A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 Page 5

  CHAPTER I

  MADAME DE STAEL AND CHATEAUBRIAND

  [Sidenote: Reasons for beginning with Mme. de Stael.]

  It has often been thought, and sometimes said, that the period of theFrench Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars--extending as it doesstrictly to more than a quarter of a century, while four decades weremore than completed before a distinct turn of tide--is, for France, theleast individual and least satisfactorily productive time in all hergreat literature. And it is, to a large extent, true. But the loss ofindividuality implies the presence of indiscernibility; and not to goout of our own department, there are at least three writers who, if butpartially, cancel this entry to discredit. Of one of them--the lowest ingeneral literature, if not quite in our division ofit--Pigault-Lebrun--we have spoken in the last volume. The othertwo--much less craftsmanlike novelists merely as such, but immeasurablygreater as man and woman of letters--remain for discussion in the firstchapter of this. In pure chronological order Chateaubriand should comefirst, as well as in other "ranks" of various kinds. But History, thoughit may never neglect, may sometimes overrule Chronology by help of alarger and higher point of view: sex and birth hardly count here, andthe departmental primes the intrinsic literary importance.Chateaubriand, too, was a little younger than Madame de Stael in years,though his actual publication, in anything like our kind, came beforehers. And he reached much farther than she did, though curiously enoughsome of his worst faults were more of the eighteenth century than hers.She helped to finish "Sensibility"; she transformed "Philosophism" intosomething more modern; she borrowed a good deal (especially in theregion of aesthetics) that was to be importantly germinal from Germany.But she had practically nothing of that sense of the past and of thestrange which was to rejuvenate all literature, and which he had; whileshe died before the great French Romantic outburst began. So let usbegin with her.[8]

  [Sidenote: _Delphine._]

  "This dismal trash, which has nearly dislocated the jaws of every criticwho has read it," was the extremely rude judgment pronounced by SydneySmith on Madame de Stael's _Delphine_. Sydney was a good-natured personand a gentleman, nor had he, merely as a Whig, any reason to quarrelwith the lady's general attitude to politics--a circumstance which, oneregrets to say, did in those days, on both sides, rather improperlyqualify the attitude of gentlemen to literary ladies as well as to eachother. It is true that the author of _Corinne_ and of _Delphine_ itselfhad been rather a thorn in the side of the English Whigs by dint of someof her opinions, by much of her conduct, and, above all, by certainpeculiarities which may be noticed presently. But Sydney, though a Whig,was not "a _vile_ Whig," for which reason the Upper Powers, in his lateryears, made him something rather indistinguishable from a Tory. And thatblunt common sense, which in his case cohabited with the finest_un_common wit, must have found itself, in this instance, by no meansat variance with its housemate in respect of Anne Germaine Necker.

  There are many _worse_ books than _Delphine_. It is excellently written;there is no bad blood in it; there is no intentional licentiousness; onthe contrary, there are the most desperate attempts to live up to a NewMorality by no means entirely of the Wiggins kind. But there is anabsence of humour which is perfectly devastating: and there is apresence of the most disastrous atmosphere of sham sentiment, shammorality, sham almost everything, that can be imagined. It was hinted inthe last volume that Madame de Stael's lover, Benjamin Constant, showsin one way the Nemesis of Sensibility; so does she herself in another.But the difference! In _Adolphe_ a coal from the altar of true passionhas touched lips in themselves polluted enough, and the result is whatit always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were pollutedor not. In _Delphine_ there is a desperate pother to strike some sort oflight and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint isclay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow ofbrand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothingbut rhetoric and fustian and, as the Sydneian sentence speaks it,"trash."[9]

  [Sidenote: The tone.]

  In fact, to get any appropriate metaphorical description of it one hasto change the terminology altogether. In a very great line Mr. Kiplinghas spoken of a metaphorical ship--

  With a drogue of dead convictions to keep her head to gale.

  Madame de Stael has cast off not only that drogue, but even the otherand perhaps commoner floating ballast and steadier of dead_conventions_, and is trying to beat up against the gale by help of allsorts of jury-masts and extemporised try-sails of other new conventionsthat are mostly blowing out of the bolt-ropes. We said that Crebillon'sworld was an artificial one, and one of not very respectable artifice.But it worked after a fashion; it was founded on some real, howeverunrespectable, facts of humanity; and it was at least amusing to thenaughty players on its stage to begin with, and long afterwards to theguiltless spectators of the commonty. In _Delphine_ there is not aglimmer of amusement from first to last, and the whole story is compact(if that word were not totally inapplicable) of windbags of sentiment,copy-book headings, and the strangest husks of neo-classic type-worship,stock character, and hollow generalisation. An Italian is necessarily aperson of volcanic passions; an Englishman or an American (at this timethe identification was particularly unlucky) has, of equal necessity, agrave and reserved physiognomy. Orthodox religion is a mistake, but akind of moral-philosophical Deism (something of the Wolmar type) ishighly extolled. You must be technically "virtuous" yourself, even ifyou bring a whole second volume of tedious tortures on you by being so;but you may play Lady Pandara to a friend who is a devout adulteress,may force yourself into her husband's carriage when he is carrying heroff from one assignation, and may bring about his death by contrivinganother in your own house. In fact, the whole thing is topsy-turvy,without the slightest touch of that animation and interested curiositywhich topsy-turviness sometimes contributes. But perhaps one should givea more regular account of it.

  [Sidenote: The story.]

  Delphine d'Albemar is a young, beautiful, rich, clever, generous, and,in the special and fashionable sense, extravagantly "sensible" widow,who opens the story (it is in the troublesome epistolary form) byhanding over about a third of her fortune to render possible themarriage of a cousin of her deceased husband. This cousin, Matilde deVernon, is also beautiful and accomplished, but a _devote_, altogetherwell-regulated and well-conducted, and (though it turns out that she hasstrong and permanent affections) the reverse of "sensible"--in factrather hard and disagreeable--in manner. She has a scheming mother, whohas run herself deeply, though privately, into debt, and the intendedhusband and son-in-law, Leonce de Mandeville, also has a mother, who ishalf Spanish by blood and residence, and wholly so (according to thetype-theory above glanced at) in family pride, personal _morgue_, and soforth. A good deal of this has descended to her son, with whom, in spiteor because of it, Delphine (she has not seen him before her rashgenerosity) proceeds to fall frantically in love, as he does with her.The marriage, however, partly by trickery on Madame de Vernon's part,and partly owing to Delphine's more than indiscreet furthering of herfriend Madame d'Ervin's intrigue with the Italian M. de Serbellane, doestake place, and Mme. de Stael's idea of a nice heroine makes her stationDelphine in a white veil, behind a pillar of the church, mutteringreproaches at the bridegroom. No open family rupture, however, iscaused; on the contrary, a remarkable and inevitably disastrous "triplearrangement" follows (as mentioned above), for an entire volume, inwhich the widow and the bridegroom make despairing love to each other,refraining, however, from any impropriety, and the wife, thoughsuffering (for she, in her apparently frigid way, really loves herhusband), tolerates the proceeding after a fashion. This impossible andpreposterous situation is at last broken up by the passion and violenceof another admirer of Delphine--a certain M. de Valorbe. These bringabout duels, wounds, and Delphine's flight to Switzerland, where sheputs up in a convent with a most superfluous and in every wayunrefreshing new personage, a widowed sister of Madame de Mandeville.Valorbe follo
ws, and, to get hold of Delphine, machinates one of themost absurd scenes in the whole realm of fiction. He lures her intoAustrian territory and a chamber with himself alone, locks the door andthrows the key out of the window,[10] storms, rants, threatens, butproceeds to no _voie de fait_, and merely gets himself and the object ofhis desires arrested by the Austrians! He thus succeeds, while procuringno gratification for himself, in entirely demolishing the last shred ofreputation which, virtuous as she is in her own way, Delphine's variouseccentricities and escapades have left her; and she takes the veil. Inthe first form the authoress crowned this mass of absurdities with thesuicide of the heroine and the judicial shooting of the hero. Somebodyremonstrated, and she made Delphine throw off her vows, engage herselfto Leonce (whose unhappy wife has died from too much carrying out of theduty of a mother to her child), and go with him to his estates in LaVendee, where he is to take up arms for the king. Unfortunately, theVendeans by no means "see" their _seigneur_ marrying an apostate nun,and strong language is used. So Delphine dies, not actually by her ownhand, and Leonce gets shot, more honourably than he deserves, on thepatriot-royalist side.

