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Influence on English literature.

Finally, from 1700 onwards, England came under French influence in a very clear and unmistakable manner. Addison is the pupil of Boileau, more gifted, more refined, and more brilliant than his master, but still never forgetful of his master's teaching. Moralist, satirist, and critic, a poet equally at home in the romantic, allegorical, and tragic styles, he could turn with ease from French wit to English humour, and often seems even to combine, mix and blend the two together. Taking everything into account, we find Addison so exquisitely French in his methods that we are often tempted to say of him as Valentine of Milan said of Dunois: "He was stolen from us."

Pope, who has inevitably been much imitated in France, owed much to her in his earlier days. The style and manner of his letters remind us of Balzac and of Voiture; his moral poems have the precise turn of wit characteristic of Boileau; he represents, as it were, the transition between Boileau and Voltaire; moreover, the Dunciad reads as though it were copied from the Lutrin, the evident relationship between the two poems being shown by their close similarity of style.

These great names must be supplemented by those of Waller, the friend of Saint-Évremond and the correspondent of La Fontaine, in whom we might almost say was revived all that was finest in our witty précieux of the seventeenth century; Garth, the amusing humorist, who recalls the French burlesques, and whose works Voltaire so highly appreciated as to translate some of them; Arbuthnot, Gay, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Chesterfield. The name of Swift may be omitted from the list, inasmuch as, in the first instance, if he borrowed at all from the French, it was rather from the writers of the sixteenth than from those of the seventeenth century, and, secondly, because Swift's was too original and too individual a nature to allow of his being cited as an example of any kind of external influence. But here it is necessary to stop-in view of the well-known fact that, if the English humorists of the early eighteenth century certainly owe much to the French, the English "Sentimentalists" of the middle of the eighteenth century no less certainly exercised a very strong and deep influence over Diderot, Rousseau, and Sedaine.

This outline-for it is nothing more-indicates the general characteristics of the great French writers of the seventeenth century, who made themselves heard and felt throughout the European world of letters of that century and the earlier years of its successor. It was a glorious era in French history, however diversely it may be regarded according to the national standpoint of the student; as had been her lot in the thirteenth century, so again in the seventeenth France was. unanimously acclaimed the intellectual sovereign of Europe, all eyes being turned towards her, and all ears listening for her action.

The predominant influence of French literature is everywhere perceptible; for a time its prestige blocked the way and arrested the action

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of every individual impulse, every national movement, in the literary history of every nation. Especially was this the case in Italy and Spain; it was also partially true of Germany and England. Perhaps, after all, it is not a bad thing, in the long run, for a people to put itself to school for a time to another nation, or rather (since this is never really done) to enter upon a period of diligent, careful, and devoted study of the literature of another people. The French nation ought to be aware of this truth, for not less than four times in its history a period of imitation of foreign work has been succeeded by a brilliant, and, in some ways, a glorious, literary revival, by no means to be explained as a mere coincidence. First, after a searching study of the classics, came the Pléiade; then came the literature of 1660, after an intimate study of Italian and Spanish writers; then the period of Diderot and Rousseau, after a salutary enthusiasm for English literature; and lastly, the French Romantic revival, after a time of devotion to English and German literature.

It may be (for on these inevitably obscure and extremely complex matters it is better not to dogmatise) that contact with a foreign influence enriches, in a general way, the national literary sense; or, again, certain sides of the national mind which were unaware of their own existence or at all events hardly suspected it may awake and become conscious of their existence when they recognise themselves in the literature of a foreign land; or, yet again, the real essence of a nation's intellectual life may be distilled and acquire fresh strength by the very reaction against a foreign literature that has for a time been injudiciously worshipped; and in this case, too, good arises, though indirectly.

For example, English humour will endure for all time; but we have seen that it was developed to a singularly high degree in England after contact with French wit; and again, in Germany, the national revolution brought about by Lessing and the great literary results that ensued for German literature were stimulated by French influence, which not only invigorated German wit, but incited it to the assertion of its own independence.

We are reminded of the saying of La Bruyère concerning strong and sturdy children who fight their nurses. Nurses give sustenance to their foster-children for the very purpose of making them strong and able, if need be, to fight their foster-mothers. They perform this task in perfect consciousness, and cheerfully undertake the risk which it implies. Whatever the explanation may be, for nearly a hundred years France occupied a position towards every other European nation analogous to that of a nurse; and, on the whole, she cannot assert that, when she remembers this experience, it is wholly unsatisfactory to her.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GALLICAN CHURCH.

DURING the first half of the seventeenth century French religion went through a somewhat chaotic stage. Catholicism had triumphed under Henry IV, but the whole reign of his successor was taken up by discussions as to the particular form which Catholicism should assume. For a long while the country swung to and fro between two rival schools of extremists, neither of which was strong enough to crush the other. At one end of the line was the ultra-clerical party headed successively by Mary de' Medici and Anne of Austria. At the opposite end were the upholders of a purely official religion; their strength lay chiefly in the legal and administrative class, which Richelieu had raised to power. They were ready enough to call themselves Catholics, and "perform the ancient ceremonies of their country with a decent moderation," as one of their own great writers enjoins. But they insisted that Catholicism should be kept under the strict surveillance of the civil powers; its profession was not so much a duty to God as a duty to the State. Their real religion they found in the books of such men as Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621), Bishop of Lisieux and Lord Keeper during the regency of Mary de' Medici. He offered them a purely natural religion, set out in singularly impressive language largely borrowed from the ancient Stoics. Intensely moral and patriotic, it is touched throughout with Christian sentiment; but it owes quite as much to Epictetus as to the Sermon on the Mount.

