CHAPTER VII
THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES
In the present chapter we shall endeavour to treat two divisions ofactual novel- or at least fiction-writing--strikingly opposed to eachother in character; and a third subject, to include which in the titlewould have made that title too long, and which is not strictly a branchof novel-_writing_, but which had perhaps as important an influence onthe progress of the novel itself as anything mentioned or to bementioned in all this _History_. The first division is composed of thefollowers--sometimes in the full, always in the chronological sense--ofRabelais, a not very strong folk as a rule, but including one brilliantexample of co-operative work, and two interesting, if in some degreeproblematical, persons. The second, strikingly contrasting with thegeneral if not the universal tendency of the first, is the greattranslated group of _Amadis_ romances, which at once revived romance ofthe older kind itself, and exercised a most powerful, if not an actuallygenerative, influence on newer forms which were themselves to pass intothe novel proper. The third is the increasing body of memoir- andanecdote-writers who, with Brantome at their head, make actualpersonages and actual events the subjects of a kind of story-telling,not perhaps invariably of unexceptionable historic accuracy, butfurnishing remarkable situations of plot and suggestions of character,together with abundant new examples of the "telling" faculty itself.
[Sidenote: Subsidiary importance of Brantome and othercharacter-mongers.]
The last point, as an apparent digression but really a most importantcontribution to the History, may perhaps be discussed and dismissedfirst. All persons who have even a slight knowledge of French literaturemust be aware how early and how remarkable are its possessions in whatis vaguely called the "Memoir" department. There is nothing at the time,in any modern literature known to the present writer, similar toVillehardouin, or a little later to Joinville,--one might almost saythat there is nothing in any literature at any time superior, if therebe anything equal, in its kind to Froissart. In the first two casesthere is pure personal experience; in the third there is, of course, acertain amount of precedent writing on the subject for guidance, and alarge gathering of information by word of mouth. But in all these, andto a less extent in others up to the close of the fifteenth century,there is the indefinable gift of treatment--of "telling a story." InVillehardouin this gift may be almost wholly, and in principle verymainly, limited to the two great subjects which made the mediaeval endas far as profane matters were concerned--fighting and counselling; butthis is by no means the case in Froissart, whom one is sometimes temptedto regard as a Sir Walter Scott thrown away upon base reality.
With the sixteenth century this gift once more burgeoned and spreaditself out--dealing, indeed, very mainly with the somewhat ungratefulsubject of the religious disputes and wars, but flowering or fruitinginto the unsurpassable gossip--though gossip is too undignified aword--of Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abbe de Brantome, that Froissart andPepys in one, with the noble delight in noble things of the first,inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second,and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, andranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier(his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable--notprofessional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, andobviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies,"Bayard and the two Marguerites," as some one has put it. And his vividirregular fashion of writing adapts itself with equal ease to a gallantfeat of arms and a ferocious, half-cut-throat duel, to an exquisitepiece of sentimental passion like that which tells us the story how theelder Queen of Navarre rebuked the lover carelessly stepping over thegrave of his dead mistress, and to an unquotable anecdote to parallelthe details of which, in literature of high rank, one must go toRabelais himself, to Martial, or to Aristophanes. But, whatever thesubject, the faculty of lively communication remains unaltered, and thesuggestion of its transference from fact (possibly a little coloured) topure fiction becomes more and more possible and powerful.[110]
[Sidenote: The _Heptameron_.]
