form of biography from which a later age has perhaps suffered too much; but it was of divines especially that biographies were written. Christopher Wordsworth's collection 1 runs to four volumes, and of them all-and few are destitute of interest-the most delightful are those of Isaac Walton 2 (15931683), who wrote short biographies of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. A peculiar and ineffable charm breathes from the works of Walton, their gentle and pious spirit, their natural and felicitous style, careless in structure but never obscure. The Complete Angler (1653-76) is itself a character-sketch as well as a treatise on the mysteries of an art; and in his five lives he is less concerned about accurate details than about all that illustrates the goodness, learning, and devotion of his subjects. Complexity he does not care for. Donne's early life is hastened over, and there was more in Herbert than Walton saw; but the side he chooses to elaborate is presented with extraordinary distinctness and charm. 1 Ecclesiastical Biography of England to 1688, 4 vols., Lond., 1839. 2 Of the Compleat Angler there are over 120 editions. Those of the Lives are also numerous-e.g., by A. H. Bullen, with W. Dowling's Life, Lond., 1884, with preface by Vernon Blackburn, Lond., 1895. The Temple Classics, 1898. 244 CHAPTER VI. FRENCH VERSE AND PROSE.1 CAMUS WANING OF THE PLEIAD. MALHERBE-PURITY AND CORRECTNESS-VERSE. DISCIPLES-MAYNARD-RACAN. SOCIAL FORCES HÔTEL DE RAMBOUILLET—ACADEMY. INDEPENDENTS—THÉOPHILE DE VIAU—SAINTAMANT-MLLE. DE GOURNAY AND MATHURIN RÉGNIER. VINCENT VOITURE. HEROIC POEMS. PROSE-ROMANCES-D'URFÉ-'L'ASTRÉE' EXEMPLARY TALES; HEROIC ROMANCE GOMBAULD'S ENDYMION '--GOMBERVILLE'S 'POLEXANDRE '—LA CALPRENEDEELIMINATION OF THE MARVELLOUS-ROMANTIC HISTORY-MADELEINE DE SCUDÉRY-CULMINATION OF "PRÉCIOSITÉ"-BOILEAU'S DIALOGUE LES HÉROS DE ROMAN.' REALISM AND BURLESQUE IN ROMANCE -SORELLE BERGER EXTRAVAGANT'-'FRANCION'—LANNELCYRANO-SCARRON. SHAPERS OF MODERN FRENCH PROSE-BALZAC AND THE CULT OF STYLE; DESCARTES-RATIONALISM AND LUCIDITY; -PASCAL-THE WAY OF THE INTELLECT AND THE WAY OF THE HEART. THE MEMOIRS'-DE RETZ AND LA ROCHEFOUCAULDPHILOSOPHY OF THE 'FRONDE'-'LES MAXIMES.' THE poets of the Pleiad attempted more than they were able to achieve. The ambitious programme of Du Bellay issued in no great and permanent result. There was no Pindar and no Waning of the Pleiad. 1 Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature française des Origines à 1900, Paris, 1896-1900; Lanson, Histoire de la Littérature française, Paris, 1896; Nisard, Histoire de la Littérature française, Paris, 1844; Saintsbury, A Short History of French Literature, Lond., 1898; Dowden, A History of French Literature, Lond., 1897; F. Brunetière, Manuel de la Litt. franç., Paris, 1898; Virgil in their ranks, no Petrarch and no Milton. The fame even of the great Ronsard was to be shortlived. In spite of the vigorous protests of a Régnier and a Mademoiselle de Gournay, it melted before the scornful glance of Malherbe, "le grammairien en lunettes et en cheveux gris"; and even now that time has redressed the injustice of the seventeenth century, he survives, not as the rival of Pindar and Virgil, but as the writer of some charming sonnets and songs, the poet of "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose." And it is by poems in the same vein that every one of the band is represented in such a collection as Crépet's. They breathed an Italian gravity and sweetness into French poetry which was not without its effect on the work even of their immediate successors; but they produced no poetry of such great and shining merits as to justify to these successors the violence they did in more than one way to the genius of the language and to the French love of sense, logic, and order. Both these principles found in François Malherbe (1555-1628), the son of a Norman "conseiller," an ardent and even fanatical adherent and champion. Of his life little need be said Malherbe. Lotheissen, Geschichte der französischen Litteratur im XVIIten Jahrhundert, Wien, 1877, 2nd ed. 1897; Sainte-Beuve, Tableau de la Poésie française et du Théâtre français au XVIe Siècle, the Port Royal passim, and essays in the Causeries de Lundi, &c.; Théophile Gautier, Les Grotesques; Faguet, Dix-Septième Siècle, Études Littéraires, Paris, 1893; Brunetière, Études Critiques, &c., the series of monographs, Les Grands Écrivains français, Paris. Selections from the poets with introductory notices in Crepet, Les Poètes français, Paris, 1861. here. He served under Henri d'Angoulême. His merits as a poet were made known to Henri IV. by Cardinal du Périer, on the death of whose daughter Malherbe had written the most beautiful, in its dignified pathos, of all his poems; and from 1605 to his death he was laureate-and no poet was ever more essentially and entirely a laureate poet-to Henri, to Marie de Médicis, to Richelieu, and to Louis XIII. Purity. 1 Malherbe's earliest work was probably Ronsardist in character, but he soon discovered, like Pope, that his way to fame lay through "correctness," and no poet ever became a more thorough - going disciple and prophet of that useful if limited doctrine. The "poetic" which he taught, mainly through his criticism of Desportes 1 (on whose work he made a close-running "commentaire"), and which he practised in his slowly elaborated Odes, was in part the protest of one imbued with a passionate jealousy for his native tongue, her idiom and nuances, against the innovations and licences of the Pleiad. Du Bellay and Ronsard had dreamed of creating 1 The annotated copy of the Euvres de Philippe Desportes, Paris, 1600, passed into Balzac's hands, who in a letter to Conrart (1653) describes the characters of the "commentaire": "Je vous dirai que j'ai ici un exemplaire de ses œuvres marqué de la main de feu M. de Malherbe et corrigé d'une terrible manière. Toutes les marges sont bordées de ses observations critiques." Ferdinand Brunot, in La Doctrine de Malherbe, Paris, 1891, has extracted from Malherbe's comment his views on poetry, style, and correct idiom. See also Malherbe, by the Duc de Broglie (Les Grands Écrivains de la France), and the Euvres Complètes de Malherbe, par M. L. Lalanne (Les Grands Écrivains de la France, 6 vols.), Paris, 1862-69. a poetic style distinct in diction and idiom from the language of every day. Malherbe bluntly declared that for poetry, as for prose, the only rule was "proper words in proper places," and that the arbiter of propriety was usage. The "crocheteurs du port au Foin' were," he said, "his masters in language." Racan reports the saying and Régnier ridicules the doctrine; but both in practice and theory Malherbe admitted the restraining principle of elegance. It was not the usage of the street but of the court which was his norm. Many of Malherbe's other rules, especially his prosody, are an expression of that spirit of order which was soon to become dominant in France, and which already took the form of reverence for rule as rule, which is its greatest vice the introduction into literary art of the spirit of social etiquette. To recommend his reforms Malherbe's poetry had, besides correctness, as its most positive excellence, a rich and sonorous versification. The famous lines in the Consolation à Monsieur Verse. du Périer sur la Mort de sa Fille แ "Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses, The are the most poetical Malherbe ever wrote. thought even of his finest laureate poems is commonplace if quite appropriate so far as it goes. One feels that each ode was probably drafted in prose before being elaborated in sonorous verse; for the splendour of the verse is the redeeming |