THE FRENCH IDEAL.* FOLLOWING on that attractive book, The French
Procession, we have The French Ideal. It is interesting to note the selection of names which, to the mind of Mme. Duclaux, represent the fine flower of French character and genius; and it is also curious to observe that three of the great men dwelt on here—Pascal, Buffon, and Lamartine—find no place in her former pageant, while in both books a generous space is allot- ted to Fenelon. Whether Mme. Duclaux sets herself to obey any fixed general rule in these matters of precedence it seems difficult to know. More probably, while guided to some extent by the world's verdict as to fame in life and literature, she follows on the whole her own fancy. And no one who is familiar with the mass of her work, with all it displays of critical power, excellent taste, and delicate charm of handling, will say that she could find a better leader.
The essays on Pascal and Fenelon are naturally the most important among these four that set forth the "French Ideal." The admiration of Mme. Duclaux for Lamartine rises to a height which will hardly be attained by English readers of that great poet. She places him on a level with Shelley. We do not say that this, for her, is the highest conceivable level, but that we differ• from her as to the relative importance of the two ; and this is almost the only point where her criticism does not seem quite satisfying. The chief literary interest of this essay lies in the comparatively recent discovery of the love- letters of " Elvire " (Madame Charles), the genius who inspired that true romantic idealism which was—and is likely to be again, it seems—the secret of Lamartine's power with his countrymen.
The essay on Buffon suggests by default one of the first characteristics of a supreme classic. Sainte-Benve said- Mme. Duclaux quotes him — " Il y a quelqu'un an dix- huitieme siecle qui est nn reftitateur de Pascal, Bien autre- ment puissant que d'Alembert, Condorcet on Voltaire : c'est Buffon, c'est la science de la Nature elle-meme." It is as the antagonist of Pascal, as the mind " to whom Man is no mysterious and terrible enigma, but an animal among other animals," that Georges Louis le Clerc, Comte de Buffon, Intendant du Jardin du Roy, takes his place here. One of the first of the great naturalists, his story is of absorb- ing interest in the advance of human knowledge, and the scientific thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had little to do but to follow along the path he marked out. And yet to-day the world is begin- ning to see that the ideas and beliefs of Pascal—himself so great in science—are of a more real and lasting importance than the studies of Buffon. " To-day, perhaps," says Mme. Ductlanx—and the experience of most careful observers will bear her out--" the mysterious universe of Pascal appears less old-fashioned than the majestic order of Buffon 's sovereign cosmos." Pascal, in fact, has his place in the temple of im- mortal genius. Buffon may be dethroned, but as long as the world lasts Pascal will be among the classics.
As to the reasons for this it would seem at first that there
can be nothing new to say; and yet those to whom Pascal remains a puzzle and a mystery will find themselves consider- ably enlightened by Mme. Duclaux's thorough and wide- embracing study. The great writer whom M. Brunetiere, on the strength of some of the Lettres Provinciales and certain • The French Neat: Pascal, Fgnelon, and other EMIR. By Madame Dnelaux (A. Mary F. Robinson). London: Chapman and Hall. [7s. (id. net.]
fragments of the Pens&s, placed, as to style, above all the rest of French literature—ranging "from the most familiar simplicity to the highest eloquence "—has been interpreted in various ways, both as a man and a philosopher. To Voltaire, Pascal was a sectarian fanatic ; Condorcet, in his 1776 edition of the Pensees, and Andre Chenier, living in the light of the Encyclopedie, went further, and treated him as a superstitious maniac; to Rousseau and his fol- lowers he was a vague and sentimental mystic. Chateau- briand and the Romantics dwelt upon his scepticism, and this view was carried on to our own day by Victor
Cousin, only to be refuted by students such as MM. Brunschvicg, Boutroux, Strowski, Faguet, and others, whose writings represent the latest opinion on the subject. This
opinion is fully given us by Mme. Duclaux. We may now see in Pascal, in spite of all his feverish agony of mind and many contradictions, something even higher than Sainte-Beuve's " athlete, martyr, and hero of the invisible moral world "—a simple Christian fervently adoring his Lord. His sister, Gilberte Perier, wrote of him, " Cet homme si grand en touter choses estoit simple comme un enfant pour ce qui regarde la pieta," and the most careful researches seem to prove that she knew her brother better than his contempo- raries or his critics knew him. There is no life in the ranks of European genius more worth studying than the life of Pascal—no life in which pathos and greatness more strikingly meet.
