208 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



presentment and perfection of form obtained by rigid self-criticism and 

 elimination of the unessential. 



Centralised absolutism was only established by the civil power by 

 gradually suppressing the political aspirations and rights of the feudal 

 and legal aristocracies, the middle classes and the Huguenots. The 

 ascendancy of ultramontanism and the Jesuits, and complete religious 

 uniformity was only reached by crushing Protestants, Gallicans, and 

 Jansenists alike. In literature the triumph of the classical spirit was 

 equally slow and laborious. The sixteenth century had closed with 

 a model of disorder, disproportion, and heterogeneousness in the Essays 

 of Montaigne. The seventeenth opened with the formulation of 

 Malherbe's canons which insist on order, balance, unity of conception, 

 concise statement, correct syntax, and impeccable versification, while 

 restricting vocabulary to that of Parisian society, and literary forms to 

 a few types selected for their dignified character. That Malherbe's 

 doctrine bore immediate fruit is shown in the dramas of Corneille, who, 

 however, found great difficulty in fitting his romantic and extravagant 

 plots into the scheme of the classical unities. While this new 

 conception of literature steadily gained ground, it was not till an age 

 of bad taste had been traversed in which euphuistic preciosity flourished 

 side by side with gross burlesque, that it triumphed. Its victory was 

 materially assisted by the influence of the Academie Francaise, an 

 informal literary association which, after receiving official incorporation 

 from Richelieu (1634), began to exercise a censorship over the language 

 and an organising and centralising influence over literature. The 

 triumph of Malherbe's principles was complete when they were 

 adopted and amplified by Boileau in the palmy days of Louis XIV., 

 the Classical Age par excellence in literature. 



In art, and especially in architecture, the classical spirit, which had 

 been obscured under the later Valois, gradually reasserted itself, and 

 the century was one of constant struggle and compromise between the 

 two tendencies which may be described as Palladianism and Barocco. 

 At first the purer school was represented by a union of Huguenot 

 austerity and Roman grandeur, the free classic by the traditions of the 

 School of Fontainebleau. About 1620 the latter were reinforced by 

 the influence of the Flemish barocco, which during a period, 

 corresponding roughly with the age of bad taste in literature, 

 threatened to be completely triumphant. But classical studies, which 

 had at no time been altogether abandoned, became increasingly 

 strenuous, and reasserted their influence under the regency of Anne 

 of Austria, more especially in the purification of detail and decoration. 



In the political sphere unity and efficiency attendant on an irresis- 

 tible central government were secured, but only by crushing out some 

 of the vital forces of national life. Literature gained in precision 