  Among the minor characters not yet referred to are an old-maidsister-in-law of Delphine's, who, though tolerably sensible in thebetter sense, plays the part of confidante to her brother's _mijauree_of a widow much too indulgently; a M. Barton, Leonce's mentor, who,despite his English-looking name, is not (one is glad to find) English,but is, to one's sorrow, one of the detestable "parsons-in-tie-wigs"whom French Anglomania at this time foisted on us as characteristic ofEngland; a sort of double of his, M. de Lerensei, a Protestantfree-thinker, who, with his _divorcee_ wife, puts up grass altars intheir garden with inscriptions recording the happiness of their queerunion; an ill-natured Mme. du Marset and her old cicisbeo, M. deFierville, who suggest, in the dismallest way, the weakest wine ofMarmontel gone stale and filtered through the dullest, though not thedirtiest, part of Laclos.

  Yet the thing, "dismal trash" as Sydney almost justly called it, isperhaps worth reading once (nothing but the sternest voice of dutycould have made me read it twice) because of the existence of _Corinne_,and because also of the undoubted fact that, here as there, though muchmore surprisingly, a woman of unusual ability was drawing a picture ofwhat she would have liked to be--if not of what she actually thoughtherself.[11] The borrowed beauty goes for nothing--it were indeed hardif one did not, in the case of a woman of letters, "let her make herdream All that she would," like Tennyson's Prince, but in this otherrespect. The generosity, less actually exaggerated, might also pass.That Delphine makes a frantic fool of herself for a lover whoseattractions can only make male readers shrug their shoulders--for thoughwe are _told_ that Leonce is clever, brave, charming, and what not, wesee nothing of it in speech or action--may be matter of taste; but thather heroine's part should seem to any woman one worth playing is indeedwonderful. Delphine behaves throughout like a child, and by no meansalways like a very well-brought-up child; she never seems to have thevery slightest idea that "things are as they are and that theirconsequences will be what they will be"; and though, once more, we are_told_ of passion carrying all before it, we are never _shown_ it. It isall "words, words." To speak of her love in the same breath with Julie'sis to break off the speech in laughter; to consider her woes andremember Clarissa's is to be ready to read another seven or eightvolumes of Richardson in lieu of these three of Madame de Stael's.

  And yet this lady could do something in the novel way, and, when thetime came, she did it.

  [Sidenote: _Corinne._]

  Between _Delphine_ and _Corinne_ Madame de Stael had, in the fullestsense of a banal phrase, "seen a great of the world." She had lost theillusions which the Duessa Revolution usually spreads among clever butnot wise persons at her first appearance, and had not left her bones,as too many[12] such persons do, in the _pieuvre_-caves which themonster keeps ready. She had seen England, being "coached" byCrabb-Robinson and others, so as to give some substance to the vague_philosophe-Anglomane_ flimsiness of her earlier fancy. She had seenRepublicanism turn to actual Tyranny, and had made exceedinglyunsuccessful attempts to captivate the tyrant. She had seen Germany, andhad got something of its then not by any means poisonous, if somewhatwindy, "culture"; a little romance of a kind, though she was never areal Romantic; some aesthetics; some very exoteric philosophy, etc. Shehad done a great deal of not very happy love-making; had been a woman ofletters, a patroness of men of letters, and--most important of all--hadnever dismounted from her old hobby "Sensibility," though she had learnthow to put it through new paces.

  A critical reader of _Corinne_ must remember all this, and he mustremember something else, though the reminder has been thought to savourof brutality. It is perfectly clear to me, and always has been so fromreading (in and between the lines) of her own works, of LadyBlennerhassett's monumental book on her, of M. Sorel's excellentmonograph, and of scores of longer and shorter studies on and referencesto her English and German and Swiss and French--from her own timedownwards, that the central secret, mainspring, or whatever any one maychoose to call it, of Madame de Stael's life was a frantic desire forthe physical beauty which she did not possess,[13] and a persistentattempt, occasionally successful, to delude herself into believing thatshe had achieved a sufficient substitute by literary, philosophical,political, and other exertion.

  [Sidenote: Its improved conditions.]

  This partly pathetic, partly, alas! ridiculous, but on the whole (with alittle charity) quite commiserable endeavour, attained some success,though probably with not a little extraneous help, in _De l'Allemagne_,and the posthumous _Considerations_ on the Revolution; but these booksdo not concern us, and illustrate only part of the writer's character,temperament, and talent, if not genius. _Corinne_ gives us the rest, andnearly, if not quite, the whole. The author had no doubt tried to dothis in _Delphine_, but had then had neither art nor equipment for thetask, and she had failed utterly. She was now well, if not perfectly,equipped, and had learnt not a little of the art to use heracquisitions. _Delphine_ had been dull, absurd, preposterous; _Corinne_,if it has dull patches, saves them from being intolerable. If itssentiment is extravagant, it is never exactly preposterous or exactlyabsurd; for the truth and reality of passion which are absent from theother book are actually present here, though sometimes in unintentionalmasquerade.

  In fact, _Corinne_, though the sisterhood of the two books is obviousenough, has almost, though not quite, all the faults of _Delphine_removed and some merits added, of which in the earlier novel there isnot the slightest trace. The history of my own acquaintance with it is,I hope, not quite irrelevant. I read it--a very rare thing for me with aFrench novel (in fact I can hardly recollect another instance, except, aquaint contrast, Paul de Kock's _Andre le Savoyard_)--first in English,and at a very early period of life, and I then thought it nearly asgreat "rot" as I have always thought its predecessor. But though I had,I hope, sense enough to see its faults, I had neither age nor experiencenor literature enough to appreciate its merits. I read it a good deallater in French, and, being then better qualified, _did_ perceive thesemerits, though it still did not greatly "arride" me. Later still--infact, only some twenty years ago--I was asked to re-edit and "introduce"the English translation. It is a popular mistake to think that aneditor, like an advocate, is entitled, if not actually bound, to makethe best case for his client, quite apart from his actual opinions; butin this instance my opinion of the book mounted considerably. And it hascertainly not declined since, though this _History_ has necessitated afourth study of the original, and though I shall neither repeat what Isaid in the Introduction referred to, nor give the impression thererecorded in merely altered words. Indeed, the very purpose of thepresent notice, forming part, as it should, of a connected history ofthe whole department to which the book belongs, requires differenttreatment, and an application of what may be called critical"triangulation" from different stand-points.

  [Sidenote: An illustrated edition of it.]

 
By an odd chance and counter-chance, the edition which served for thislast perusal, after threatening to disserve its text, had an exactlycontrary result. It was the handsome two-volume issue of 1841 copiouslyadorned with all sorts of ingenious initial-devices, _culs-de-lampe_,etc., and with numerous illustrative "cuts" beautifully engraved (forthe most part by English engravers, such as Orrin Smith, the Williamses,etc.), excellently drawn and composed by French artists from Grosdownwards, but costumed in what is now perhaps the least tolerable styleof dress even to the most catholic taste--that of the Empire in Franceand the Regency in England--and most comically "thought."[14] At firstsight this might seem to be a disadvantage, as calling attention to, andaggravating, certain defects of the text itself. I found it just thereverse. One was slightly distracted from, and half inclined to makeallowances for, Nelvil's performances in the novel when one saw him--ina Tom-and-Jerry early chimneypot hat, a large coachman's coat flung offhis shoulders and hanging down to his heels, a swallow-tail, tightpantaloons, and Hessian boots--extracting from his bosom his father'sportrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely toaccuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of familyworship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And thefaithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing atexcessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebodyelse's feet, or supporting somebody else in a fainting condition, orresting his or her burning brow on a hand, the elbow of which rested, inits turn, on a pedestal like that of Mr. Poseidon Hicks in _Mrs.Perkins's Ball_. The plates gave a safety-valve to the letterpress in acuriously anodyne fashion which I hardly ever remember to haveexperienced before. Or rather, one transferred to them part, if not thewhole, of the somewhat contemptuous amusement which the manners hadexcited, and had one's more appreciative faculties clear for the bookitself.

  [Sidenote: The story.]

  The story of _Corinne_, though not extraordinarily "accidented" and, aswill be seen, adulterated, or at least mixed, with a good many thingsthat are not story at all, is fairly solid, much more so than that of_Delphine_. It turns--though the reader is not definitely informed ofthis till the book is half over--on the fact of an English nobleman,Lord Edgermond (dead at _temp._ of tale), having had two wives, thefirst an Italian. By her he had one daughter, whose actual Christianname (unless I forget) we are never told, and he lived with them inItaly till his wife's death. Then he went home and married a secondwife, an English or Scotch woman (for her name seems to have beenMaclinson--a well-known clan) of very prudish disposition. By her he hadanother daughter, Lucile--younger by a good many years than her sister.To that sister Lady Edgermond the second does not behave exactly in thetraditionally novercal fashion, but she is scandalised by the girl'sItalian ways, artistic and literary temperament, desire for society,etc. After Lord Edgermond's death the discord of the two becomesintolerable, and the elder Miss Edgermond, coming of age and into anindependent fortune, breaks loose and returns to Italy, her stepmotherstipulating that she shall drop her family name altogether and allowherself to be given out as dead. She consents (unwisely, but perhapsnot unnaturally), appears in Italy under the name of "Corinne," andestablishes herself without difficulty in the best Roman society as alady of means, great beauty, irreproachable character, but given toprivate displays of her talents as singer, improvisatrice, actress, andwhat not.

