In reading Lescurel's notes and the poems of Charles d'Orléans, we are struck with one remarkable circumstance which is of some importance when we study the history of French literature. Grammarians talk much of the revolutions accomplished by Malherbe and Balzac, the former in poetry, the latter in prose; they speak of the barbarous condition in which they found the language, when they began to write, of the jargon spoken by the authors of the Renaissance period of Ronsard, Dubartas, and Baïf. All this is quite true, the literary coup d'état with which the names of Balzac and Malherbe are connected, was most imperatively called for, and from it sprang the French language such as it is spoken now. But, on the other hand, we must bear in mind that this reform was more a restoration than anything else; conducted in direct opposition to the rules and innovations introduced by the school of Ronsare, it was a return to a state of things which had previously existed. "The thirteenth century, and a great part of the fourteenth, had been, and still remain, now that they are better known, ages of real splendour for the French idiom. Its grammatical construction was clear, the words were well formed, well digested, truly rich; and having attained a wholesome and complete state, the language could still receive some ameliorations; but it required only to be modified, and not pulled to pieces,-destroyed, so to say. And yet this is what the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have done, by complicating the syntax, and rendering it incomprehensible; especially by returning to Latin origin, not perceiving that the language had taken as much Latin as it required, and had taken it, too, in the best possible manner, by transformation and assimilation. The authors of the Renaissance period did, therefore, the greatest injury to the French language, when they endeavoured to give to it a Latin syntax, and to incorporate in the vocabulary barbarous words borrowed from the classical authors of antiquity. Their influence, which might have been still more baneful than it really was, may pared to that of the writers of the Dryden school, who, during the reign of Charles II. and James II. attempted to arrange the English vernacular according to the improved Versailles fashion. Read an author of the fourteenth century, and you are astonished at finding how easily you can understand him, how clear his style, how simple his vocabulary. Turn, then, to one of the pedantic writers who, under the reigns of Francis I., Francis II., and Henry II., made their sentences *Poésies de Lescurel. Préface. be com ROGER DE COLLERYE. 363 bristle with Greek terminations or Latin epithets, and you will see that you proceed only painfully, being obliged almost at every step to consult a glossary, and to wonder whether the author knew his own meaning. The following stanza, written by Charles d'Orléans, when he was an exile, is a model of gracefulness and of perspicuity : "Nouvelles ont couru en France Par mains lieux, que j'estoye mort; On the other hand, the lines which we shall now quote, and in which the words imported from Latin and Greck predominate, must strike every reader as singularly obscure and defective in point of harmony : "Rememorant mon dict primicial Tous gens flatteurs sont gens dyaboliques, Je les maintiens pour beffleurs repudiques : The piece taken from the works of Roger de Collerye* has been commented upon by a recent editor at the rate of a note for every other word, and no wonder. Blactes and gazophilants! That is erudition with a vengeance! But such was the character of the literary revolution to which the name of Renaissance has been given. Ronsard, Jodelle, Baïf, Desportes, did as much mischief to literature as those artists did to sculpture whom Mr. Ruskin has denounced so vehemently in his works; they tampered with etymology, turned the syntax upside down, and corrupted prosody, to say nothing of public morals. He was only expressing himself in the fashionable jargon of the times, that Limousin student introduced by Rabelais, saying: "Bien est veriforme que, a cause que Mammone ne supergurgite goutte en mes locules, je suis quel *Euvres complétes de Roger de Collorye; édition revisée et annotée par M. Charles d'Héricault. vol. que peu rare et lent à supereroger les eleemosynes à ces egenes queritans leur stipe hostiatement." Whereupon Pantagruel very properly remarks that the interlocutor must be a "mighty orator, since he despises the common way of speaking." Roger de Collerye, to whom allusion has just been made, and whose poetry is distinguished by much liveliness and a great amount of quiet yet keen satire. Roger de Collerye is remarkable especially because he has felt the double influence of the esprit Gaulois, and of the classical mania stigmatized by Pantagruel. Régnier and Villon, on the contrary, were both essentially and exclusively French. Those amongst our readers who know at all, by description or by personal acquaintance, that class of bipeds yclept gamins de Paris, will find in François Corbueil, otherwise called Villon, the type of that respectable fraternity. Suppose Villon, a Frenchman of the nineteenth century, you would be sure to have found him in 1848, commanding a company of gardes mobiles, or, a few years later, leading on the Zouaves to the storming of the Redan. Villon belonged to that unfortunate, and alas! too numerous assemblage of