FRANCE. (LITERATURE.) 



291 



ie that of Paris 1521, folio. Towards the close of the 

 thirteenth century, an allegoric-romantic poem was 

 written by Jacques Gelee, under the title of Le 

 Roman du nouveau Renard, which was, probably, 

 the origin of the German poem, Reinecke der 

 Fuchs (Renard the Fox) ; and, in 1330, an ecclesi- 

 astic, by the name of Deguilleville, wrote three 

 large religious allegories, founded on the idea of a pil- 

 grimage. The hundred tales of Margaret, queen of 

 Navarre, sister of Francis I., L' Heptameron ou 

 I'Histoire des amans fortunes de tres-illustre et tres- 

 excellente Princesse Marguerite de 1'alois, Heine de 

 Navarre (1559), are written in the manner of 

 Boccaccio, and it can hardly be conceived, how a 

 woman could so entirely divest herself of female 

 delicacy. The tone, however, was not offensive to 

 the manners of her age. The 100 tales of the 

 Burgundian court had appeared at an earlier period, 

 in the reign of Charles VII., and also the two follow- 

 ing romantic poems, written with a charming simpli- 

 city Gerard de Nevers, and Le petit Jehan de 

 Saintre, which were afterwards published in a revised 

 edition by Tressan. During the crusades, the French 

 knights became acquainted with Arabian poems, 

 which gave rise to the fairy tales that afterwards 

 became so popular, and which, with the romances of 

 chivalry, became the sole repositories of whatever 

 romantic enthusiasm was yet left in France. These 

 little romantic tales were called Fabliaux (See Meon's 

 Nouveau Recueil de Fabliaux et Contes inedits des 

 Poetes Francais, of the thirteenth and fourteenth 

 centuries, Paris, 1823, 2 vols.) The romances of 

 chivalry. Huon of Bourdeaux, Ogier the Dane, and 

 similar stories of the Paladins of Charlemagne, were 

 written at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 

 the beginning of the sixteenth century, the taste for 

 this species of literature again revived in France ; 

 but the genuine romance gradually passed over into 

 the historical, which, in turn, degenerated into 

 histories of intrigues and court anecdotes. A new 

 species, the satirical romance, was introduced by 

 Rabelais, in the first half of the sixteenth century. 

 His Gargantua and Pantagruel is coarse, but full of 

 wit, comic originality, and inexhaustible fantastic 

 invention. When Anne of Austria became queen of 

 France, pastoral romances, on the model of the Span- 

 ish, became popular. Agreeably to the French 

 character, the comic was introduced into them by 

 Nicolas de Montreux, in his Bergeries de Juliette. 