  But before she has thus thrown a still respectable bonnet over a not toodisreputable mill, something has happened which has, in the long run,fatal consequences. Lord Edgermond has a friend, Lord Nelvil, who has ason rather younger than Corinne. Both fathers think that a marriagewould be a good thing, and the elder Nelvil comes to stay with theEdgermonds to propose it. Corinne (or whatever her name was then) laysherself out in a perfectly innocent but, as he thinks, forward manner toplease him, and he, being apparently (we never see him in person) not alittle of an old fool, cries off this project, but tells Edgermond thathe should like his son to marry Lucile when she grows up.

  Without an intolerable dose of "argument," it is only possible to sayhere that Nelvil, after his father's death, journeys to the Continent(where he has been already engaged in a questionable _liaison_), meetsCorinne, and, not at first knowing in the least who she is, falls, orthinks he falls, frantically in love with her, while she really doesfall more frantically in love with him. After a sojourn, of which alittle more presently, circumstances make him (or he thinks they makehim) return home, and he falls, or thinks he falls,[15] out of love withCorinne and into it (after a fashion) with Lucile. Corinne undertakes anincognito journey to England to find out what is happening, but (this,though not impossible in itself, is, as told, the weakest part of thestory) never makes herself known till too late, and Nelvil, partly outof respect for his father's wishes, and partly, one fears, becauseLucile is very pretty and Corinne seems to be very far off, marries theyounger sister.

  It would have greatly improved the book if, with or even without a"curtain," it had ended here. But Madame de Stael goes on to tell us howNelvil, who is a soldier by profession,[16] leaves his wife and a littledaughter, Juliette, and goes to "Les Iles" on active service for fouryears; how Lucile, not unnaturally, suspects hankering after the sistershe has not seen since her childhood; how, Nelvil being invalided home,they all go to Italy, and find Corinne in a dying condition; how Lucileat first refuses to see her, but, communications being opened by thechild Juliette, reconciliations follow; and how Corinne dies with Nelviland Lucile duly kneeling at her bedside.

  The minor personages of any importance are not numerous. Besides LadyEdgermond, they consist of the Comte d'Erfeuil, a French travellingcompanion of Nelvil's; the Prince of Castel-Forte, an Italian of thehighest rank; a Mr. Edgermond, who does not make much appearance, but ismore like a real Englishman in his ways and manners than Nelvil; an oldScotch nincompoop named Dickson, who, unintentionally, makes mischiefwherever he goes as surely as the personage in the song made music. LadyEdgermond, though she is neither bad nor exactly ill-natured, is theevil genius of the story. Castel-Forte, a most honourable and excellentgentleman, has so little of typical Italianism in him that, findingCorinne will not have him, he actually serves as common friend,confidant, and almost as honourable go-between, to her and Nelvil.

  On the other hand, French critics have justly complained, and criticsnot French may endorse the complaint, that the Comte d'Erfeuil is a merecaricature of the "frivolous" French type too commonly accepted out ofFrance. He is well-mannered, not ill-natured, and even not, personally,very conceited, but utterly shallow, incapable of a serious interest inart, letters, or anything else, blandly convinced that everything Frenchis superlative and that nothing not French is worthy of attention.Although he appears rather frequently, he plays no real part in thestory, and, unless there was some personal grudge to pay off (which isnot unlikely), it is difficult to imagine why Madame de Stael shouldhave introduced a character which certainly does her skill as acharacter-drawer very little credit.

  [Sidenote: The character of Nelvil.]

  It is, however, quite possible that she was led astray by awill-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very firstclass--the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-mindedErfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil--a type again, as hewas evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. Shewas a devotee of Rousseau, and she undoubtedly had the egregious Bomstonbefore her. But, though her sojourn in England had not taught her verymuch about actual Englishman, she had probably read Mackenzie, and knewthat the "Man of Feeling" touch had to some extent affected us. Shetried to combine the two, with divers hints of hearsay and a good dealof pure fancy, and the result was Oswald, Lord Nelvil. As with thatother curious contemporary of hers with whom we deal in this chapter,the result was startlingly powerful in literature. There is no doubtthat the Byronic hero, whose importance of a kind is unmistakable andundeniable, is Schedoni, Rene, and Nelvil sliced up, pounded in amortar, and made into a rissole with Byron's
own sauce of style inrhetoric or (if anybody will have it so) poetry, but with very littlemore substantial ingredients. As for the worthy peer of Scotland orEngland, more recent estimates have seldom been favourable, and neverought to have been so. M. Sorel calls him a "snob"; but that is only oneof the numerous and, according to amiable judgments, creditableinstances of the inability of the French to discern exactly what"snobbishness" is.[17] My Lord Nelvil has many faults and very fewmerits, but among the former I do not perceive any snobbishness. He isnot in the least attracted by Corinne's popularity, either with thegreat vulgar or the small, and his hesitations about marrying her do notarise from any doubt (while he is still ignorant on the subject) of hersocial worthiness to be his wife. He _is_ a prig doubtless, but he is aprig of a very peculiar character--a sort of passionate prig, or, to putit in another way, one of Baudelaire's "Enfants de la lune," who, notcontent with always pining after the place where he is not and the lovethat he has not, is constantly making not merely himself, but the placewhere he is and the love whom he has, uncomfortable and miserable. Therecan, I think, be little doubt that Madame de Stael, who frequentlyinsists on his "irresolution" (remember that she had been in Germany andheard the Weimar people talk), meant him for a sort of modern Hamlet invery different circumstances as well as times. But it takes yourShakespeare to manage your Hamlet, and Madame de Stael was notShakespeare, even in petticoats.

  [Sidenote: And the book's absurdities.]

  The absurdities of the book are sufficiently numerous. Lord Nelvil, whohas not apparently had any special experience of the sea, "advises" thesailors, and takes the helm during a storm on his passage from Harwichto Emden; while these English mariners, unworthy professionaldescendants of that admirable man, the boatswain of the opening scenesof _The Tempest_, are actually grateful to him, and when he goes 'ashore"press themselves round him" to take leave of him (that is to say, theydo this in the book; what in all probability they actually _said_ wouldnot be fit for these pages). He is always saving people--imprisonedJews and lunatics at a fire in Ancona; aged lazzaroni who getcaught in a sudden storm-wave at Naples; and this in spite of theconvenient-inconvenient blood-vessels which break when it is necessary,but still make it quite easy for him to perform these Herculean featsand resume his rather interim military duties when he pleases. As forCorinne, her exploits with her "schall" (a vestment of which Madame deStael also was fond), and her crowning in the Capitol, where the crowntumbles off--an incident which in real life would be slightly comical,but which here only gives Nelvil an opportunity of picking it up--form asimilar prelude to a long series of extravagances. The culmination ofthem is that altogether possible-improbable visit to England, whichmight have put everything right and does put everything wrong, and theincurable staginess which makes her, as above related, refuse to seeOswald and Lucile _together_ till she is actually in _articulo mortis_.

  And yet--"for all this and all this and twice as much as all this"--Ishould be sorry for any one who regards Corinne as merely a tedious andnot at all brief subject for laughter. One solid claim which itpossesses has been, and is still for a moment, definitely postponed; butin another point there is, if not exactly a defence, an immensecounterpoise to the faults and follies just mentioned. Corinne to fartoo great an extent, and Oswald to an extent nearly but not quite fatal,are loaded (_affubles_, to use the word we borrowed formerly) with amass of corporal and spiritual wiglomeration (as Mr. Carlyle usedexpressively and succinctly to call it) in costume and fashion andsentiment and action and speech. But when we have stripped this off,_manet res_--reality of truth and fact and nature.

  [Sidenote: Compensations--Corinne herself.]

  There should be no doubt of this in Corinne's own case. It has been saidfrom the very first that she is, as Delphine had been, if not what hercreatress was, what she would have liked to be. The ideal in the formercase was more than questionable, and the execution was very bad. Herethe ideal is far from flawless, but it is greatly improved, and theexecution is improved far more than in proportion. Corinne is not "areasonable woman"; but reason, though very heartily to be welcomed onits rare occurrences in that division of humanity, when it does notexclude other things more to be welcomed still, is very decidedly not tobe preferred to the other things themselves. Corinne has these--or mostof them. She is beautiful; she is amiable; she is unselfish; without theslightest touch of prudery she has the true as well as the technicalchastity; and she is really the victim of inauspicious stars, and of themisconduct of other people--the questionable wisdom of her own father;the folly of Nelvil's; the wilfulness in the bad sense, and the weaknessof will in the good, of her lover; the sour virtue and _borne_temperament of Lady Edgermond. Almost all her faults and not a few ofher misfortunes are due to the "sensibility" of her time, or the time alittle before her; for, as has been more than hinted already, _Corinne_,though a book of far less genius, strength, and concentration than_Adolphe_, is, like it, though from the other side, and on a far largerscale, the history of the Nemesis of Sensibility.