individuals who live by their wits; write off, when pressed by necessity, a beautiful poem for half-a-guinea, get drunk on the proceeds, find often their way before the magistrate on the score of riotous behaviour, and consider themselves lucky if they die without having been to prison more than six or seven times. Villon committed himself even farther than that, for he would certainly have been hung, had not Louis XI. in proprià persona, interfered and saved his life. In good sooth, the author of the " Repuis Franches" was an arrant rogue; his poetry bears, in many places, the stamp of his moral character, and yet, as a writer, he has obtained considerable reputation, owing to the fact that he is the first French poet who entirely threw overboard the conventionalisms of medieval literature, and confined himself to the delineation of scenes and characters such as he saw around him. At the time when Villon wrote, the "Romaunt of the Rose" was the fashionable poem, and the insipid allegories of Guillaume de Lorris were considered the height of fine writing. Villon's merit is, that instead of deriving his inspiration from books, he sought them in his own heart; the genuine mirth, the vis comica, and the affecting melancholy with which his works *Euvres complétes de François Villon. Nouvelle edition, revisée, corrigée et misé en ordre, avec des notes historiques et littéraires, par T. L. Jacob, bibliophile. 1 vol. are full, entitle him to a very high rank in the annals of French poetry. The following paraphrase of the maximγνωθι δαντον may be quoted as a specimen : Je congnois bien mouches en laict; Je congnois pourpoint au collet; Je congnois tout, fors que moy-mesmes. Régnier is another writer whom we cannot exclude from our short notice of French imaginative literature. Having died in 1613, he thus stands at the very threshold of the seventeenth century, and opens, in a remarkable manner, an era which was destined to produce so many great things. As far as the subjects of his poems are concerned, Mathurin Régnier is not altogether faultless; his satire does not strike us as the outburst of virtuous indignation against wickedness and crime; we derive from it very little benefit as a moral production; there is nothing serious, no high principle about him; but he observes correctly, is extremely picturesque in his descriptions, and has a vigour of style which we find in few of his contemporaries. One great fault we find in Régnier is his imitations of Horace, Ovid, and other authors belonging to classical antiquity. In his turn he was copied by subsequent writers; Boileau borrowed largely from him, and Molière's* "Tartuffe" has many features in common with Macette. We have now come to the beginning of another epoch in French literature, an epoch when the double current which Euvres de Mathurin Régnier, avec les commentaires revies et corrigés, précédées de l'histoire de la satire en France, pour servir de discours préliminaire, par M. Viollet, 2 disc. 1 vol. VOL. XLI. B B has ever run through it will manifest itself with new activity, and with new power. Already our sketch has noticed more than once, besides the serious, religious, and somewhat formal poetry of the middle ages, a school of writers whose epicurean, satirical, and often too free productions, may be considered as the expressions of public feeling on the institutions, manners, and personages of the times. As a contrast to the Romances of Chivalry, we have seen the Fableaux. Villon is the counterpart of Charles d'Orléans. The literature of the reign of Louis XIII. offers parallels quite similar to these, but the limits of our subject prevent us from examining them in this article. We would ever have our readers plainly to remember that our aim has not been to give here anything like a complete sketch of the intellectual life of the middle ages; the theme is certainly well worth studying, and with the resources now so largely available in Mr. Jannet's 'Biblothéque Elzèirvienne," the study will be comparatively easy. ART. VII.-Sacrifice: in its Relation to God and Man. An Argument from Scripture. By the Rev. R. FERGUSON, D.D., LL.D., Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, of the Society of Antiquaries, and Member of the Royal Irish Academy, &c., &c. Ward and Co. IN the preface to his little volume, Dr. Ferguson has these pertinent and appropriate remarks :— "This is an age of wider enquiry; but it may be questioned whether the superficial is not taking the place of the profound. In too many instances what is called the deep and earnest spiritualism' of the day, is nothing better than a sickly sentimentalism-the effect of an imperfectly disciplined intellect, of a shallow philosophy, and of unhappily morbid feeling. Men are rather dreaming of the living and the true, than agonizing to enter into communion with it; and are seeking in something created and finite, that which is to be found only in the Infinite and the Uncreated. "Many of the speculations of the day may be harmless, but any attempt to depress and depreciate the sublime doctrines of our common Christianity, is to be resisted with invincible determination. It is our happiness to know, that the highest forms of Christian truth are based on facts; and that before these facts can be disposed of or affected, the facts which are found in man's moral consciousness must cease to exist. Any system of Theology, or any mode of Pulpit |