Part 11

Prior in date and influence to that of Italy comes the literature of France, with the debts in substance or in manner which we are bound to acknowledge to our neighbours across the Channel. Our purpose does not require that we should pretend to traverse the whole history of French literature. If we dwell upon a certain number of salient topics or famous names, it is because they in particular represent the chief types in the development of French literary history, and either directly or indirectly affect the evolution of our own.

France has, during civilized times, been politically and socially, as well as geographically, so near to us; Englishmen and Englishwomen have been generally so well acquainted with the French language and French books, that it is beyond possibility to determine exactly what effect French models have had and are having upon us, just as on the other hand it is beyond possibility to analyse exactly the effect which English models have had and are having upon France. But, without aiming at this impossible exactitude, we may at least make ourselves aware of such periods and manners of French influence as yield themselves readily to the student’s survey.

It will be found that, though the influence of French literature has been felt in every generation, there are two great periods in particular during which the creations and the critical principles of Frenchmen have dominated those of our own authors. The one is the period between the Conquest and the rise of Chaucer; the second is the period which began in the seventeenth century with writers of the age of Waller and Dryden, and continued till towards the end of the eighteenth century, that is to say, till the time of Cowper and Burns. Approximate dates are, perhaps, necessary here, and the following may roughly serve. From about the year 1100 till about the year 1370, and from about the year 1660 till 1780, England took its cue in many departments of literary work from the matter, the form, and the critical principles of contemporary France. Doubtless at all times there have been borrowings to and fro, but these are the periods when the borrowings have been most one-sided and most palpable. The interval from the maturity of Chaucer till the earlier part of the seventeenth century was more especially the era of Italian influence, introducing and supporting that mightier influence from pagan Greece and pagan Rome which began in what is justly styled the Renaissance. Again, since the latter part of the eighteenth century, the time heralded by Cowper and crowned by Burns, the English have emancipated themselves from direct literary imitation of the French, although, as is briefly stated at the end of this chapter, there have been no few currents of French influence upon various classes of our writers, and, from them, upon the reading public.

Let it then be repeated that two periods especially concern us—the period of the Norman and Plantagenet kings preceding and reaching up to Chaucer, and that period which embraces the literature of the reigns of Charles II, James II, William III, Anne, and the first two Georges; or, to put the latter period more plainly and more suitably in a literary connection, the age of Dryden, of the “Social School,” of the comedy of Wycherley and Congreve, of the essays of Addison and the _Spectator_, of the verse of Pope, of the prose of David Hume and Samuel Johnson.

The former period corresponds to the era of influence from the Provençal Troubadours and the Northern French Trouvères, from the epic _chansons de gestes_, the several kinds and cycles of “romances,” the allegories, _fabliaux_, and other creations of which we must take some special account. The second period answers in particular to the names of Corneille, Racine, Molière, Boileau, Voltaire, and of a number of famous French novelists, letter-writers, and critics. How and in what manner these authors came to tyrannize so completely and so long over English literature will require some terse statement. For the rest, in the period from the writers of the _romans_ and allegories down to Corneille, and again in the period from Rousseau to the present, we shall speak of French authors only as links in the chain of French development in itself, with a passing reference to any value they may have individually for the literature of England.

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The greater part of the land of Gaul—the modern France—was at an early date occupied mainly by Celts, akin to, though not precisely identical with, the present Bretons of the north-west corner of the country. There were also Germans in the north-east, and Euskarians in the south-west. Under the Roman empire the land was gradually overrun with Roman settlers, Roman merchants, and Roman soldiers, and Latin naturally became the official language, the language of high society, of literature, and of education.

The mixed people in process of time thus came to speak a provincial Latin, and to call themselves “Romans.” In reality they were very far from being true Romans, and their speech almost was as far from being true Latin. It was both corrupted and also broken up into local dialects. It was, in fact, a blend of Latin with influences from the various native peculiarities. Early in the fifth century a body of Franks, a German people and speaking a German language, invaded the heart of Gaul and permanently held its northern half. It is from them, the Franks, that the whole country obtained the name of “France.” These conquerors brought many a German word—mostly of war and feudalism—into the language of the conquered, and likewise hastened the corruption of their “Latin” syntax. The old Latin of culture became more and more widely severed from everyday speech, and hence “Romance,” the corrupted language of these modern “Romans” of Gaul, was regularly used as a term in direct opposition to the old and literary “Latin.” It came, in fact, to mean the vulgar tongue. It was about the year 800 that, in the northern half of Gaul, the popular or Romance speech was formally recognized. In the tenth century, the Northmen descended on much of this region, and became its masters. Meanwhile the southern half of Gaul, which had been subdued by other German peoples, the Visigoths and Burgundians, was forming its own particular corruption of the Latin, and, among the dialects which arose in that division, the dialect of Provence, in the south-east, took earliest shape and clearest predominance.