 The first Frenchman who rivalled the Spaniards in 

 this department was Honoree d'Urfe in his Astree, 

 which was received with enthusiasm. The Proven- 

 gal romantic spirit seems to breathe from this work, 

 the ingenious and enthusiastic author of which was 

 born at Marseilles ; his own history is interwoven in 

 his work (5 vols., the 1st 1610). It depicts no world 

 of Arcadian shepherds, but one of chivalric gallan- 

 t\j. The romantic sentimentality of this work had an 

 influence on the historical romances, which became 

 popular during the reign of Louis XIV. Calprenede 

 treated Grecian and Roman subjects in such a man- 

 ner as to leave nothing Greek or Roman but the 

 names. He had a rich and poetical imagination, but 

 he belonged to the school which endeavoured to 

 elevate genius at the expense of taste, and which, by 

 its excess, threw the victory into the hands of the 

 opposite party, which found merit only in a close 

 adherence to the rules of art. Calprenede found an 

 imitator in Mile, de Scudery. She wrote seven long- 

 winded novels, of which the first, Clelie, extends 

 through ten octavo volumes. There are also ten 

 volumes of Conversations et Entretiens from the same 

 prolific source. In Mile, de Scudery's works, ten- 

 derness of sentiment is lost in an affected sensibility, 

 and a shallow stream of words. She died in 1701 at 



T2 



the age of more than ninety years. The ladies appear 

 to have felt a special call for the cultivation f 

 this field, and by their efforts the romance gradually 

 descended into the sphere of realities. The historical 

 novels of Mile. Rose de Caumont de la Force met 

 with a very favourable reception ; she had the art of 

 giving to them the colouring of true history. Madame 

 de Vuiedieu made it her peculiar business to meta- 

 morphose anecdotes from ancient history into tales of 

 gallantry. Her Galanteries Grenadines are written 

 in the Spanish style. Fairy tales then came into 

 vogue. The Arabian Thousand and One Nights, 

 which were translated into France by Antoine Gal- 

 land, found numerous imitators. The Contes -de ma 

 Mere I'Oye, written by Perrault, and the Tales of the 

 countess d'Aunoy, were very much read. Hamilton's 

 stories were distinguished for wit and boldness of 

 imagination ; even the venerable Fenelon wrote fairy 

 tales for the instruction of the duke of Burgundy. 

 The romances of the countess de la Fayette were 

 much admired, and her Princesse de Cleves will 

 always be ranked among the best historical novels ; 

 her Za'ide is distinguished for elegance of style and 

 tenderness of sentiments. The number of comic 

 romances was not so great. Paul Scarron, well 

 known for his wit, and his marriage with Mile. 

 d'Aubirn<*, afterwards marchioness de Maintenon, 

 displayed the talents which afforded so much amuse- 

 ment to his contemporaries, in his Le Roman coaiique. 

 He portrays successfully the comic in situations. 

 His sallies are bold, but his humour is often insipid 

 and verbose. The novels of Lesage are in imitation 

 of Spanish works. His Gil Bias, and Diable Boiteux, 

 were universally admired ; besides these, he left six 

 other works of the same kind. The Roman Bour- 

 geois of Furetiere, was read for a time, and then 

 forgotten. The invention of the domestic novel 

 belongs to the English. The abbe Prevot translated 

 the works of Richardson ; and his own novels, Cleve- 

 land, Le Doyen de Ktllerine, and particularly Manon 

 Lescaut, touch the heart. The same may be said of 

 Segrais's novels. In Montesquieu's Lettres Per- 

 sannes, fiction serves merely to convey philosophical 

 satire. In comic novels, as Candide, Zadig, Micro- 

 megas, and the Princess of Babylon, Voltaire's genius 

 appears in a striking manner. They are characterized 

 by originality, piquancy, nature, sparkling wit, and 

 an interesting style. J. J. Rousseau's Nauvelle 

 Helo'ise, by its overpowering eloquence and gfowing 

 pictures of the passions, excited universal admiration. 

 Marivaux, Diderot (whose James the Fataliat, and 

 The Nun, are among the earliest moral novels, 

 although he afterwards disgraced himself by his 

 Les Bijoux indiscrets), Mesdarnes de Tencin, de 

 Graffigny, and Riccoboni, Marmontel in his Belts- 

 aire, Incas, and Contes moraux were distinguished 

 in this class. Florian showed how the historical 

 romance may be combined with the romance of 

 chivalry, in his Gonzalve de Cordove ; he succeeded 

 in reviving the pastoral novel, by his free inntation 

 of the Galathee of Cervantes, and by his own lovely 

 Estelle. The younger Crebillon, than whom no 

 writer better understood the art of combining the 

 most voluptuous situations with a nice description of 

 character, stands at the head of a long series of 

 writers of frivolous novels. The works of some of 

 his imitators are stained by the most shameless im- 

 moralities. Such are the Liaisons dangereuses of 

 Laclos, and Justine. One of the best novelists in 

 the latter half of the eighteenth century was Iletif 

 de la Bretonne. Two later writers in tliis branch of 

 literature throw all their predecessors into the shade 

 Beniardin de St Pierre and Chateaubriand. Th 

 fonner gained the reputation of a writer of much 

 sense and feeling by his Etudes de ia Nature, while 