  [Sidenote: Nelvil again.]

  But Nelvil? He is, it has been said, a deplorable kind of creature--akind of creature (to vary Dr. Johnson's doom on the unlucky mutton)ill-_bred_, ill-educated, ill- (though not quite in the ordinary sense)natured, ill-fated to an extent which he could partly, but only partly,have helped; and ill-conducted to an extent which he might have helpedalmost altogether. But is he unnatural? I fear--I trow--not. He is, Ithink, rather more natural than Edgar of Ravenswood, who is something ofthe same class, and who may perhaps owe a very little to him. At anyrate, though he has more to do with the theatre, he is less purelytheatrical than that black-plumed Master. And it seems to me that he ismore differentiated from the Sensibility heroes than even Corinneherself is from the Sensibility heroines, though one sympathises withher much more than with him. _Homo est_, though scarcely _vir_. Now itis humanity which we have been always seeking, but not always finding,in the long and often brilliant list of French novels before his day.And we have found it here once more.

  [Sidenote: Its aesthetics.]

  But we find also something more; and this something more gives it notmerely an additional but even to some extent a fresh hold upon thehistory of the novel itself. To say that it is in great part a"guide-book novel," as indeed its second title[18] honestly declares,may seem nowadays a doubtful testimonial. It is not really so. For itwas, with certain exceptions in German, the _first_ "guide-book" novel:and though some of those exceptions may have shown greater 'literarygenius than Madame de Stael's, the Germans, though they have, in certainlines, had no superiors as producers of tales, have never produced agood novel yet.[19] Moreover, the guide-book element is a great set-offto the novel. It is not--or at any rate it is not necessarily--liable tothe objections to "purpose," for it is ornamental and not structural. Ittakes a new and important and almost illimitably fresh province ofnature and of art, which is a part of nature, to be its appanage. Itwould be out of place here to trace the development of this system ofreinforcing the novel beyond France, in Scott more particularly. It isnot out of place to remind the reader that even Rousseau (to whom Madamede Stael owed so much) to some extent, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre andChateaubriand to more, as far as what we may call scenery-guide-bookinggoes, had preceded her. But for the "art," the aesthetic addition, shewas indebted only to the Germans; and almost all her French successorswere indebted to her.[20]

  [Sidenote: The author's position in the History of the Novel.]

  Although, therefore, it is hardly possible to call Madame de Stael agood novelist, she occupies a very important position in the history ofthe novel. She sees, or helps to see, the "sensibility" novel out, withforcible demonstration of the inconveniences of its theory. She helps tosee the aesthetic novel--or the novel highly seasoned and evensandwiched with aesthetics--in. She manages to create at least onecharacter to whom the epithets of "noble" and "pathetic" can hardly berefused; and at least one other to which that of "only too natural," ifwith an exceptional and f
aulty kind of nature, must be accorded. At atime when the most popular, prolific, and in a way craftsmanlikepractitioner of the kind, Pigault-Lebrun, was dragging it throughvulgarity, she keeps it at any rate clear of that. Her description isadequate: and her society-and-manners painting (not least in the _recit_giving Corinne's trials in Northumberland) is a good deal more thanadequate. Moreover, she preserves the tradition of the great_philosophe_ group by showing that the writer of novels can also be theauthor of serious and valuable literature of another kind. These are nosmall things to have done: and when one thinks of them one is almostable to wipe off the slate of memory that awful picture of a turbaned or"schalled" Blowsalind, with arms[21] like a "daughter of the plough,"which a cruel tradition has perpetuated as frontispiece to some cheapeditions of her works.

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: Chateaubriand--his peculiar position as a novelist.]

  There is perhaps no more difficult person to appraise in all Frenchliterature--there are not many in the literature of the world--thanFrancois Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. It is almost more difficultthan in the case of his two great disciples, Byron and Hugo, to keep hispersonality out of the record: and it is a not wholly agreeablepersonality. Old experience may perhaps attain to this, and leave toghouls and large or small coffin-worms the business of investigating andpossibly fattening on the thing. But even the oldest experience dealingwith his novels (which were practically all early) may find itselfconsiderably _tabuste_, as Rabelais has it, that is to say, "bothered"with faults which are mitigated in the _Genie du Christianisme_,comparatively (not quite) unimportant in the _Voyages_, and almostentirely whelmed in the _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_. These faults are ofsuch a complicated and various kind that the whole armour of criticismis necessary to deal with them, on the defensive in the sense of notbeing too much influenced by them, and on the offensive in the sense ofbeing severe but not too severe on them.

  [Sidenote: And the remarkable interconnection of his works in fiction.]

  The mere reader of Chateaubriand's novels generally begins with _Atala_and _Rene_, and not uncommonly stops there. In a certain sense thisreader is wise in his generation. But he will never understand hisauthor as a novelist if he does so; and his appreciation of the books orbooklets themselves will be very incomplete. They are both notunfrequently spoken of as detached episodes of the _Genie duChristianisme_; and so they are, in the illustrative sense. They areactually, and in the purely constitutive way, episodes of another book,_Les Natchez_, while this book itself is also a novel "after a sort."The author's work in the kind is completed by the later _Les Martyrs_,which has nothing to do, in persons or time, with the others, beingoccupied with the end of the third century, while they deal (throwingback a little in _Atala_) with the beginning of the eighteenth. But thisalso is an illustrative companion or reinforcement of the _Genie_. Withthat book the whole body of Chateaubriand's fiction[22] is thus directlyconnected; and the entire collection, not a little supported by the_Voyages_, constitutes a deliberate "literary offensive," intended tocounter-work the proceedings of the _philosophes_, though with aid drawnfrom one of them--Rousseau,--and only secondarily designed to providepure novel-interest. If this is forgotten, the student will find himselfat sea without a rudder; and the mere reader will be in danger ofexaggerating very greatly, because he does not in the least understand,the faults just referred to, and of failing altogether to appreciate thereal success and merit of the work as judged on that only criterion,"Has the author done what he meant to do, and done it well, on the lineshe chose?" Of course, if our reader says, "I don't care about all this,I merely want to be amused and interested," one cannot prevent him. Hehad, in fact, as was hinted just now, better read nothing but _Atala_and _Rene_, if not, indeed, _Atala_ only, immense as is the literaryimportance of its companion. But in a history of the novel one isentitled to hope, at any rate to wish, for a somewhat better kind ofcustomer or client.

  According to Chateaubriand's own account, when he quitted England afterhis not altogether cheerful experiences there as an almost penniless_emigre_, he left behind him, in the charge of his landlady, exactly2383 folio pages of MSS. enclosed in a trunk, and (by a combination ofmerit on the custodian's part and luck on his own) recovered themfifteen years afterwards, _Atala_, _Rene_, and a few other fragmentshaving alone accompanied him. These were published independently, the_Genie_ following. _Les Martyrs_ was a later composition altogether,while _Les Natchez_, the _matrix_ of both the shorter stories, andincluded, as one supposes, in the 2383 waifs, was partly rewritten andwholly published later still. A body of fiction of such a singularcharacter is, as has been said, not altogether easy to treat; but,without much change in the method usually pursued in this _History_, wemay perhaps do best by first giving a brief argument of the variouscontents and then taking up the censure, in no evil sense, of thewhole.

  [Sidenote: _Atala._]

  _Atala_ is short and almost entirely to the point. The heroine is ahalf-breed girl with a Spanish father and for mother an Indian of somerank in her tribe, who has subsequently married a benevolent chief. Sheis regarded as a native princess, and succeeds in rescuing from theusual torture and death, and fleeing with, a captive chief of another"nation." This is Chactas, important in _Rene_ and also in the _Natchez_framework. They direct their flight northwards to the French settlements(it is late seventeenth or early eighteenth century throughout), and ofcourse fall in love with each other. But Atala's mother, a Christian,has, in the tumult of her early misfortunes, vowed her daughter'svirginity or death; and when, just before the crucial moment, amissionary opportunely or inopportunely occurs, Atala has already takenpoison, with the object, it would appear, not so much of preventing asof avenging, of her own free will, a breach of the vow. The rest of thestory is supplied by the vain attempts of the good father to save her,his evangelising efforts towards the pair, and the sorrows of Chactasafter his beloved's death. The piece, of course, shows that exaggeratedand somewhat morbid pathos of circumstance which is the common form ofthe early romantic efforts, whether in England, Germany, or France. Butthe pathos _is_ pathos; the unfamiliar scenery, unlike that of Bernardinde Saint-Pierre (to whom, of course, Chateaubriand is much indebted,though he had actually seen what he describes), is not overdone, andsuits the action and characters very well indeed. Chactas here is thebest of all the "noble savages," and (what hardly any other of them is)positively good. Atala is really tragic and really gracious. Themissionary stands to other fictitious, and perhaps some real,missionaries very much as Chactas does to other savages of story, if notof life. The proportion of the whole is good, and in the humble opinionof the present critic it is by far Chateaubriand's best thing in allperhaps but mere writing.