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Before entering upon any account of “French” literature, we must remove from our minds the conception of France and French as they are, and try to see them as they were in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. North of the Loire are various provinces and a distinctly marked Romance language, the _langue d’oïl_, or “French.” A Celtic attachment, which has immigrated from Great Britain, exists in Brittany, much Norman blood in the north, and a Frankish influence has modified the Gallo-Roman staple. South of the Loire are other states, and, for the most part, another Romance language, the _langue d’oc_, or “Provençal,” with leanings rather to an Italian kindred on one side, and a Catalonian-Spanish on the other. Strictly speaking, the _langue d’oc_ extended over the country south of a line drawn from about Charente to the Alps, while Provençal is properly the language of the south-eastern portion of that area. Corresponding to the two divisions of Gaul there arose two different forms and two different spirits of literature, one “French,” one “Provençal.” Later it was a joining of these two forms and spirits (though with a very distinct predominance of the northern) which produced modern French literature, or “French literature” in the ordinary sense; and it was both of them, though chiefly the northern, which largely controlled England during two centuries before Chaucer, and so contributed to the making of that poet and his age.

There is a fact too often forgotten by students of English writing and even of English history. It is that until Chaucer’s time England was only a portion of the King of England’s dominions; the rest was on the continent, in France. Under Henry II, King of England in the later twelfth century, more than half of modern France, namely, Normandy and other provinces north of the Loire, Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony south of it, were part of an English or Franco-English empire. At the peace of Brétigny in 1360, Poitou, Guienne, and Gascony were still left a portion of the realms of Edward III. This fact of the oneness of England and much of France is of very great importance to early English literature. The court and official tongue, and, in a large degree, the literary language, of England were in any case French. The intercourse between England and the _langue d’oïl_, and (though less continued) between England and the _langue d’oc_, was, moreover, intimate and frequent. The writers and minstrels were, in a considerable measure, common to England and to both northern and southern France. No few of the writers belonging to old literature in French, _e.g._, Walter Map, and Benoît de Ste. More, had their homes in England; among them was Marie de France. The channels of communication were constantly open, and the current flowing and ebbing through.

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A concise account must first be given of the two Gallic literatures, “French” and Provençal. Provençal flourished early, and enjoyed but a brief life. We may, therefore, trace this branch first, then the northern French, and afterwards compare and combine the two.

Though northern France had its song of Roland and other _chansons_ at as early a date as the love lyrics of Provence, yet, if literature implies conscious art and system, Provençal composition is—with the exception of Anglo-Saxon—the first real literature of modern Europe; it stimulated Spain on the one hand, and Italy on the other; but it was in advance of either. It is earlier than Dante, and, although it is appreciably indebted to Ovid, and in some degree to Virgil, it is anterior to the influence of the classical forms or spirit of the first Renaissance. It began, helped by Moorish or “Arabian” impulses and lessons, in the eleventh century, enjoyed a brilliant existence for two hundred years, and died with the dying _langue d’oc_. Though it was never enriched and made immortal by the work of any one transcendent genius, it can boast a large number of composers possessed at least of talent and taste. Provençal verses became models for all neighbouring countries. Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, Richard Cœur-de-Lion in Anglo-French England, Alfonso II in Aragon, Frederick II in Sicily, these royal personages went out of their way to compose in the fashionable style and rhythm of Provence. They became, in fact, _troubadours_. The terms needs some explanation. A troubadour is not properly a wandering minstrel carrying a guitar. That itinerant minstrel is an inferior order of person, the _jongleur_ (in Provençal _joglar_). He stands to the troubadour as the Anglo-Saxon “gleeman” to the “maker.” The troubadour was the “finder,” the poet, generally a noble, a knight, sometimes even a prince. It is no doubt true that the jongleur, who originally sang the troubadour’s ditties, was fain, like other inferiors, to assume the higher rank, try his own hand at composing variations, and call himself a troubadour, and so the title became degraded. It is true also that the real troubadours frequently chanted their own songs of love and glory, and so helped to cause confusion between themselves and the mere jongleur minstrels. But the troubadour proper was one who travelled sumptuously mounted and attired, to be the honoured guest of _châtelains_ and princes.

