THE

FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. LIX.

FOR OCTOBER, 1842.

ART. I.-Revue des

Mondes. other extraordinary appendages of the last (Criticisms on English Writers of Ro- century, was perhaps the Postillion: that reBy PHILARETE CHASLES.) Paris. presentative of Progress being more behind1839-1842. hand and retrograde, than any other of his compatriots. In exterior setting forth, as in THE mutual opinions entertained by many more respects, military ideas had superFrench and English of each other, were in seded all others. The moustachiod officer the last century universally admitted and was in the highest sphere of fashion and agreed on. The Englishman was a sturdy, notability. And women dressed to correscarnivorous, independent clown: the French- pond: lacing up their chests like those of man a lantern-jawed skeleton (the epithet drummajors, and placing their waists in and was applied to him as far back as Piers Plow- about the region of the hipbone, as hussars man), soup-fed, laced-dizened, and pressed are wont to do. Civilian elegance, which under the triple yoke of "popery, slavery, and wooden shoes." There was no mistaking the physical or moral characteristics of the two people. The Frenchman was irremediably gay, essentially volatile and saltatory: the Englishman, reserved and splenetic, even to suicide. Such were the stereotyped features of each race, when the Revolution drew its dark veil between them, and allowed but distant peeps at each other's deeds, ways, and thoughts.

When the veil or curtain was withdrawn, half a century had done its work on both. The Englishman, pent up in his splenetic island, had become, or at least, was found to be, a very gay and pleasurable fellow, and a slender dandy withal. The division of property had in the mean time turned the Frenchman into pastures of his own, almost as fat as John Bull's; and he had become in consequence a grave and ruminant animal, with a protuberant oesophagus. As to fashion, taste, gait, appearance, everything of course was topsyturvy. A powdered marquis was no more: perukes had vanished: and the only being that adhered to the queue, and

had reached such a height in England, in France existed not. In 1815 Young France touched a razor once a week, and divers brushes of the toilet quite as seldom. Yet it was then the dynasty of dandies reigned in England. What was the surprise of the French, when fine specimens of this fraternity rolled over to Dessein's, and invaded the boulevards! The Moustache was dethroned, and in a very few months the little theatres began to ridicule the braggart soldier of the Empire. A learned essay was written, which the Institute refused to print, on the causes to which it was owing, that the genius of tailoring had passed in modern times from Italy to Spain; then from Spain to France; and lastly, in passing to England, had abandoned the Latin for the Teutonic race. surprise of the French at this was as great as that of the Romans, when they first beheld their general Cecina exchange the toga for a pair of Gallic trews and tartans: "quod versicolore sagulo, braccas, tegmen barbarum, indutus, togatos adloqueretur."

The

If such difference, mutual surprise, and misapprehension existed respecting external

attributes and superficial humours, still greater and that of Guizot himself stands at the head was the surp. ise, when each began to ex- of hundreds of volumes, some twenty of Shaksamine, the intellectual productions and pro- peare being of the number. gress of the other. For a Frenchman, during These translations were not confined to the first fifteen years of the century, to have novels and dramas. Cousin introduced the known English literature was difficult; to French to Kant. Jouffroy translated Dugald have talked or written of it, impossible. Stewart and Reid. And the fiercest combats Madame de Staël saw the first edition of her between the old school of imperial literature, "Germany" pounded in a mortar, because it and the new one of the rising generation, praised the poetry and philosophy of the took place on the fields of metaphysics. Germans. What would have befallen her, Messrs. Jouy and his friends of the Constituhad she praised English men and letters, re- tionnel, the Minerve, and the Pandore, were minds one of the proverbial story of the Voltairean, materialist, classic, epigrammatic. Marseillais. A boy, walking peaceably down The new antagonists started up as spiritualthe street, receives from a Marseillais a rude ists, romanticists, and serious reasoners. Conkick, which leaves him sprawling. The boy dillac was the ne plus ultra of the science of rises, and with lamentation asks, what he had mind with the old school: supported by the done to the aggressor to deserve such a blow. physical theories of Cabanis and Broussaix, "What have you done to me!" resounds the the latter of whom explained life by nervous Marseillais. Only imagine what a kick you irritation. Their antagonists translated Leibwould have got had you done anything to nitz, reprinted Descartes, brought back the me!" Napoleon converted the Allemagne current of French philosophy to its source, into pastboard. Had it been an Angleterre, and asserted with Kant that consciousness he would have done scarcely less than make was proof enough of soul. These doctrines an Auto-da-Fé of book and authoress to- were expounded in the Globe, an organ of gether. the ideas of the rising generation, which was fast superseding the journals and the veteran writers of the imperial school.