  And even in this it is bad to beat, in him or out of him. The smallspace forbids mere surplusage of description, and the plot--as all plotsshould do, but, alas! as few succeed in doing--acts as a bellows tokindle the flame and intensify the heat of something far better thandescription itself--passionate character. There are many finethings--mixed, no doubt, with others not so fine--in the tempestuousscene of the death of Atala, which should have been the conclusion ofthe story. But this, in its own way, seems to me little short ofmagnificent:

  "I implored you to fly; and yet I knew I should die if you were not with me. I longed for the shadow of the forest; and yet I feared to be with you in a desert place. Ah! if the cost had only been that of quitting parents, friends, country! if--terrible as it is to say it--there had been nothing at stake but the loss of my own soul.[23] But, O my mother! thy shade was always there--thy shade reproaching me with the torments it would suffer. I heard thy complaints; I saw the flames of Hell ready to consume thee. My nights were dry places full of ghosts; my days were desolate; the dew of the evening dried up as it touched my burning skin. I opened my lips to the breeze; and the breeze, instead of cooling me, was itself set aglow by the fire of my breath. What torment, Cha
ctas! to see you always near me, far from all other humankind in the deepest solitude, and yet to feel that between us there was an insuperable barrier! To pass my life at your feet, to serve you as a slave, to bring you food and lay your couch in some secret corner of the universe, would have been for me supremest happiness; and this happiness was within my touch, yet I could not enjoy it. Of what plans did I not dream? What vision did not arise from this sad heart? Sometimes, as I gazed on you, I went so far as to form desires as mad as they were guilty: sometimes I could have wished that there were no living creatures on earth but you and me; sometimes, feeling that there was a divinity mocking my wicked transports, I could have wished that divinity annihilated, if only, locked in your arms, I might have sunk from abyss to abyss with the ruins of God and of the world. Even now--shall I say it?--even now, when eternity waits to engulf me, when I am about to appear before the inexorable Judge--at the very moment when my mother may be rejoicing to see my virginity devour my life--even now, by a terrible contradiction, I carry with me the regret that I have not been yours!"

  At this let who will laugh or sneer, yawn or cavil. But as literature itlooks back to Sappho and Catullus and the rest, and forward to all greatlove-poetry since, while as something that is even greater thanliterature--life--it carries us up to the highest Heaven and down to thenethermost Hell.

  [Sidenote: _Rene._]

  _Rene_[24] has greater fame and no doubt exercised far more influence;indeed in this respect _Atala_ could not do much, for it is not theeternal, but the temporal, which "influences." But, in the same humbleopinion, it is extremely inferior. The French Werther[25] (for theattempt to rival Goethe on his own lines is hardly, if at all, veiled)is a younger son of a gentle family in France, whose father dies. Helives for a time with an elder brother, who seems to be "more kin thankind," and a sister Amelie, to whom he is fondly, but fraternally,attached. Rene has begun the trick of disappointment early, and, after atime, determines to travel, fancying when he leaves home that his sisteris actually glad to get rid of him. Of course it is a case of _coelumnon animum_. When he returns he is half-surprised but (for him) whollyglad to be at first warmly welcomed by Amelie; but after a little whileshe leaves him, takes the veil, and lets him know at the last momentthat it is because her affection for him is more than sisterly, thatthis was the reason of her apparent joy when he left her, and thatassociation with him is too much for her passion.[26] _She_ makes anexemplary nun in a sea-side convent, and dies early of disease caughtwhile nursing others. _He_, his wretchedness and hatred of life reachingtheir acme, exiles himself to Louisiana, and gets himself adopted by thetribe of the Natchez, where Chactas is a (though not _the_) chief.

  [Sidenote: Difference between its importance and its merit.]

  Now, of course, if we are content to take a bill and write down Byronand Lamartine, Senancour and _Jacopo Ortis_ (otherwise Ugo Foscolo),Musset, Matthew Arnold, and _tutti quanti_, as debtors to _Rene_, wegive the tale or episode a historical value which cannot be denied;while its positive aesthetic quality, though it may vary very much indifferent estimates, cannot be regarded as merely worthless. Also, oncemore, there is real pathos, especially as far as Amelie is concerned,though the entire unexpectedness of the revelation of her fatal passion,and the absolute lack of any details as to its origin, rise, andcircumstances, injure sympathy to some extent. But that sympathy, as faras the present writer is concerned, fails altogether with regard to Renehimself. If his melancholy were traceable to _mutual_ passion of theforbidden kind, or if it had arisen from the stunning effect of therevelation thereof on his sister's side, there would be no difficulty.But, though these circumstances may to some extent accentuate, they havenothing to do with causing the _weltschmerz_ or _selbst-schmerz_, orwhatever it is to be called, of this not very heroic hero. Nor hasChateaubriand taken the trouble--which Goethe, with his more criticalsense of art, _did_ take--to make Rene go through the whole course ofthe Preacher, or great part of it, before discovering that all wasvanity. He is merely, from the beginning, a young gentleman affectedwith mental jaundice, who cannot or will not discover or takepsychological calomel enough to cure him. It does not seem in the leastlikely that if Amelie had been content to live with him as merely "inall good, all honour" a loving and comforting sister, he would havereally been able to say, like Geraldine in Coleridge's original draft of_Christabel_, "I'm better now."

  He is, in fact, what Werther is not--though his own followers to a largeextent are--mainly if not merely a Sulky Young Man: and one cannot helpimagining that if, in pretty early days, some one had been good enoughto apply to him that Herb Pantagruelion, in form not exactly of a halterbut of a rope's end, with which O'Brien cured Peter Simple's _mal demer_, his _mal du siecle_ would have been cured likewise.

  Of course it is possible for any one to say, "You are a Philistine and aVulgarian. You wish to regard life through a horse-collar," etc., etc.But these reproaches would leave my withers quite ungalled. I think_Ecclesiastes_ one of the very greatest books in the world's literature,and _Hamlet_ the greatest play, with the possible exception of the_Agamemnon_. It is the abysmal sadness quite as much as the _furorarduus_ of Lucretius that makes me think him the mightiest of Latinpoets. I would not give the mystical melancholy of certain poems ofDonne's for half a hundred of the liveliest love-songs of the time, andcould extend the list page-long and more if it would not savour ofostentation in more ways than one. But mere temperamental [Greek:heolokrasia] or [Greek: kraipale] (next-day nausea), without even theexaltation of a previous orgy to ransom it,--mere spleen and sulks andnaughty-childishness,--seem to me not great things at all. You may notbe able to help your spleen, but you can "cook" it; you may have qualmand headache, but in work of some sort, warlike or peaceful, there isalways small beer, or brandy and soda (with even, if necessary,capsicum or bromide), for the ailment. The Renes who can do nothing butsulk, except when they blunder themselves and make other peopleuncomfortable in attempting to do something, who "never do a [manly]thing and never say a [kind] one," are, I confess, not to my taste.[27]

  [Sidenote: _Les Natchez._]

  Both these stories, as will have been seen, have a distinctly religiouselement; in fact, a distinctly religious purpose. The largernovel-romance of which they form episodes, as well as its later andgreater successor, _Les Martyrs_, increase the element in both cases,the purpose in the latter; but one of the means by which this increaseis effected has certainly lost--whether it may or may not everrecover--its attraction, except to a student of literary history who iswell out of his novitiate. Such a person should see at once thatChateaubriand's elaborate adoption, from Tasso and Milton, of the systemof interspersed scenes of Divine and diabolic conclaves andinterferences with the story, is an important, if not a wholly happy,instance of that general Romantic _reversion_ to earlier literarydevices, and even atmospheres, of which the still rather enigmaticpersonage who rests enisled off Saint-Malo was so great an apostle. Andit was probably effectual for its time. Classicists could not quarrelwith it, for it had its precedents, indeed its origin, in Homer andVirgil; Romanticists (of that less exclusive class who admitted theRenaissance as well as the Dark and Middle Ages) could not but welcomeit for its great modern defenders and examples. I cannot say that Ienjoy it: but I can tolerate it, and there is no doubt at all, odd as itmay seem to the merely twentieth-century reader, that it did somethingto revive the half-extinct religiosity which had been starved andpoisoned in the later days of the _ancien regime_, forcibly suppressedunder the Republic, and only officially licensed by the Napoleonicsystem. In _Les Martyrs_ it has even a certain "grace of congruity,"[28]but in regard to _Les Natchez_, with which we are for the momentconcerned, almost enough (with an example or two to come presently) hasbeen said about it.