Nearly all this Provençal literature of three centuries of troubadours is lyric, not epic. It is generally singing, not narrating, and its theme is chiefly personal feelings. Rhymes, which had, it is true, been sparsely employed in monkish compositions in Latin, were then novel things in European literature, although long and universally used by the Saracens. The Provençal poets cultivated rhymes which grew more and more varied and complicated; with careful elaboration of soft and harmonious sounds they sang of two things, and almost only of two, to wit, love and glory, gallantry and chivalry in both senses and connections. The verses were love verses or martial verses, celebrating loyalty in love and valour in arms. As a class they are without pretension to any profoundness of imagination or to any sublimity. Their excellence is their music, not any translatable substance of thought. It must be confessed that the songs and subjects lacked variety; the same tricks of expression and “conceits,” the same nouns and adjectives, the same situations, the same “fantastic sentimentality,” would reappear monotonously, and would inevitably suggest the artificial and unreal. One could hardly be expected to read extensively in the _cansos_, or love-songs, of those who called themselves the “gentle troubadours,” without a feeling of satiety. The serenade (_serena_), the morning greeting (_alba_), the dispute of lovers (_tenso_ or _joc parti_), the lament (_planh_), which were recognized species of troubadour effort, inevitably suffered from exhaustion of material. Nevertheless one cannot but be impressed with the chivalrous idea of love which many of the Provençal poets professed, and according to which they nearly always treat that passion, vaunting a devoted tenderness and a delicate and sentimental worship. The influence of this idea, as still further refined and ennobled in Tuscany, is palpable in the attitude of Dante towards Beatrice, and of Petrarch towards Laura; there are many traces of its influence in Chaucer and his contemporaries. Through the Petrarchist sonneteers it again reaches England in the Elizabethan age.

It must be enough merely to mention the names of Bernard de Ventadour, Bertran de Born, Pierre Vidal, and Arnaud Daniel, among famous troubadours. But a word may be said of that remarkable institution, the “Court of Love,” to which a poem of Chaucer (or more probably of some one with a large share of Chaucer’s mind) owes its conception and its title. During the later generations of the “gentle troubadours,” the way to speak and think of love and gallantry was reduced to a system. It was made a science—called _el gai saber_, “the gay science”—which every poet was supposed to understand and to have at his finger-ends. One favourite form of poetry was the _tenso_, a dispute or altercation between troubadours upon delicate questions and scruples of behaviour and feeling in affairs of love. It became the fashion for noble ladies in those idle, rather frivolous, but doubtless not unhappy days to hold mock courts, in which poets sang one against the other, like opposing advocates; whereafter the court gave its decision, or _arrêt d’amour_, and awarded prizes to that troubadour whose arguments and verse were most in keeping with the code prescribed by the gay science. “Is it a greater grief to lose a lover by death or by unfaithfulness?” may serve as an example of the subjects particularly favoured in these poetical courts of the ladies of Gascony, of the Countess of Champagne, or of Queen Eleanor.

Such, briefly, was the genuine Provençal literature—lyrics of love and bravery, with here and there a pastoral, and here and there a poem of censure or satirical criticism. But true epics and romances of adventure, sustained allegories, witty tales of common life, they had practically none. For these we must look to northern France, to the land not of the troubadours, but of the Trouvères. _Trouvère_ is the French form corresponding to the Provençal _troubadour_, and equally means the “finder,” who is indeed the “poet.” But in northern France there existed different social conditions and a different clime; there was also the sterner stuff which belongs to Franks and Normans, while in Brittany there was the Celt, with all his melancholy fire and imaginative and mystical emotion. The lyric literature of the north blossomed, indeed, somewhat later than that of Provence, and is largely an imitation of it. The romances of the trouvères are also distinctly infused with the ideas and style of the lyric south. Nevertheless the great mass of the poetry of northern France is of its own creation in both matter and spirit. It is the poetry of the epic, the allegory, and the tale; the poetry of the romance of heroic adventures, of satirical teaching, and of stories to amuse; in other words, it produced the _chanson de geste_, the _roman_, and the _fabliau_. It is in every way stronger than the creations of the south, in seriousness, in vigour, in variety, in invention. According to Ten Brink, _prouesse_, the masculine side of chivalry, is more northern, while _courtoisie_, the feminine side, is more Provençal. But the difference goes much deeper than any pair of terms can express it.

