l6 
LAiND & WATER 
itifc anti Jtetters 
October 25, 1917 
By J. C. Squire 
Dr. George Saintsbury 
DR. GKORGE SAINTSBURY'S retirement, at 
something over seventy, from his I-d>nbur^h 
Professorship, did not connote a larcwcll iron, 
authorship although he had written enough 
books and parts of books to sink a ship. He phmged at ona. 
into one more large scheme, a Hhlorv of the {'''''^^''■^"'''.{ 
of which the first volume has just beeu published (icSs. net) 
by Macmillans. He suggests that this •' mu^t in all pro- 
bability be the last of some already, perhaps, too numerous, 
studies of literary history," but I would lay odds that He i^ 
wrong, and am happy in the conviction. Dr. Saints»"r> 
although he has been a Professor of Literature, and althougi^ 
he has all sorts of cranks and limitations (including a deplor- 
able inability to see the beauty of some of the finest modern 
literature), has never been a pedant or a dullard. I his in 
a Professor, is much. For literary history, like history of ot lei 
kinds, suffers from the operation of the general rule that 
people who could do the main job won't do the donkey work, 
and that people who like the donkey work are quite unequal to 
the job. One of many bad results of this is that there is a 
terrible lot of copying'of opinions. Something, labelled in a 
certain wav, goes "into a history, and gets transferred into all 
the other "histories until some innovator comes along and 
makes a fresh start. 
****** 
Dr. Saintsbury, at least, is no respecter of persons or their 
views. He has read almost everything that ever was written, 
and it is safe to say that his opinions about it all are invariably 
his own. He eveii, perhaps, shows signs of a tendency to re- 
gard other people's judgments as challenges ; he is quite 
obviously happy when he is disagreeing— which he never doe.s 
without a show of reason— with another critic or an accepted 
view. This may mean that he often goes astray ; but it has 
also meant that", in his studies both of French and of English 
literature, he has frequently called attention to the merits of 
neglected works and. to the defects of telauded ones. The 
H islorv of the French Novel is not a book to be attempted by 
anyone who knows nothing of the French novel ; but it 
could not fail to interest, stimulate, and provoke to thought 
anyreader who has a general acquaintance with it. 
***** 
The volume covers the subject from the beginning up to 
1800, the only really richly productive century being left for 
later treatment ; and the jterm " novel " is made to include 
anything which is written in prose, and which tells a story, 
wholly or mainly fictitious.' No other system of classification 
would have been so easily defensible. Dr. Saintsbury brings 
in the Media.'val Romances and fabliaux {he admits verse 
thus early), the works of Francis Rabelais, all sorts of short 
stories and collections of such, the fairy stories of Perrault, 
Madame d'Aulnoy, and others, as well as books which would 
be considered novels by the casual modern observer. The 
ground is well covered, all. the really important figures are 
adequately treated, and when Dr. Saintsbury completely 
omits men whom the orthodox critic would automatically 
include — such as the authors of Les Liaisons Duni^ereiises 
and Les Amours du Chevalier dc Faublas — he is able to 
justify his action. 
***** 
His conclusion on the French Novel to 1800 is that France 
grew the seed of Romance for all countries ; and that " from 
1400 to 1800 she entered upon a curious kind of wilderness, 
studded with oases of a mcire curious character still." Con- 
tinually the French invented things which were more fully 
developed elsewhere : but they achieved few masterpieces, 
and they had no period which for production could compare 
with our own eighteenth century with its Defoe, Swift, 
Richardson, Fielding, Smollctrt, Sterne, Goldsmith and Jane 
Austen. Dr. Saintsbury is enthusiastic enough when ho 
comes to anything indisputably good — Gil Bias, that remark- 
able accident <l/fl«o)i Lescaiit. or the first part of Rousseau's 
./»/ic, which he criticises with great discrimination. He has 
a favourable word for Telemaque. now less read perhaps than 
any work once so universally known ; he discovers and 
praises the merits of Crebillon fits, whose qualities, as a 
stylist, narrator and wit, have been in this country 
smothered under the evil reputation of Le Sop/i<i ; he gives 
precisely their due and no more to the early collections of 
imiies, and he is almost lyrical about Hamilton's tales. But 
the mere reputation is nothing to him. Cyrano de Bergerac 
whose VoyasiL- has small meritorious patches which would 
bear quotation — he dismisses with almost too great a 
contempt, in spite of his factitious fame ; he is cold about 
Marivaux ; and to \'oltaire he is openly hostile. Of Voltaire 
(who " did a great deal of harm in the world, and pcrhrfps no 
solid good ") he says that he was " perhaps the greatest 
talent — but — not — genius ever known." There is- some 
sense in this in my opinion, but it is evidently a matter of 
opinion, as is also the decision that if a monkey could write 
he would write like A'oltairc. At all events. Dr. Saintsbury 
appreciates Candide as what it is : a skit which, however 
superficial, is as permanently entertaining as anything ever 
written — an almost perfect work of art. Possibilities of 
greatness as a novelist are detected in Scarron. Dr. Saints- 
bury's conclusion is that Rabelais was the greatest novelist 
of those dealt with here, and that Diderot might have 
been a second, possibly as great. These judgments, from 
which I for one should not dissent, are an instance of Dr. 