  The book, as a whole, suffers, unquestionably and considerably, from theresults of two defects in its author. He was not born, as Scott was alittle later, to get the historical
novel at last into full life andactivity; and it would not be unfair to question whether he was a bornnovelist at all, though he had not a few of the qualifications necessaryto the kind, and exercised, coming as and when he did, an immenseinfluence upon it. The subject is too obscure. Its only original_vates_, Charlevoix, though always a respectable name to persons of someacquaintance with literature and history, has never been much more,either in France or in England. The French, unluckily for themselves,never took much interest in their transatlantic possessions while theyhad them; and their dealings with the Indians then, and ours afterwards,and those of the Americans since, have never been exactly of the kindthat give on both sides a subject such as may be found in all mediaevaland most Renaissance matters; in the Fronde; in the English Civil War;in the great struggles of France and England from 1688 to 1815; in theJacobite risings; in La Vendee; and in other historical periods andprovinces too many to mention. On the other hand, the abstract "noblesavage" is a faded object of exhausted _engouement_, than which thereare few things less exhilarating. The Indian _ingenu_ (a very differentone from Voltaire's) Outougamiz and his _ingenue_ Mila are rather nice;but Celuta (the ill-fated girl who loves Rene and whom he marries,because in a sort of way he cannot help it) is an eminent example ofthat helpless kind of quiet misfortune the unprofitableness of which Mr.Arnold has confessed and registered in a famous passage. Chactasmaintains a respectable amount of interest, and his visit to the courtof Louis XIV. takes very fair rank among a well-known group of things ofwhich it is not Philistine to speak as old-fashioned, because they neverpossessed much attraction, except as being new- or regular-fashioned.But the villain Ondoure has almost as little of the fire of Hell as ofthat of Heaven, and his paramour and accomplice Akansie carries verylittle "conviction" with her. In short, the merit of the book, besidesthe faint one of having been the original framework of _Atala_ and_Rene_, is almost limited to its atmosphere, and the alterativequalities thereof--things now in a way ancient history--requiring even aconsiderable dose of the not-universally-possessed historic sense todiscern and appreciate them.

  Outside the "Histoire de Chactas" (which might, like _Atala_ and _Rene_themselves, have been isolated with great advantage), and exceptinglikewise the passages concerning Outougamiz and Mila--which possess, inconsiderable measure and gracious fashion, what some call the "idyllic"quality--I have found it, on more than one attempt, difficult to takemuch interest in _Les Natchez_, not merely for the reasons alreadygiven, but chiefly owing to them. Rene's appearances (and he isgenerally in background or foreground) serve better than anything in anyother book, perhaps, to explain and justify the old notion that_accidia_[29] of his kind is not only a fault in the individual, but apositive ill omen and nuisance[30] to others. Neither in the Indiancharacters (with the exceptions named) nor among the French and creoledoes one find relief: and when one passes from them to the "machinery"parts--where, for instance, a "perverse couple," Satan and La Renommee(_not_ the ship that Trunnion took), embark on a journey in a car withwinged horses--it must be an odd taste which finds things improved. InGreek verse, in Latin verse, or even in Milton's English one could standNight, docile to the orders of Satan, condescending to deflect a hatchetwhich is whistling unpleasantly close to Rene's ear, not that he may bebenefited, but preserved for more sufferings. In comparatively plainFrench prose--the qualification is intentional, as will be seen a littlelater--with a scene and time barely two hundred years off now and not ahundred then, though in a way unfamiliar--the thing won't do. "Time," atthe orders of the Prince of Darkness, cutting down trees to make astockade for the Natchez in the eighteenth century, alas! contributesagain the touch of weak allegory, in neither case helping the effect;while, although the plot is by no means badly evolved, the want ofinterest in the characters renders it ineffective.

  [Sidenote: _Les Martyrs._]

  The defects of _Les Martyrs_[31] are fewer in number and less in degree,while its merits are far more than proportionally greater and morenumerous. Needing less historical reinforcement, it enjoys much more._Les Natchez_ is almost the last, certainly the last important novel ofsavage life, as distinguished from "boys' books" about savages. _LesMartyrs_ is the first of a line of remarkable if not always successfulclassical novels from Lockhart's _Valerius_ to Gissing's _Veranilda_. Ithas nothing really in common with the kind of classical story whichlasted from _Telemaque_ to _Belisarius_ and later. And what is more, itis perhaps better than any of its followers except Kingsley's_Hypatia_, which is admittedly of a mixed kind--a nineteenth-centurynovel, with events, scenes, and _decor_ of the fifth century. If it hasnot the spectacular and popular appeal of _The Last Days of Pompeii_, itescapes, as that does not, the main drawback of almost all theothers--the "classical-dictionary" element: and if, on the other, itsauthor knew less about Christianity than Cardinals Wiseman and Newman,he knew more about lay "humans" than the authors of _Fabiola_ and_Callista_.

  It is probably unnecessary to point out at any great length that some ofthe drawbacks of _Les Natchez_ disappear almost automatically in _LesMartyrs_. The supernatural machinery is, on the hypothesis and at thetime of the book, strictly congruous and proper; while, as a matter offact, it is in proportion rather less than more used. The time andevents--those of the persecution under Diocletian--are familiar,interesting, and, in a French term for which we have no exactequivalent, _dignes_. There is no sulky spider of a Rene crawlingabout the piece; and though history is a little strained toprovide incidents,[32] "that's not much," and they are not inthemselves improbable in any bad sense or degree. Moreover, theclassical-dictionary element, which, as has been said, is so awkward tohandle, is, at least after the beginning, not too much drawn upon.

  The book, in its later modern editions, is preceded not merely byseveral Prefaces, but by an _Examen_ in the old fashion, and fortifiedby those elaborate citation-notes[33] from authorities ancient andmodern which were a mania at the end of the eighteenth and the beginningof the nineteenth century, and which sometimes divert and sometimesenrage more modern readers in work so different as _Lalla Rookh_ and_The Pursuits of Literature_, while they provided at the time materialfor immortal jokes in such other work as the _Anti-Jacobin_ poems. Inthe Prefaces Chateaubriand discusses the prose epic, and puts himself,quite unnecessarily, under the protection of _Telemaque_: in the_Examen_ he deals systematically with the objections, religious, moral,and literary, which had been made against the earlier editions of thebook. But these things are now little more than curiosities for thestudent, though they retain some general historical importance.

  [Sidenote: The story.]

  The book starts (after an "Invocation," proper to its scheme but perhapsnot specially attractive "to us") with an account of the household ofDemodocus, a Homerid of Chios, who in Diocletian's earlier andunpersecuting days, after living happily but for too short a time inCrete with his wife Epicharis, loses her, though she leaves him onelittle daughter, Cymodocee, born in the sacred woods of Mount Idaitself. Demodocus is only too glad to accept an invitation to becomehigh priest of a new Temple of Homer in Messenia, on the slopes ofanother mountain, less, but not so much less, famous, Ithome. Cymodoceebecomes very beautiful, and receives, but rejects, the addresses ofHierocles, proconsul of Achaia, and a favourite of Galerius. One day,worshipping in the forest at a solitary Altar of the Nymphs, she meets ayoung stranger whom (she is of course still a pagan) she mistakes forEndymion, but who talks Christianity to her, and reveals himself asEudore, son of Lasthenes. As it turns out, her father knows this person,who has the renown of a distinguished soldier.

  From this almost any one who has read a few thousand novels--almost anyintelligent person who has read a few hundred--can lay out the probableplot. Love of Eudore and Cymodocee; conversion of the latter; jealousyand intrigues of Hierocles; adventures past and future of Eudore;transfer of scene to Rome; prevalence of Galerius over Diocletian;persecution, martyrdom, and supernatural triumph. But the "fillings up"are not banal; and the book is well worth reading from divers points
ofview. In the earliest part there is a little too much Homer,[34]naturally enough perhaps. The ancient world changed slowly, and we knowthat at this particular time Greeks (if not also Romans) rather playedat archaising manners. Still, it is probably not quite safe to take thememorable, if not very resultful, journey in which Telemachus was,rather undeservedly, so lucky as to see Helen and drink Nepenthe[35] andto reproduce it with guide- and etiquette-book exactness, _c._ A. D.300. Yet this is, as has been said, very natural; and it arouses manypleasant reminiscences.

  [Sidenote: Its "panoramic" quality.]

