FRENCH EPIC POETRY. 627 



When orlancing over French Hterature of the early part of 

 ihe 17th century, it strikes us to find a period of about 30 years, 

 reckoning from the appearance of D'Aubigne's Tragiques, which 

 is an absolute blank as far as epics are concerned. The epic 

 seems to be dead in France. Could it be that there was no poet 

 to be found who dared attempt the perilous undertaking of a 

 new epic? That was quite possible. Besides, these years \ve re 

 the opening spell of the high day of French classical tragedy, 

 Corneille was bringing his immortal masterpieces to the stage. 

 Moreover, by his side, Racan was conquering with his pastorals 

 a thankful public, whom he had before edified with his psalms, 

 and Malherbe was publishing his odes. However, tovvards the 

 middle of the century there came a change. A school of heroic 

 poets arose. This revival was due partly to the fan,ie and success 

 of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, in which he sung' in lofty, 

 glorious numbers the exploits of the Crusaders, and partly to 

 the 40,000 verses of Marino's Adone, which made many a poet 

 dream of a counterpart due to his epic genius. We may take it 

 for granted that these were the predisposing causes of this 

 revival. The proximate cause lay elsewhere : it was the extreme 

 popularity that had been gradually won by the contemporary 

 novel. Gomberville's Polexandrc, La Calprenede's Clcopaitrc, 

 Mile, de Scudery's Grand Cyrus and Clelie, were keeping the 

 select society under their spell by the marvellous adventures, 

 which they told by their skilfully interwoven history and fiction, 

 and the noble and lofty sentiment they fostered. If epics in mere 

 prose were capable of achieving such brilliant successes, what 

 enthusiasm ought, then, to be roused by genuine epics, the fruit 

 of the divine afflatus? And so it came about that the poets 

 resumed the tale of dignity about great individuals in the lan- 

 guage of the gods. 



I need not point out here that it was a most fatal mistake 

 to consider an epic to be nothing but, say, a Polexandrc or a 

 Grand Cyrus done into verse. The consequences of this fallacy 

 were deplorable. Scudery's statement : " Le poeme epique a 

 beaucoup de rapports, quant a la constitution, avec ces ingenieuses 

 fables que nous appelons des romans," certainly did much harm 

 in this respect, many novel writers of the period being in the 

 liabit of distorting historical truth, depicting mere artificial and 

 would-be antique surroundings, in which contemporaries mas- 

 queraded about in toga and pallium. Desmarets and Le Pere 

 Lemoyne, who each wrote a national epic, the former Cluvis, the 

 latter Saint Louis, were both guilty of this error. Desmarets, 

 ventilating an authoritative dictum of Ronsard, exclaimed 

 proudly: "A poet is not an historian!" and Lemoyne went even 

 so far as to say : " The more you invent and fabricate outside 

 history, the more you are a poet !" Nothing of any superior 

 poetical or literary standing could be produced by such fallacious 

 methods. Much against their intentions, Scudery and Chapelain 

 have proved this ; the former with his epic Alaric, the latter with 

 his Pucelle. 