No book has been more subject to the "insupportable advances" of the"key"-monger than the _Heptameron_, and the rage for identifying hasgone so far that the pretty old name of "Emarsuite" for one of thecharacters has been discarded for an alleged and much uglier"Ennasuite," which is indeed said to have MS. authority, but which isavowedly preferred because it can be twisted into "_Anne_ a Suite"("Anne in Waiting"), and so can be fastened to an actual Maid of Honourof Marguerite's. It is only fair, however, to admit that something ofthe kind is at least suggested by the book itself. Even by those who donot trouble themselves in the least about the personages who may or maynot have been disguised under the names of Nomerfide (the Neifile ofthis group) and Longarine, Saffredent and Dagoucin and Gebron (Geb_u_ronthey call him now), admit the extreme probability of the Queen havinginvited identification of herself with Parlamente, the younger matron ofthe party, and of Hircan her husband with the King of Navarre.[111] Butsome (among whom is the present writer) think that this delightful andnot too well-fated type of Renaissance amorousness, letteredness, andpiety combined made a sort of dichotomy of herself here, and intendedthe personage of Oisille, the elder duenna (though by no means a verystern one) of the party, to stand for her as well as Parlamente--to whomone really must give the Italian pronunciation to get her out of theabominable suggestion of our "talking-machine."
[Sidenote: Character and "problems."]
A much more genuinely literary question has been raised and discussed asto the exact authorship of the book. That it is entirely Marguerite's,not the most jealous admirers of the Queen need for a moment contend.She is known to have had a sort of literary court from Marot andRabelais downwards, some of the members of which were actually residentwith her, and not a few of whom--such as Boaistuau and Le Macon, thetranslators of Bandello and Boccaccio, and Bonaventure Desperiers (_v.inf._)--were positive experts in the short story. Moreover, the customof distributing these collections among different speakers positivelyinvited collaboration in writing. The present critic and his friend, Mr.Arthur Tilley of King's College, Cambridge, who has long been our chiefspecialist in the literature of the French Renaissance, are in anamicable difference as to the part which Desperiers in particular mayhave played in the _Heptameron_; but this is of no great importancehere, and though Marguerite's other literary work is distinctly inferiorin style, it is not impossible that the peculiar tone of the best partsof it, especially as regards the religious-amorous flavour, was infusedby her or under her direct influence. The enthusiasm of Rabelais andMarot; the striking anecdote already mentioned which Brantome, whosemother had been one of Marguerite's maids of honour, tells us, and oneor two other things, suggest this; for Desperiers was more of a satiristthan of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought againsthim are (_v. inf._ again) scarcely supported by his work, he wascertainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal andsometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own _Contes_,sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as"_l'impossibilite_ de nostre chair,"[112] may be hers, and the followingremarkable speech of Parlamente probably expresses her own sentimentspretty exactly. It is very noteworthy that Hircan, who is generallyrepresented as "taking up" his wife's utterances with a certain sarcasm,is quite silent here.
[Sidenote: Parlamente on human and divine love.]
"Also," said Parlamente, "I have an opinion that never will a man love God perfectly if he has not perfectly loved some of God's creatures in this world." "But what do you call 'perfect loving'?" said Saffredent. "Do you reckon as perfect lovers those who are _transis_,[113] and who adore ladies at a distance, without daring to make their wishes known?" "I call perfect lovers," answered Parlamente, "those who seek in what they love some perfection--be it beauty, kindness, or good grace,--always striving towards virtue; and such as have so
high and honourable a heart, that they would not, were they to die for it, take for their object the base things which honour and conscience disapprove: for the soul, which is only created that it may return to its Sovereign Good, does naught while it is in the body but long for the attainment of this. But because the senses by which alone it can acquire information are darkened and made carnal by the sin of our first father, they can only show her the visible things which approach closest to perfection--and after these the soul runs, thinking to find in outward beauty, in visible grace, and in moral virtue, grace, beauty, and virtue in sovereign degree. But when she has sought them and tried them, and finds not in them Him whom she loves, she leaves them alone,[114] just as a child, according to his age, likes dolls and other trivialities, the prettiest he sees, and thinks a collection of pebbles actual riches, but as he grows up prefers his dolls alive, and gets together the goods necessary for human life. Yet when he knows, by still wider experience, that in earthly things there is neither perfection nor felicity, he desires to seek the Creator and the Source of these. Nevertheless, if God open not the eye of faith in him he would be in danger of becoming, instead of a merely ignorant man, an infidel philosopher.[115] For Faith alone can demonstrate and make receivable the good that the carnal and animal man cannot understand."