  The book, moreover, has two great qualities which were almost,if not quite, new in the novel. In the first place, it has acertain _panoramic_ element which admits--which indeednecessitates--picturesqueness. Much of it is, almost as necessarily,_recit_ (Eudore giving the history of his travels and campaigns); but itis _recit_ of a vividness which had never before been known in French,out of the most accomplished drama, and hardly at all in prose. Theadventures of Eudore require this most, of course, and they get it. Hisearly wild-oats at Rome, which earn him temporary excommunication; hisservice in the wars with the Franks, where, for almost the only time inliterature, Pharamond and Merovee become living creatures; his captivitywith them; his triumphs in Britain and his official position inBrittany, where the entrance of the Druidess Velleda and the fatal lovebetween them provide perhaps the most famous and actually one of themost effective of the episodes of the book--all "stand out from thecanvas," as the old phrase goes. Nor is the mastery lost when _recit_becomes direct action, in the scenes of the persecution, and the finalpurification of the hero and crowning of the heroine in theamphitheatre. "The work burns"; and, while it is practically certainthat the writer knew the Scudery romances, the contrast of this"burning" quality becomes so striking as almost to justify,comparatively if not positively, the accusations of frigidity andlanguor which have been somewhat excessively brought against the earlierperformances. There is not the passion of _Atala_--it would have beenout of place: and there is not the soul-dissection of _Rene_, for thereis nothing morbid enough to require the scalpel. But, on the other hand,there is the bustle--if that be not too degrading a word--which iswanting in both; the vividness of action and of change; colour, variety,suspense, what may perhaps best be called in one word "pulse," giving,as a necessary consequence, life.

  [Sidenote: And its remarkable advance in style.]

  And this great advance is partly, if not mainly, achieved byanother--the novelty of _style_. Chateaubriand had set out to give--has,indeed, as far as his intention goes, maintained throughout--an effortat _le style noble_, the already familiar rhetoric, of which, in French,Corneille had been the Dryden and Racine the Pope, while it had, in hisown youth, sunk to the artifice of Delille in verse and the "emphasis"of Thomas in prose. He has sometimes achieved the best, and not seldomsomething that is by no means the worst, of this. But, consciously orunconsciously, he has more often put in the old bottles of form new wineof spirit, which has not only burst them, but by some very satisfactorymiracle of literature shed itself into new receptacles, this time not atall leathery but glass of iridescent colour and graceful shape. It wasalmost inevitable that such a process, at such a time, and with such alanguage--for Chateaubriand did not go to the real "ancient mother" ofpre-_grand siecle_ French--should be now and then merely magniloquent,that it should sometimes fall short of, or overleap, even magniloquenceand become bombast. But sometimes also, and not so seldom, it attainsmagnificence as well; and the promise, at least the opportunity, of suchmagnificence in capable followers can hardly be mistaken. As in hisyounger contemporary, compatriot, and, beyond all doubt, disciple,Lamennais, the results are often crude, unequal, disappointing;insufficiently smelted ore, insufficiently ripened and cellared wine.But the quantity and quality of pure metal--the inspiriting virtue ofthe vintage--in them is extraordinary: and once more it must beremembered that, for the novel, all this was absolutely new. In thisrespect, if in no other, though perhaps he was so in others also,Chateaubriand is a Columbus of prose fiction. Neither in French nor inEnglish, very imperfectly in German, and, so far as I know, not in anyother language to even the smallest degree, had "prose-poetry" beenattempted in this department. "Ossian" perhaps must have some of thecredit: the Bible still more. But wherever the capital was found it wasChateaubriand who put it into the business of novel-writing and turnedout the first specimens of that business with the new materials andplant procured by the funds.

  [Sidenote: Chateaubriand's Janus-position in this.]

  Some difficulties, which hamper any attempt to illustrate and supportthis high praise, cannot require much explanation to make them obvious.It has not been the custom of this book to give large untranslatedextracts: and it is at least the opinion of its author that in mattersof style, translation, even if it be of a much higher quality than heconceives himself able to offer, is, if not quite worthless, veryinadequate. Moreover, it is (or should be) well known that the qualitiesof the old French _style noble_--which, as has been said, Chateaubrianddeliberately adopted, as his starting-point if nothing more--are, evenin their own language, and still more when reproduced in any other, fullof dangers for foreign appreciation. The no doubt largely ignorant andin any case mistaken contempt for French poetry and poetic prose whichso long prevailed among us, and from which even such a critic and such alover (to some extent) of French as Matthew Arnold was not free, wasmainly concerned with this very point. To take a single instance, thepart of De Quincey's "Essay on Rhetoric" which deals with French is madepositively worthless by the effects of this almost racial prejudice.Literal translation of the more _flamboyant_ kind of French writing hasbeen, even with some of our greatest, an effective, if a somewhatfacile, means of procuring a laugh. Furthermore, it has to be rememberedthat this application of ornate style to prose fiction is undoubtedly tosome extent an extraneous thing in the consideration of the novelitself. It is "a grand set off" (in the old phrase) to tale-telling; butit is not precisely of its essence. It deserves to be _constate_,recorded and set to the credit of those who practise it, and especiallyof those who first introduced it. But it is a question whether, in thenecessarily limited space of a book like this, the consideration of itought to occupy a large room.

  Still, though the warning, "Be not too bold," should never be forgotten,it should be remembered that it was given only once and its contraryreiterated: so here goes for one of the most perilous of all possibleadventures--a translation of Chateaubriand's own boldest undertaking,the description of the City of God, in which he was following not onlythe greatest of the Hebrew prophets, but the Vision of Patmos itself.

  (_"Les Martyrs," Book III., opening. The Prayer of Cyril, Bishop of Lacedaemon, has come before the Throne._)

  [Sidenote: Illustrated.]

  At the centre of all created worlds, in the midst of innumerable stars which serve as its bastions as well as avenues and roads to it, there floats the limitless City of God, the marvels whereof no mortal tongue can tell. The Eternal Himself laid its twelve foundations, and surrounded it with the wall of jasper that the beloved disciple saw measured by an angel with a rod of gold. Clothed with the glory of the Most High, the unseen Jerusalem is decked as a bride for her bridegroom. O monumental structures of earth! ye come not near these of the Holy City. There the richness of the matter rivals the perfection of the form. There hang, royally suspended, the galleries of diamond and sapphire feebly imitated by human skill in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, fashioned of brightest stars. There are linked together porticoes of suns extended across the spaces of the firmament, like the columns of Palmyra over the sands of the desert. This architecture is alive. The City of God has a soul of its own. There is no mere matter in the abiding places of the Spirit; no death in the locality of eternal existence. The grosser words which our muse is forced to employ deceive us, for they invest with body that which is o
nly as a divine dream, in the passing of a blissful sleep.

  Gardens of delight extend round the radiant Jerusalem. A river flows from the throne of the Almighty, watering the Celestial Eden with floods of pure love and of the wisdom of God. The mystic wave divides into streams which entwine themselves, separate, rejoin, and part again, giving nourishment to the immortal vine, to the lily that is like unto the Bride, and to all the flowers which perfume the couch of the Spouse. The Tree of Life shoots up on the Hill of Incense; and, but a little farther, that of Knowledge spreads on all sides its deep-planted roots and its innumerable branches, carrying hidden in the golden leafage the secrets of the Godhead, the occult laws of Nature, the truths of morality and of the intellect, the immutable principles of good and of evil. The learning which intoxicates _us_ is the common food of the Elect; for in the empire of Sovereign Intelligence the fruit of science no longer brings death. Often do the two great ancestors of the human race come and shed such tears as the Just can still let flow in the shadow of the wondrous Tree.

  The light which lightens these abodes of bliss is compact of the rose of morning, of the flame of noon, of the purple of even; yet no star appears on the glowing horizon. No sun rises and no sun goes down on the country where nothing ends, where nothing begins. But an ineffable clearness, showering from all sides like a tender dew, maintains the unbroken[36] daylight in a delectable eternity.

  Of course any one who is so minded may belittle this as classicallycold; even as to some extent _neo_-classically bedizened; as more like,let us say, Moore's _Epicurean_ than like our greater "prose-poets" ofthe seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. The presence inChateaubriand of this dose of the style that was passing, and that hehelped to make pass, has been admitted already: but I confess I think itis only a dose. Those who care to look up the matter for themselvesmight, if they do not choose to read the whole, turn to the admirablepicture of camp-life on the Lower Rhine at the opening of Book VI. as ashort contrast, while the story is full of others. Nor should one forgetto add that Chateaubriand can, when he chooses, be epigrammatic as wellas declamatory. "Such is the ugliness of man when he bids farewell tohis soul and, so to speak, keeps house only with his body" is a phrasewhich might possibly shock La Harpe, but which is, as far as I remember,original, and is certainly crisp and effective enough.