The old French poems of heroic adventure, blent with more or less of that other-world imaginative quality known as “romance,” fall into three main cycles of subjects. They deal with Charlemagne and his Paladins (in which case they are more truly epic in character, and are called _chansons de geste_, a term properly thus restricted to incidents in supposed French history), or with King Arthur and his knights (together with the once independent legends of Tristram), or with classical heroes, whether of the Trojan legend or, like Alexander, of actual history. These three cycles have been named the “Carlovingian” (or “French”), the “Arthurian” (or “British”), and the “classical” (or “Grecian”). Or we may make four by subdividing the last into “Trojan” and “Alexandrian.” At the time of their composition the cycle which dealt with the classical subjects of antiquity was said to deal with “matter of Rome.” All antiquity was “Rome,” and all ancient heroes “Romans.” We find, then, songs of Roland and Oliver, romances of Tristram or Launcelot, romances of Alexander the Great, and many more. Some _romans_, called _d’aventures_, are independent of any cycle and make no pretence at all to be history. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are rich in the poetical narratives which tell of heroic feats, or miracles of devotion and loyalty, mixed with much of the supernatural withal. This was the day of the Crusades, of conquests of the Saracens, single combats, adventures in distant lands, where dwarfs and enchanters, dragons and giants, were supposed to dwell; and nothing pleased the venturous barons more than to be told such tales to the music of the itinerant jongleurs. A further variety of these songs of exploit was the _lai_, which is too short and too lyrical to be an epic or a _roman_, and is rather the song of an epic episode. The allegorical poems—which they also called _romans_, as being similarly akin to epic and written in the vulgar tongue—long and tedious as they are to us, were not disdained by Chaucer, and gave the cue to several conspicuous works of the Chaucerians down to the sixteenth century. That most famous of all, the _Roman de la Rose_, was translated by our master of English undefiled. This poem, begun by Guillaume de Lorris as an “Art of Love,” after the manner of Ovid (as filtered through Provence), was continued a generation later by Jean de Meung as a satirical miscellany of learning and legend. It is all about a lover who sought to pluck a rose, about his difficulties in reaching it, about the abstract qualities which help or hinder him, about personified virtues and vices, such as Dame Idleness, who lets him into the garden, Avarice, Meanness, Hatred, who stand in his way, Fair-Seeming, who has much to say in the matter, and numerous others. Thanks to these agencies, it takes that unhappy youth some 23,000 verses before he attains to plucking the object of his affections. Yet it was this reading which inspired the earliest efforts of our Chaucer, and which, in his first stage, he fell to imitating. It was this literature which the cultivated Norman English delighted hugely to hear. Allegorical, also, and purely satirical is the prolonged beast-fable known as the _Roman de Renard_ (“the fox”), which enjoyed an immense vogue throughout Europe, and provoked countless imitations.

One chief species of composition, and a highly important one, yet remains. This was the _fabliau_, the amusing tale in verse, the one kind of writing to let us know that the world was not wholly made of doughty knights and gentle damosels. The _fabliau_ is a tale of real or possible adventure in ordinary life, generally of a humorous kind. It is, in fact, a sort of novelette. Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ are often _fabliaux_. From France the _fabliau_ was borrowed by the _Novellieri_ of Italy. It was taken up and developed by Boccaccio, and both directly from France and indirectly through Italy it made its way into the general stock of European narrative material. Had it not been for _fabliaux_, one might have thought that in those days there was nothing else for men to do but fight and love. Yet the great ordinary mass of mankind existed all the time, doing its sober work in towns and country places. And it was time for this great stratum to find recognition in _bourgeois_ story.

Thus in northern France we have chiefly epics and romances of heroic adventures, allegories more or less satirical and didactic, and amusing tales; in southern France we have chiefly lyrics of love and chivalry. As time goes on, each half moves closer to the other, although during the whole epoch of the northern romances the Provençal spirit had combined with the Celtic to pervade them with a peculiar tone of chivalric sentiment. In 1249 the two geographical divisions became one kingdom. Before the middle of the fourteenth century the Provençal tongue begins to die, and its literature to perish. The story of French literature thenceforward is one and undivided.

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While the troubadour and trouvère literatures were thus flourishing in the two halves of France, the cultivated circles of Norman and Plantagenet England found those literatures sufficiently adapted to their needs. The ordinary language of these circles was identical with that of the trouvères, and at the same time the English possessions in Languedoc, including the cultured centre Bordeaux (gained by the marriage of Henry II with Eleanor of Guienne and Poitou), brought the Court into direct communication with the lyrics of the troubadours. Henry’s son, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, was himself a troubadour and the friend of troubadours, in particular of Bertran de Born. But better suited to the Anglo-Norman temperament, and, of course, completely intelligible to the French-speaking barons and gentry, were the romances, _lais_ and _fabliaux_ of the trouvères. The work of the Norman Wace (_Geste des Bretons_) in 1155 was as much intended for England as for France. So also was the _Roman de Troie_ (1160) of Benoît de Ste. More, which included the story of Troilus. The French _Saint Grael_ stories of Walter Map (1180) and the _lais_ of Marie de France (1210) were produced in our island, and were the common property of England and Norman France. The jongleurs wandered from baron’s court to baron’s court, and the stories of Arthur,

Of Greece and Troy the strongë stryf, There many a man lost his lyf; Of Brute that baron bold of hand, The first conqueroure of Engeland; Of King Arthur, that was so riche, Was not in his tyme him liche; How Kyng Charles and Rowland fought, With Sarazens nold they be caught; Of Tristrem and Ysoude the swete, How they with love first gan mete; Of King John and of Isumbras, Of Ydoine and of Amadas; Stories of diverse thinges, Of princes, prelates and kinges; Many songes of divers rhyme, As Engelish, French and Latyne.