This gives the better Renaissance temper perhaps as well as anything tobe found, and may, or should in fairness, be set against the worser toneof mere libertinage in which some even of the ladies indulge here, andstill more against that savagery which has been noticed above. Thisundoubtedly was in Milton's mind when he talked of "Lust hard by Hate,"and it makes Hircan coolly observe, after a story has been told in whichan old woman successfully interferes to save a girl's chastity, that inthe place of the hero he should certainly have killed the hag andenjoyed the girl. This is obviously said in no bravado, and not in theleast humorously: and the spirit of it is exemplified in divers not inthe least incredible anecdotes of Brantome's in the generationimmediately following, and of Tallemant des Reaux in the next. Thereligiosity displayed is of a high temper of Christian Platonism, and wecannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go tomass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogethererroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's beinglate for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keepthe unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seemto dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while theyare finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisantcasuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at thepiety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been KingFrancis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way toillegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on oneoccasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that ofOisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole isgraceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionlesscoarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcelynecessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours offashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the futurenovelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand tothe shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Desperiershimself.
[Sidenote: Desperiers.]
With the _Cymbalum Mundi_ of this rather mysterious person we need havelittle to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation ofLucian--a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and acertain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of oftenrather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day andsince, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at leastanti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with theauthor's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be verylittle harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kindof fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of agenius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that ratherinferior rate. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on the other hand, thoughthe extreme brevity of some has perhaps sometimes prejudiced readersagainst them, have always seemed to the present writer to form the mostremarkable book, as literature, of all the department at the time except_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ and the _Heptameron_, and to supply astrong presumption that their author had more than a minor hand in the_Heptameron_ itself. It must, of course, be admitted that the fashion inwhich they are delivered may not only offend in one direction, but maypossibly mislead in another. One may read too much into the brevity, andso fall into the error of that other Englishman who was beguiled by themysterious signs of Desperiers' greatest contemporary's most originalcreation. But a very large and long experience of literary weighing andmeasuring ought to be some safeguard against the mistake of Thaumast.
[Sidenote: _Contes et Joyeux Devis._]
One remarkable difference which may seem, at first sight, to be againstthe theory of Desperiers having had a large share in the _Heptameron_ isthe contrasted and, as it may seem again at first sight, antagonistictone of the two. There are purely comic and even farcical passages inMarguerite's book, but the general colour, as has been said, isreligious-sentimental or courtly-amatory, with by no means infrequentexcursions into the purely tragical. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, onthe other hand, in the main continue the wholly jocular tone of the old_fabliaux_. But Desperiers must have been, not only _not_ the great manof letters which the somewhat exaggerated zeal of his editor, M. LouisLacour, ranked him as being, but a very weak and feeble writer, if hecould not in this way write comedy in one book and tragedy in another.In fact Rabelais gives us (as the greatest writers so often do) what isin more senses than one a master-key to the contrast. Desperiers has inthe _Contes_ constant ironic qualifications and asides which may evenhave been directly imitated from his elder and greater contemporary;Marguerite has others which pair off in the same way with the mostserious Rabelaisian "intervals," to which attention has been drawn inthe last chapter. One point, however, does seem, at least to me, toemerge from the critical consideration of these two books with the otherworks of the Queen on the one hand and the other works ofDesperiers[116] on the other. It is that the latter had a much crisperand stronger style than Marguerite's own, and that he had a faculty ofgrave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediableeffects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there issomething more than the mere _grivoiserie_, which in other hands itmight easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.--on KingSolomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure ofalchemy--is of quite a different type from most things in thesestory-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not beshocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe thecaution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in itsparticular kind.
[Sidenote: Other tale-collections.]
The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenthcentury, and a respectable number of them have found a home in historiesof literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what theyare, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant ofwhich is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,_Apologie pour Herodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the_Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noel Du Fail, a Breton squire(as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _EscraignesDijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinees_ and_Apres Dinees_ of Cholieres, and, the largest collection of all, the_
Serees_ [Soirees] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while afterthe close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributedand denied to Beroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, theimitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to befound; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Desperiers;while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than onecollection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffingtogether of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesquestyle--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language tomost; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old_fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of theRenaissance--learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almosteverything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] andnone of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit oftale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more specialpoint of importance "for us."
[Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]
It will be observed that some of them actually display in their titles(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have adefinite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearlyAngevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundianand as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely benecessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigourand variety must have been brought by this plantation in the differentsoils of those provinces which have counted for so much--and nearlyalways for so much good[119]--in French literature and French thingsgenerally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been itstendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this theprovincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselvesgenerally--one of the fairest and most fertile fields of thenovel-kingdom--became thus more fully and freely the object and subjectof the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive andintensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the dramanecessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin[120] andMontaigne were getting the language more fully ready for theprose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature withreligion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,commerce, familiarity with foreign nations--everything almost thattouched on life--helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearanceof the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and moresteps to go through before it could take full form.
[Sidenote: The _Amadis_ romances.]
No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar onewhich will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present_History_, or perhaps in any other, than that of the matter justdiscussed with the great body of _Amadis_ romance which, at this sametime, was introduced into French literature by the translation oradaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. ThatHerberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic studentsof French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers orreformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, forus, minor. Of the controversial part of the _Amadis_ subject it must, asin other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may belaid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from anyFrench original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no externalevidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is animmense improbability against any such original ever having existed.Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but forthe French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of _Amadis_itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the leastlike those of French or English. How the actual texts came into thatexistence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expertcriticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, andthe refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterlybeyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves--their hugevogue being a matter of fact--and the influence which they exercised onthe future development of the novel,--these are the things that concernus, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve alittle attention.
[Sidenote: Their characteristics.]
What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves--which, assome readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out intoendless genealogies in the _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ lines, besides themore or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censorsof Don Quixote's library--as well as the later French examples of a notdissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is LordBerners's translation of _Arthur of Little Britain_--do show the moststriking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- andthirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur productions, but also fromintermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of thesediscrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernaturalelements. Of course these were not absent in the older romanceliterature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they hadcertain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective"critical"--little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what maybe called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story isdeliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle ofreconciliation and restoration which concludes _Amis and Amiles_ is thework of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they areintroduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on theearlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of itssupernatural elements into the romance itself.
[Sidenote: Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.]
In the _Amadis_ cycle and in romances like _Arthur of Little Britain_all this undergoes a change--not by any means for the better. What hasbeen unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror'ssupernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of thepersonages of the _Knight of the Sun_ is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it isreally too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.In _Arthur of_ (so much the Lesser) _Britain_ there is, if I rememberrightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinninground on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom bemet with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legsand hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, notwithout probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come soreadily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly importsan element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and itdiminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminishedthe _readability_ of these same things, is quite another question.
Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of greatlength and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, andthe like--a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to thedistorted echo of more musical[122] appellations in Arabic and otherEastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubtthat the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in suchthings. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, andstill more with continuations from father to son and grandson, andtrains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less chargedas an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rulewhich had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seenearlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been notuncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from thepositively terse _Roland_ to the prolix fifteen
th-century forms. In factthis went on till the extravagant length of the Scudery group madeitself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardsonknow, there was reluctance to shorten.
[Sidenote: The "cruel" heroine.]
We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the mostimportant by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is theever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine andthe sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not speciallynoticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffersplentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the twoheroines of _Palmerin_, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, andMiraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course thething was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. Thelines--
And cruel in the New As in the Old one,
may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to thehistorical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed ratherindiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinctionof sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was saferfor men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among herinnumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while oneregrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, thoughEros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obviousreasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,though there seems to me more chance of the convention coming from Araband Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the _ArabianNights_ at least, though there are lustful murderesses--easternMargarets of Burgundy, like Queen Labe of the Magicians,--there isseldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of theheroines.