  Reassembling, then, the various points which we have endeavoured to makein respect of his position as novelist, it may once more be urged thatif not precisely a great master of the complete art of novel-writing, byactual example, he shows no small expertness in various parts of it: andthat, as a teacher and experimenter in new developments of method andindication of new material, he has few superiors in his own country andnot very many elsewhere. That in this pioneer quality, as well as inmere contemporaneousness, he may, though a greater writer, be yoked withthe authoress of _Corinne_ need hardly be argued, for the accounts givenof the two should have sufficiently established it.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [8] Although, except in special cases, biographical notices are notgiven here, the reader may be reminded that she was born in 1766, thedaughter of Necker and of Gibbon's early love, Susanne Curchod; marriedat twenty the Swedish ambassador, Baron of Stael-Holstein; sympathisedat first with the Revolution, but was horrified at the murder of theking, and escaped, with some difficulty, from Paris to England, where,as well as in' Germany and at Coppet, her own house in Switzerland, shepassed the time till French things settled down under Napoleon. With himshe tried to get on, as a duplicate of himself in petticoats and therealm of mind. But this was clearly impossible, and she had once more toretire to Coppet. She had separated, though without positive quarrel,from her husband, whom, however, she attended on his death-bed; and theexact character of her _liaisons_ with others, especially M. de Narbonneand Benjamin Constant, is not easy to determine. In 1812 she married,privately, a young officer, Rocca by name, returned to Paris before andafter the Hundred Days, and died there in 1817.

  [9] I never can make up my mind whether I am more sorry that MadameNecker did not marry Gibbon or that Mademoiselle Necker did not, as wassubsequently on the cards, marry Pitt. The results in either case--both,alas! could hardly have come off--would have been most curious.

  [10] The most obvious if not the only possible reason for this would beintended outrage, murder, and suicide; but though Valorbe is arobustious kind of idiot, he does not seem to have made up such mind ashe has to this agreeable combination.

  [11] I forget whether other characters have been identified, but Leoncedoes not appear to have much in him of M. de Narbonne, Corinne's chieflover of the period, who seems to have been a sort of FrenchChesterfield, without the wit, which nobody denies our man, or the realgood-nature which he possessed.

  [12] Perhaps, after all, _not_ too many, for they all richly deserve it.

  [13] Eyes like the Ravenswing's, "as b-b-big as billiard balls" and ofsome brightness, are allowed her, but hardly any other good point.

  [14] I never pretended to be an art-critic, save as complying withBlake's negative injunction or qualification "not to be connoisseuredout of my senses," and I do not know what is the technical word in thearts of design corresponding to [Greek: dianoia] in literature.

  [15] I hope this iteration may not seem too damnable. It is intended tobring before the reader's mind the utterly _willowish_ character ofOswald, Lord Nelvil. The slightest impact of accident will bend down,the weakest wind of circumstance blow about, his plans and preferences.

  [16] That he seems to have unlimited leave is not perhaps, for a peer inthe period, to be cavilled at; the manner in which he alternately breaksblood-vessels and is up to fighting in the tropics may be rather moreso.

  [17] As I may have remarked elsewhere, they often seem to confuse itwith "priggishness," "cant," and other amiable _cosas de Inglaterra_.(The late M. Jules Lemaitre, as Professor Ker reminds me, even gave thepicturesque but quite inadequate description: "Le snob est un mouton dePanurge pretentieux, un mouton qui saute a la file, mais d'un airsuffisant.") We cannot disclaim the general origin, but we may protestagainst confusion of the particular substance.

  [18] _Corinne, ou l'Italie._

  [19] If anybody thinks _Wilhelm Meister_ or the _Wahlverwandtschaften_ agood novel, I am his very humble servant in begging to differ. Freytag's_Soll und Haben_ is perhaps the nearest approach; but, on English orFrench standards, it could only get a fair second class.

  [20] Corinne "walks and talks" (as the lady in the song was asked to do,but without requiring the offer of a blue silk gown) with her Oswald allover the churches and palaces and monuments of Rome, "doing" alsoNaples, Venice, etc.

  [21] She was rather proud of these mighty members: and some readers mayrecall that not least Heinesque remark of the poet who so much shocksKaiser Wilhelm II., "Those of the Venus of Milo are not more beautiful."

  [22] Including also a third short story, _Le Dernier Abencerage_, whichbelongs, constructively, rather to the _Voyages_. It is in a way theliveliest (at least the most "incidented") of all, but not the mostinteresting, and with very little _temporal_ colour, though some local.It may, however, be taken as another proof of Chateaubriand's importancein the germinal way, for it starts the Romantic interest in Spanishthings. The contrast with the dirty rubbish of Pigault-Lebrun's _LaFolie Espagnole_ is also not negligible.

  [23] For the mother, in a fashion which the good Father-missionary mostrighteously and indignantly denounces as unchristian, had staked her ownsalvation on her daughter's obedience to the vow.

  [24] Its author, in the _Memoires d'Outre-Tombe_, expressed a warm wishthat he had never written it, and hearty disgust at its puling admirersand imitators. This has been set down to hypocritical insincerity or thesourness of age: I see neither in it. It ought perhaps to be said thathe "cut" a good deal of the original version. The confession of Ameliewas at first less abrupt and so less effective,
but the newer form doesnot seem to me to better the state of Rene himself.

  [25] There had been a very early French imitation of _Werther_ itself(of the end especially), _Les dernieres aventures du sieur d'Olban_, bya certain Ramond, published in 1777, only three years after Goethe. Ithad a great influence on Ch. Nodier (_v. inf._), who actuallyrepublished the thing in 1829.

  [26] This "out-of-bounds" passion will of course be recognised as aRomantic trait, though it had Classical suggestions. Chateaubriandappears to have been rather specially "obsessed" by this form of it, forhe not merely speaks constantly of Rene as _le frere d'Amelie_, but goesout of his way to make the good Father in _Atala_ refer, almostecstatically, to the happiness of the more immediate descendants of Adamwho were _compelled_ to marry their sisters, if they married anybody. AsI have never been able to take any interest in the discussions of theByron and Mrs. Leigh scandal, I am not sure whether this _tic_ ofChateaubriand's has been noticed therein. But his influence on Byron wasstrong and manifold, and Byron was particularly apt to do things,naughty and other, because somebody else had done or suggested them. Andof course it has, from very early days, been suggested that Amelie is anexperience of Chateaubriand's own. But this, like the investigations asto time and distance and possibility in his travels and much else also,is not for us. Once more I must be permitted to say that I am writingmuch about French novels, little about French novelists, and least ofall about those novelists' biographers, critics, and so forth.Exceptions may be admitted, but as exceptions only.

  [27] I once had to fight it out in public with a valued and valiantfriend for saying something like this in regard to Edgar ofRavenswood--no doubt, in some sort a child of Rene's or of Nelvil's; butI was not put to submission. And Edgar had truer causes for sulks thanhis spiritual ancestor had--at least before the tragedy of Amelie.

  [28] Not in the strict theological meaning of this phrase, of course;but the misuse of it has aesthetic justification.

  [29] _I.e._ not mere "sloth," but the black-blooded and sluggishmelancholy to which Dante pays so much attention in the _Inferno_. Thisdeadly sin we inadequately translate "sloth," and (on one side of it) itis best defined in Dante's famous lines (_Inf._ vii. 121-3):

  Tristi fummo Nell' aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra, Portando dentroaccidioso fummo.

  Had Amelie sinned and not repented she might have been found in theSecond circle, flying alone; Rene, except _speciali gratia_, must havesunk to the Fourth.

  [30] For instance, he goes a-beaver-hunting with the Natchez, but hisusual selfish moping prevents him from troubling to learn the laws ofthe sport, and he kills females--an act at once offensive to Indianreligion, sportsmanship, and etiquette, horrifying to the consciences ofhis adopted countrymen, and an actual _casus belli_ with theneighbouring tribes.

  [31] Its second title, _ou Le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne_,connects it still more closely than _Les Natchez_ with _Le Genie duChristianisme_, which it immediately succeeded in composition, thoughthis took a long time. No book (it would seem in consequence)exemplifies the mania for annotation and "justification" moreextensively. In vol. i. the proportion of notes to text is 112 to 270,in vol. ii. 123 to 221, and in vol. iii., including some extracts fromthe Pere Mambrun, 149 to 225.

  [32] Such as Eudore's early friendship at Rome, before the persecutionunder Diocletian, with Augustine, who was not born till twenty yearslater.

  [33] See note above.

  [34] There cannot be too much Homer in Homer; there may be too muchoutside Homer.

  [35] If one had only been Telemachus at this time! It would have been agood "Declamation" theme in the days of such things, "Should a man--forthis one experience--consent to be Telemachus for the rest of hislife--and after?"

  [36] In the original the word which I have translated "unbroken" is_eternel_, and with the adjacent _eternite_ illustrates (as do_tonnerre_ and _etonnante_ in Bossuet's famous passage on the death of"Madame") one of the minor but striking differences between French andEnglish rhetoric. Save for some very special purpose, we should considersuch repetition a jingle at best, a cacophony at worst: they think it abeauty.