Saintsbury's habit of thinking for himself. On both authors 
ho is at his best, and the chapter on Rabelais may be com- 
mended to all who misunderstandjthat gigantic story-teller. 
As for his meanings, and the struggles of modern allegory- 
hunters. Dr. Saintsbury is very sensible. It is generalh' 
supposed, he says, that 
there must be a general theme, because the writer ' is so 
obviously able to handle any theme he chooses. It may be 
wiser — it certainly seems so to the present writer — to dis- 
believe in anything but occasional sallies — episodes, as it 
were, or even digressions — of political, religious, moral, 
social and other satire. 
Panurge he describes as " the first distinct and striking 
character in prose fiction." As for Diderot (who, to my taste 
has like Rabelais something very English about him) Dr. 
Saintsbury's judgment is not supported by that dull and 
mechanically nasty fantasia which he wrote for money and 
which is so uncharacteristic of him. And it is not founded 
upim Le Xereu de Rameau, a work the subtlety and modernity 
of which has made it latterly the object of a cult. It is 
based entireh- upon La Religieuse, and quite soundly. What 
Diderot knew about life in convents is more than I can say ; 
but- that novel is astonishingly true to life in general. It 
is the work of a real novelist, whose men and women come 
alive to him and act of their own volition ; its unlaboured 
vividness, its natural vigour, the spontaneous force of its 
dialogue, are unmatched in^ I'rench eighteenth centurj- 
literature. And there is suft'ering behind it. 
***** 
Dr. Saintsbury's is as readable a book as could be written 
on the subject. Biographical information is given only 
where it is likely to be needed : the extracts are well and 
unconventionally chosen : and Dr. Sail tsbury does not pro- 
portion his book as a hide-bound scholar would have done. 
J'hat is to say, mere names arc nothing to him. If he 
thinks he can get a celebrated person successfully disposed of 
in a page or two, he does so, and if he thinks a book so well 
known that analysis of its contents is unnecessar\-, he passes 
on, leaving himself more space for the full treatment of books 
about which he has something special to say or which, though 
historically important, are scarcely ever read. Two examples 
of the latter class are D'Urfe's Astree and Mine, de Scudery's 
Le Grand Cyrus, the prototypes of seventeenth century 
pastoral and historical romance. Xo history would omit 
them, but few historians would read tiv?ni or, at any rate, do 
more than skim through them. Dr. Saintsbury is exhaustive 
on both ; he has done his duty like a man ; the book which 
would daunt him by its size has not yet been written, and that 
chronicle of which Macaulay said that it might have Ijcen 
read in the age of Hilpa and Shalum would have been child's 
play to him. He seems, as a result of his researches, to ha: c 
found Astree as charming as it used to be thought ; but his 
exploration of Le Grand Gyrus s'till leaves one completely 
in the dark as to why our ancestors were so devoted to it. 
His account, however, temporarily invests the work with an 
interest which (save arch:cologically) it does not possess : 
and the same thing may be said of his remarks about even the 
dullest and most " minor " items in his catalogue. He is 
well over seventy, but his zest for life, literature and con- 
troversy is unimpaired. He eats his way through tlie centuries 
like a hungry caterpillar. No serene and reminiscent old age 
for him : he is as eager as ever to form and formulate new 
judgments, to maintain old ones against new opponents, to 
infect the reader with his enjoyments and his detestations, and 
to hit the twentieth century — which he seems to regard hs 
the peculiar home of radicalism, paradox, morbidity and 
pretentiousness — on the nose. But even one who does not 
share all his views can stand histhumps forthcsakeof the en- 
livening spectacle he presents when delivering them. 
