BOOKS.

THE AGE OF CORNEILLE.*

MR. TILLEY has chosen for the subject of an interesting and sympathetic study a period in French literature which is one of the least familiar to English readers. As a rule we read foreign writers either for the sake of their resemblance to our- selves, or for the sake of their complete unlikeness; thus in the literature of France Englishmen are most attracted either to the lyrical poets of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, or to the great classical masters of the age of Louie XIV. The period of which Mr. Tilley treats—that which inter- vened between the close of the Renaissance and the triumph of the classical spirit—is comparatively unknown because its characteristics were complex and indefinite; it was a time of transition, in which rival schools and theories struggled doubtfully with one another; it was a time remarkable rather for a great mass of distinguished and varied talent of a secondary order than for an efflorescence ef supreme genius. For these very reasons, however, Mr. Tilley's choice has probably been a wise one, for his powers are chiefly of the explanatory and the analytical order, He is at his best when he is tracing the rise and fall of some literary fashion, when he is appraising the influence of some school of forgotten writers, or indicating the connexions between social changes and the formation of ideals in art. Particularly noteworthy is his learned and original chapter on "The Catholic:al Revival," while his accounts of the Hotel de Rambouillet, the formation of the French Academy, and "the reign of bad taste" are full of entertaining information and lucid scholarship. His treatment of the two great figures in the book—Corneille and Pascal—is less satisfactory, because here something more is needed than care, wide reading, and good taste, something more even than reverence and admira- tion,—a high enthusiasm endowed with a noble power of speech. Such a gift is too rare for its absence to be a subject of complaint; one cannot expect to find a Coleridge in every critic. And, after all, if it is true that Mr. Tilley's book fails to do justice to Corneille and Pascal, no very great harm has been done ; for Corneille and Pascal can take care of themselves.

From the point of view of letters, the central interest of the period might almost be described as a dramatic one. Its history is the history of the rise, the development, the apparent defeat, and the sudden and absolute triumph of a great artistic idea. And this idea was no random instinct ; it was a conception of art deliberately held and consciously fostered by a long succession of workers. Never has the importance of criticism as a creative force in literature been more clearly shown. It is often carelessly assumed that the creative and the critical faculties are either actually antagonistic to one another, or so distinct as to be mutually exclusive; but the more the facts are examined, the more certain it appears that the contrary is the case. In England the great school of Dryden and the great school of Wordsworth both drew their strength from a

* From Motitaiono to Molidro ; or, The Preparation for the Classical, Age of French Literature. By Arthur Tilley, Follow end Lecturer of King's College, Cambridge. London : John Murray, LISa. net.)

profound and searching criticism ; and there can be little doubt that even the "wild enormity" of the Elizabethan drama was the result of a deliberate revolt against the frigid classicism which preceded it. No less deliberate was the long and complex movement which forms the subject of Mr. Tilleyls book,—the movement, as he describes it, "from imagination to reason, from disorder to form," It was, indeed, to its extreme self-consciousness that it owed its peculiar character. French literature during the first half of the seventeenth century was exploring the field of criticism opened by Malherbe, but without Malherbe's strong simplicity and austere self- command. The author of those noble lines on death, which seem to sum up the whole of what is most exalted in

Stoicism— "La pauvre en an cabana, ot le obaume le oeuvre,

Rat sujet sea loix ;

Et la garde qui wine aux barrieres du Louvre

N'en defend point nos reis.

De murmurer contra elle at perdre patience, D eat mal it propos ; Vouloir ce qua Dieu vent eat la smile science Qui nous met en repos "- had for his successors a tribe of literary artisans who occupied themselves solely with sentimental phantasies, verbal intricacies, or elaborate burlesques. Writers had begun to reflect upon their art, and they had grown, like all self-conscious persons, affected. The same symptoms appeared in society, which, under the influence of a centralised Government and the spread of cultivation, was beginning to

exist in its modern shape in the salons of Paris. The ladies and the wits who met in Madame de Rambouillet's blue drawing-room, or who attended the " Saturdays " of Mlle. de Scudery, had discovered a new art—the art of living—and they were so delighted by the discovery that they forgot life itself. The Precieuses, we learn from a grave contemporary, "have ten general maxims, of which the fourth is to value imagination more than truth in matters of pleasure; the fifth is to give their opinions only in the presence of those they esteem, and never to speak of a person's defects without adding some praise; the eighth is to use a different language from that of ordinary folk, in order that their ideas may only be understood by those whose intelligence is above the common; and the ninth is never to remain silent in conversation without expressing their sentiments by signs and gestures."

Such rules betray that precise mixture of ingenuousness and affectation which is the common appanage of youth. As Mr. Tilley points out, the bad taste which infected the literature of this generation in France cannot be explained away as merely the result of Italian or Spanish influences. The disease was far too deeply seated ; it infected the whole social life of the time, and the prose of "La Grand Cyrus" and the verse of "La Pucelle " were but symptoms of a universal malady. Fortunately the malady, so far from being a fatal one, was, like some of those in the physical world, actually beneficial. The virus had to work itself out; but, when that had happened, the patient was wonderfully regenerated. "Those move easiest," says Pope," who have learnt to dance." During these fifty years French literature was learning to dance, with all the effort, the absurdity, and the artificiality of a very anxious pupil. Suddenly, unexpectedly, perfection came, Pascal, Molibre, Racine, moved forward in easy triumph. " Nous avons change de methode," exclaimed La Fontaine ;

"Et rnaintenant II ne faut pas Quitter la nature d'un pas."

The youth bad put away childish things, and become a man.

The one dominating figure of the epoch shared in a curious way its defects and its inconsistencies. Corneille, who has come down to posterity as the archetype of classicism, and who in consequence has suffered through the general disrepute into which classicism has fallen, was in reality, before all else, a man of his own age, His work everywhere reflects the conflicting ideals, the love of emphasis and affectation, the uneasy self-consciousness, which characterised his time. But he possessed one thing which was possessed by none of his contemporaries,—poetical inspiration. And his inspiration knew nothing of the formal and polished beauty of hie classical successors; it was all passion, flame, and heat ; and thus, in spite of his Alexandrines and his Unities, he was, fundamentally, a great Romantic. At its best his verse rises through rhetoric and inflation into a high sublimity. "Ever and anon," as Mr. Tilley admirably says, "it stirs our blood as with a trumpet-call"

" Grenade at l'Aragon tremble quand ce fer brine: Mon nom sort de rampart toute la Castilla; Sans moi, vous passeriez bient6t sous d'autres lois, Et vous auriez bient6t roe ennemis pour rois. Chaque jour, cheque instant, pour rehausser ma gloire, Met lauriers sur lauriers, victoire sur vietoire !"

Such writing recalls another age and another literature. Corneille's true place, one might almost fancy, was among that crowd of valiant and soaring spirits who have made immortal the England of Elizabeth.