A hasty rememberer of the sufferings of Lancelot and one or two otherheroes of the early and genuine romance might say, "Why go further thanthis?" But on a little examination the cases will be found verydifferent. Neither Iseult nor Guinevere is cruel to her lover;Orgueilleuse has a fair excuse in difference of rank and slightacquaintance; persons like Tennyson's Ettarre, still more his Vivien,are "sophisticated"--as we have pointed out already. Besides, Vivien andEttarre are frankly bad women, which is by no means the case with thePolisardas and Miraguardas. They, if they did not introduce thething--which is, after all, as the old waterman in _Jacob Faithful_says, "Human natur',"--established and conventionalised the Silvius andPhoebe relation of lover and mistress. If Lancelot is banished more thanonce or twice, it is because of Guinevere's real though unfoundedjealousy, not of any coquettish "cruelty" on her part; if Partenopeusnearly perishes in his one similar banishment, it is because of his ownfault--his fault great and inexcusable. But the Amadisian heroes, as arule--unless they belong to the light o' love Galaor type, which wouldnot mind cruelty if it were exercised, but would simply laugh and rideaway--are almost painfully faithful and deserving; and their sojourns inTenebrous Isles, their encounters with Bedevilled Fauns, and the like,are either pure misfortunes or the deliberate results of capricioustyranny on the part of their mistresses.
Now of course this is the sort of thing which may be (and as a matter offact it no doubt was) tediously abused; but it is equally evident thatin the hands of a novelist of genius, or even of fair talent andcraftsmanship, it gives opportunity for extensive and ingeniouscharacter-drawing, and for not a little "polite conversation." If _ladonna e mobile_ generally, she has very special opportunities ofexhibiting her mobility in the exercise of her caprice: and if it is thebusiness of the lover (as it is of minorities, according to a RightHonourable politician) to suffer, the _amoureux transi_ who has somewits and some power of expression can suffer to the genteelest of tuneswith the most ingenious fugues and variations. A great deal of theactual charm of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry in alllanguages comes from the rendering in verse of this very relation ofwoman and man. We owe to the "dear Lady Disdain" idea not merelyBeatrice, but Beatrix long after her, and many another good thing bothin verse and in prose between Shakespeare and Thackeray.
In the _Amadis_ group (as in its slightly modernised successor, that ofthe _Grand Cyrus_), the handling is so preposterously long and thereliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so littleskill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been founddifficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is toosketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort._Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are legible enough in Southey's translations,made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve thelanguage of the old English versions where possible. But Herberay'ssixteenth-century French is a very attractive and perfectly easylanguage, thoroughly well suited to the matter. And if anything that hasbeen said is read as despite to these romances, the reading is wrong.They have grave faults, but also real delights, and they have no small"place i' the story."[123]
FOOTNOTES:
[110]
[Sidenote: Note on Montaigne.]
This suggestive influence may be found almost as strongly, though shownwith less literary craftsmanship, in Brantome's successor and to someextent overlapper, Tallemant des Reaux. And it is almost needless to saythat in both _subjects_ for novel treatment "foison," as both French andEnglish would have said in their time. Nor may it be improper to addthat Montaigne himself, though more indirectly, assisted in speeding thenovel. The actual telling of a story is indeed not his strongest point:the dulness of the _Travels_, if they were really his (on which pointthe present writer cannot help entertaining a possibly unorthodoxdoubt), would sufficiently show this. But the great effect which heproduced on French prose could not, as in the somewhat similar case ofDryden in English a century later, but prove of immense aid to thenovelist. Except in the deliberately eccentric style, as in Rabelais'own case, or in periods such as the Elizabethan and our own, where thereis a coterie ready to admire jargon, you cannot write novels, tointerest and satisfy readers, without a style, or a group of styles,providing easy and clear narrative media. We shall see how, in the nextcentury, writers in forms apparently still more alien from the novelhelped it in the same way.