Something of the same kind might be said about Fenelon. If Pascal is one of the most impressive, Fenelon is certainly one of the most attractive among those characters whose brain and heart appeal alike to the rest of humanity. He, too, as Mme. Duclaux reminds us in the longest of her delightful essays, has been a puzzle and a mystery, both to his contemporaries and to posterity—with this difference, that his many-sided nature really possessed, in some measure, something of all the qualities attributed to him. Pascal was au fond simple; Fenelon was certainly complex: and this truth need not in- terfere with lime. Duclaux's claim for her special hero:-
" For my part, I think that Fenelon n as a pure and ardent spirit who, having grasped the interior secret of religion, would have been a saint under any dispensation—Jansenist or Jesuit, Catholic or Protestant, Pagan or Buddhist, Platonist or Taoist— proving in his own person the identity of the deepest soul in man. For the soul of Finelon was un amen continuel du fond du occur,' a perfect peace that passes understanding."
It is a satisfying conclusion, and one to which lime. Duclaux has been led, not only by her own studies and
sympathies, but partly by the "cohort of brilliant theologians . . . historians . . . critics" who lately in France have under- taken the happy task of " restoring the royalty of Fenelon," or of proving to a world which has never really understood him his claim to be called " a mystical saint . . . a moral hero . . . exalted by the intellectual love of God." In his own day, of course, Fenelon had a large flock who followed him devotedly—not only of the poor, the sorrowful, and those who were attracted by the doctrines on which descended the wrath of Bossuet and Louis XIV., but of thinking men, politicians, and courtiers who looked to the future, to the time when Fenelon's pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy, whose affection for his exiled tutor never failed, would be in a position to carry out Fenelon's plans for the good of the kingdom. There was a moment, in 1711, when the Dauphin died and the Duke became Louis XIV.'s heir-apparent, which suddenly moved Cambrai out of the desert and placed it, in Saint-Simon's words, " on the direct road to everywhere." It seemed likely, then, that the eighteenth century in France would see changes so great and beneficial. as to amount to a peaceful revolution : "Liberty, without the chimaera of equality; fraternity, without Cain by the side of Abel; and tolerance for all." Peace, retrenchment, reform, laws binding on all alike, something nearly resembling Free Trade, a system of local government, and a complete independence, in temporal matters, of Borne; a practical separation, in fact, of Church and State. The " Tables de Chaulnes," drawn up by Fenelon and his friend the Due de Chevreuse, suggest what a kingdom France might have become under a noble-minded king, with the Archbishop of Cambrai as his Minister. It was not to be. " Petit-Prince " died before his grandfather, and Fenelon's last sad years, beautiful in kindness and in resignation to the will of God, were years of despair for his country,
"What was Fenelon P" None of those critics who have lately studied him with so much care seem to have given an entirely positive answer. lime. Duelaux is perhaps a little impatient of them all. His own seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did him scant justice. From being reputed a troublesome idealist, next door to a heretic, he passed to Saint-Simon's definition of "un ambitieux " ; and this side of his character was dwelt upon by M. Brunetiere. But M. Jules Lemaitre, the most brilliant and most readable of his modern students, points out his unworldliness, and reminds us how he ruined his career by chivalrous faithfulness to the cause of lime. Guyon. Voltaire and d'Alembert saw in him "the philosopher and the citizen" in their own sense of the words. But, says M. Lemaitre, "this philosopher was the most religious of men, the most devoured by the love of God. And this pretended forerunner of the Revolution meditated a rational restoration of the old French monarchy." Others saw in Fenelon little but a Utopian dreamer. But he slowed the most practical good sense as a teacher, as well as in his plans for the better government of the country.
The truth is that Fenelon will remain one of the most fascinating and most elusive characters in history. He was a statesman, perhaps an ambitions one; he was a Utoi ian idealist, living before his time ; he was in the best sense a philosopher and a citizen ; he was both strong and weak, both wise and foolish ; he was a religious mystic and a practical politician. And, besides all these, he was a noble gentleman and he was a saint. And yet—there may have been some. thing to be said on Bossuet's side of the question.
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