Where the fathers swore by Du Vair, the children passed on to Descartes (1596-1650). The philosopher posed as an excellent Churchman; and when Protestant friends in Holland tried to convert him, he answered that the religion of his king and of his nurse was good enough for him. But his real work was to finish what Du Vair had begun. His Meditations gave the world what the world had never seen before-proofs of God, freedom and immortality, put into language strictly reasoned, but not too hard for average minds to follow. These three things once proved, however, Descartes made his bow and departed, leaving the field clear for theology. What God was like he did not pretend to say, nor how eternal happiness was to be compassed, or our freedom to be used.

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That was matter of faith, not reason; and he only dealt with the domain where philosophy and religion overlapped. Hereupon followed the natural result. Most Cartesian imaginations fastened on the truths of reason, and but little occupied themselves with those of faith. The first were the essentials of religion, the second its accidental clothing, mere "ancient ceremonies of one's country."

Not that this consequence showed itself at once. Churchmen were a long while in deciding whether Cartesianism did more good or harm. The great Jansenist, Antoine Arnauld, spoke up warmly in its favour. Bossuet was much more doubtful; but Pascal was the one Christian thinker of the age who steadily opposed it. Nor were the rationalists themselves quite clear whither they were bound. At first sight no one looks more negative than Gui Patin (1601-72), an eminent, but very cross-grained, professor from the Collége de France. He was always congratulating himself on being "delivered from the nightmare"; and he rivals the eighteenth century in the scorn he pours on priests, monks, and especially "that black Loyolitic scum from Spain," which called itself the Society of Jesus. Yet Patin was no freethinker. Sceptics who made game of the kernel of religion came quite as much under the lash of his tongue as bigots who dared defend its husks. His letters end with the characteristic confession: "Credo in Deum, Christum crucifixum, etc., .........De minimis non curat praetor."

At the opposite pole from Patin stood the party of the so-called dévots. Patronised successively by the two foreign queens, its first object was to introduce new fashions in devotion, and new religious orders, from Italy or Spain. For French religion and French literature were alike impoverished, and must borrow from abroad. The dévots were only doing in one field what préciosité accomplished in another, when it brought in gongorisme, or exaggerated emphasis, from beyond the Pyrenees, and little concetti from beyond the Alps. In neither case did native taste take altogether kindly to the loan. The Bare-footed Carmelites, for instance, were brought to France under the patronage of one queen, and warmly encouraged by the other. Daughters of St Teresa, they represented the fine flower of the Spanish Counter-reformation. They brought with them a glow of torrid romance, that sat well enough on the countrywomen of Don Quixote, but was utterly out of place in the Paris of Descartes and Gui Patin. Their religion was all violent contrasts of light and shade. In their churches was great show of perfumes, flowers, and fine linen; in their cloisters extraordinary austerities-terrible scourgings, the most humiliating penances, and fasts on bread and water. Louise de La Vallière, flying from the arms of Louis XIV to scrub floors in a Carmelite convent, is a typical example of their picturesque sensationalism.

Still less acceptable to most Frenchmen was the piety of the Italians. Here artistic triviality reigned. Patin is never tired of denouncing their

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The Gallican Liberties.

"bad little books of devotion, full of miracles and monkish revelations, cords of St Francis and girdles of St Margaret." Nor was their want of taste their only fault. They, and all they represented, widened the breach between Cartesian rationalism and the Church. In particular, they exasperated the Huguenots, and stood wantonly in the way of their reconciliation with the Roman Church. And that was an object that most good Frenchmen had very much at heart, though often for political reasons quite as much as for religious. A good instance is the sceptical critic Saint-Évremond (1613-1703). He quite agreed with the Protestants that they would not find a rational religion in Italy or Spain. Thanks to the Gallican Liberties, however, he thought that they might find it in France, if they left the "girdle of St Margaret" alone, and took to reading Bossuet.

The Liberties in question were certain ancient rights, in which most Frenchmen took a patriotic pride. They were peculiar to France; and, as the Crown lawyers said, they had never been granted like a privilege, but grew up in the very nature of things. They consisted chiefly in four points. Papal bulls might not come into France without leave of the Crown. The decisions of the Roman Congregations had no legal weight in France. French subjects could not be cited before a Roman tribunal. French civil Courts took cognisance of ecclesiastical affairs, whenever the law of the land was thought to be broken. And, inasmuch as Catholicism was part and parcel of the common law, the Parlements could, and did, give this last article a very wide extension. They were perfectly ready to enter into the merits of an excommunication, and force Bishops and Cardinals to withdraw it, if they thought it improperly launched. There are even cases in which they "adjudged" the sacrament to those who could not obtain it from their parish priest.

However, these abuses were the exception; and the mass of the French clergy put up with the Parlements easily enough. After all, the only alternative was an appeal to the Pope; and to him they were by no means anxious to go, even had their Government allowed it. Most visitors to Rome told the same tale. They were scandalised at its pettiness, especially at its neglect of theological scholarship. Much more secular branches of learning tempted Italian ambition. The road to the purple lay through nunciatures and administrative offices; divinity was left to the friars, who had no other chance of advancement. But indifference leads as straight to intolerance as ever can fanaticism. original book was published, the Cardinals made haste to put it on the Index, and troubled themselves no more about it, sure that it soon would be forgotten. In France this irresponsible high-handedness was neither possible nor desired; a single example would have drawn down on the offending prelate a swarm of jeering pamphlets. For the Huguenots were always on the watch to spy out a joint in Goliath's and herein they were supported by lay Catholic opinion. Most

When a too