[111] The character of this Bourbon prince seems to have been veryfaithfully though not maliciously drawn by Margaret (for the name,_Gallice pulchrum_, is _Anglice pulchrius_, and our form may bepermitted in a note) as not ungenial, not exactly ungentlemanly, and byno means hating his wife or being at all unkind to her, but constantly"hard" on her in speech, openly regarding infidelity to her as a matterof course, and not a little tinged by the savagery which (one is afraid)the English wars had helped to introduce among the French nobility;which the religious wars were deepening, and which, in the times of theFronde, came almost to its very worst, and, though somewhat tamed later,lasted, and was no mean cause, if not so great a one as some think, ofthe French Revolution. Margaret's love for her brother was ill rewardedin many ways--among others by brutal scandal--and her later days wereembittered by failure to protect the new learning and the new faith shehad patronised earlier. But one never forgets Rabelais' address to her,or the different but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposedto have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait,though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendencyof that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no meansunsuggestive of actual physical charm.
[112] This phrase, though Biblical, of course, in spirit, is not, so faras I remember, anywhere found textually in Holy Writ. It may bepatristic; in which case I shall be glad of learned information. Itsounds rather like St. Augustine. But I do not think it occurs earlierin French, and the word _impossibilite_ is not banal in the connection.
[113] The famous phrase "amoureux _transi_" is simply untranslatable byany single word in English for the adjective, or rather participle. Itsunmetaphorical use is, of course, commonest in the combination _transide froid_, "frozen," and so suggests in th
e other a lover shiveringactually under his mistress's shut window, or, metaphorically, under herdisdain.
[114] The expression (_passe oultre_) commented on in speaking ofRabelais, and again one which has no English equivalent.
[115] A very early example of the special sense given to this word inFrench increasingly during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenthcenturies, of "freethinker" deepening to "atheist." Johnson's friend, itwill be remembered, regarded Philosophy as something to which theirruption of Cheerfulness was fatal; Butler, as something acquirable byreading Alexander Ross; a famous ancient saying, as the remembrancer ofdeath; and a modern usage, as something which has brass and glass"instruments." But it was Hegel, was it not? or Carlyle? who summarisedthe French view and its time of prevalence in the phrase, "When everyone was a philosopher who did not believe in the Devil."
[116] His translations of the _Andria_ and of Plato's _Lysis_; and hisverses, the chief charm of which is to be found in his adoption of the"cut and broken" stanzas which the French Renaissance loved.
[117] Not to be confused with _Jehan_ Bouchet the poet, a much olderman, indeed some twenty years older than Rabelais, and as dull asRaminagrobis Cretin himself, but the inventor or discoverer of thatagreeable _agnomen_ "Traverseur des Voies Perilleuses" which has beennoted above.
[118] Cholieres, I think, deserves the prize for sinking lowest.
[119] From all the endless welter of abuse of God's great gift of speech[and writing] about the French Revolution, perhaps nothing has emergedmore clearly than that its evils were mainly due to the sterilisation ofthe regular Provincial assemblies under the later monarchy.
[120] A person not bad of blood will always be glad to mention one ofthe few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person ofhumour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin'sservices to French prose were utilised.
[121] He did not confine his good offices to romances of _caballeria_.In 1539 he turned into French the _Arnalte and Lucenda_ of Diego de SanPedro (author of the more widely known _Carcel de Amor_), a very curiousif also rather tedious-brief love-story which had great influence inFrance (see Reynier, _op. cit. inf._ pp. 66-73). This (though M. Reynierdid not know it) was afterwards versified in English by one of our minorCarolines, and will appear in the third volume of the collected editionof them now in course of publication by the Clarendon Press.
[122] Not always. Nouzhatoul-aouadat is certainly not as musical asPintiquinestra, though Nouronnihar as certainly is.
[123]
[Sidenote: Note on Helisenne de Crenne.]
There should be added here a very curious, and now, if not in its owntime, very rare book, my first knowledge of which I owed to a workalready mentioned, M. Gustave Reynier's _Le Roman Sentimental avantl'Astree_ (Paris, 1908), though I was able, after this chapter wascomposed, to find and read the original in the British Museum. It wasfirst printed in 1538, and bears, like other books of its time, adisproportionately long title, which may, however, be easily shortened,"_Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procedent d'Amour_ ... composees pardame Helisenne de Crenne." This Helisenne or Helisaine seems to havebeen a real person: and not the least of the remarkable group of womenauthors who illustrate her time in France, though M. Reynier himselfadmits that "it is difficult to know exactly _who_ she was." She appearsto have been of Picardy, and other extant and non-extant works areattributed to her. Like almost everybody of her time she wrote in theextreme _rhetoriqueur_ style--so much so indeed as to lead even Pasquierinto the blunder of supposing that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect ofthe "Limousin scholar." The _Angoisses_, which M. Reynier's acuteexamination shows to have been written by some one who must have knownBoccaccio's _Fiammetta_ (more than once Frenched about this time), is,or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birthwho, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband,becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Ofthese she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight principle, a veryhandsome young man who passes in the street. She is well read and triesto keep herself in order by stock examples, classical and romantic, ofill-placed and ill-fated affection. Her husband (who seems to have beena very good fellow for his time) gives her unconsciously what shouldhave been the best help of all, by praising her self-selected lover'sgood looks and laughing at the young man's habit of staring at her. Butshe has already spoken frankly of her own _appetit sensuel_, and sheproceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth centuryand the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between thealtitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out tobe an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells herin the usual stolen church interview, _Je crains merveilleusementmonsieur votre mari_). But it makes not the slightest difference; nordoes the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened butwideawake husband. Apparently she never has the chance of being actuallyguilty, for her husband finally, and very properly, shuts her up in acountry house under strong duennaship. This finishes the first part, butthere are two more, which return to more ancient ways. The loverGuenelic goes off to seek adventures, which he himself recounts, andacquires considerable improvement in them. He comes back, endeavours tofree his mistress from her captivity, and does actually fly with her;but they are pursued; and though the lover and a friend of his with therather Amadisian name of "Quezinstra" do their best, the heroine dies ofweariness and shock, to be followed by her lover.
This latter part is comparatively commonplace. M. Reynier thinks veryhighly of the first. It is possible to go with him a certain part of theway, but not, I think, the whole, except from a purely "naturalist" andnot at all "sentimental" point of view. Some bold bad men have, ofcourse, maintained that when the other sex is possessed by an _appetitsensuel_ this overcomes everything else, and seems, if not actually toexclude, at any rate by no means always or often to excite, thataccompanying transcendentalism which is not uncommon with men, andwhich, comprised with the appetite, makes the love of the great lovers,whether they are represented by Dante or by Donne, by Shakespeare or byShelley. Whether this be truth or libel _non nostrum est_. But it iscertain that Helisenne, as she represents herself, does not make thesmallest attempt to spiritualise (even in the lowest sense) or inspiritthe animality of her affection. She wants her lover as she might want apork chop instead of a mutton one; and if she is sometimes satisfiedwith seeing him, it is as if she were looking at that pork chop througha restaurateur's window and finding it better than not seeing it at alland contenting herself with the mutton. Still this result is probablythe result at least as much of want of art as of original _mis_feeling;and the book certainly does deserve notice here.
The original _Oeuvres_ of Helisenne form a rather appetising littlevolume, fat, and close and small printed, as indeed is the case withmost, but not quite all, of the books now under notice. Thecomplementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,the _Angoisses_ themselves. These latter seem to me better worthreprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the_Heptameron_ (Helisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) fornearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps evenbecause) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no meansdestitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on themif he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo isindeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printeraids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend thedescription of the B. V. M. as "Mere et Fille de _l'aliltonat_ [ant]plasmateur" into "_altitonant_" ("loud-thundering"), while _plasmateur_itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite withthe _rhetoriqueurs_, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is notexactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairlyjudged. "Au temps que la Deesse Cibele despouilla son glacial et gelidehabit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapissee de diverses couleurs, jefus procree, de noblesse." And, after all, there _is_ a certain nobilityin this fas
hion of speech and of literary presentation.
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