แ

Napoleon's exile of Madame de Staël sent her to England. This enabled her to make an early acquaintance with Waverley and The antagonism, which stretched into the Childe Harold, and through her means Byron profundities of metaphysics, was as great and Scott poured over the Channel in a tide, and as fierce in the walks of literature and that soon reached the farthest limits of Europe. the arts, and produced those controversies French critics indeed at first withstood the between classics and romantics, of which all invasion. The classic school of the Empire have heard. The Constitutionnel vowed in denounced the author of Waverley as a bar- its feuilletons that the tragedies of Jouy, barian of the mad school of Shakspeare. And Arnault, and Lemercier were in the only though Byron's admiration of Napoleon must road to the true sublime. The romantics have mollified them, their admiration of his became so exaggerated in the contrary direcgenius was neither intelligent nor great. It tion, that they gave birth to the worst extrawas not for many years, and not till after the vagances of Dumas and Hugo. fighting of several pitched battles between There was one writer, however, who classics and romantics, that the excellence might have served to conciliate and connect (very various!) of Byron, Göthe, Scott, and the schools, since he was of both. He had Moore were acknowledged. Their triumph been nurtured in the one, and had grown inwas won in the most legitimate of ways; to the other. This was Chateaubriand. He by translations; and by these translations had all the pomposity, the affectation, and finding sale and vogue even amongst a lower polished cadence, of the classic; while he class of French readers, than that which en- practised the imaginative distortion, and aimjoyed the originals in England.

The French (notwithstanding late adventures of Romancers on the Rhine) are not travellers, neither do they care to go forth to seek out the rarities and excellences of other nations. But they are generous enough to welcome these, when brought home to their doors. Thus from 1819 to 1825 a translation manufactory was set at work, which poured forth translations every month: prose translations of the poetry, drama, philosophy, and literature of other countries. Even the highest names were associated with the scheme,

ed at the effect, of the romantic. He had been in England and America, was acquainted with our literature, and had published voluminous criticisms thereon. Like Voltaire, he began by praising us in this respect, and then, vexed to find his praise too loudly taken up and echoed, he turned round and abused us. This was precisely the way in which Voltaire treated Shakspeare: first deified, and then tried to degrade him. Chateaubriand remained true, indeed, to Shakspeare and to Milton. But his opinions of his great English contemporaries varied. They varied

with the attacks of his great disease: his | ther ground. They avowed respect for relivanity. He is loud in praise of Byron; very gion, with the right of examination and judg. anxious to establish that the idea of Childe ment; respect for monarchy, and for the moHarold was taken from Réné; and carries narchy of the Bourbons, provided the latter conceit to the extreme of the ludicrous in in turn respected the constitution. Politics, arguing that Byron's total silence as to the however, they did not expatiate upon. Opname of Chateaubriand must have been owing position was then carried on in secret societo his having left an early letter of the poet's ties and conspiracies by men of action, and unanswered. To Walter Scott, Chateau- carbonari; and thinking men feared almost as briand is unjust when his vanity is again much the failure as the success of such apawake; and on one occasion he prefers Man-peals to cunning and to force. Therefore it zoni's novels to the Waverley series. At was that the Globe confined itself to reasonothers his better taste predominates, though ing; and put forth disquisitions on political it does not save him from exaggeration. economy, on penal law; on the collateral, 'England is all Shakspeare,' said he, and rather than the principal, questions of politics. even down to the present time Shakspeare has lent his soliloquy to Byron, his dialogue to Walter Scott.'

Precisely the same thing is at this moment going on in Germany; where political discussion is forbidden, but where opposition to abFrom 1820 to 1830 Chateaubriand became solutist ideas is carried on by literary, critilost in politics. Fortunately for themselves, cal, and philosophic journals. Ruge's however, the young school of which we have Deutsche Jahrbücher is much what the Globe talked, shut out politics from their studies was in Paris some fifteen years back. And and writings, if not from their sentiments. It all Germany is indeed alive with the fieris a singular remark, that any great and suc- cest discussions on all subjects save politics. cessful attack against a dominant political party The contest between Hegel's scholars and and established political ideas, must be made by Schelling's, and between the literature of regular and distant approaches, and by a re- Young Germany and that of the Old, as well currence to other fields and arms than those as between the prohibition and free trade which politics themselves afford. The old-schools in political economy, give ample exestablished Tory system of governing in Eng-ercise to the national mind, and prepare the land, the declaring all for the best, and im- way for the more serious discussion of a Peoprovement a chimera, was attacked in 1790 ple that must be free. and the following years by a revolutionary party, which thought to carry all by a coup de main. The attempt was defeated, and flung not only disgrace but ridicule on its abettors. But then began a more slow and regular warfare. Liberal thinkers, instead of storming the walls of Tory power, began to sap them. The Edinburgh Review was set up, and became a school: a normal school for statesmen, and a medium for the diffusion of a host of opinions all opposed to those which prevailed. It was a literary and philosophical opposition, that commenced in the first years of the century, and that took one quarter of that century to do its work. It brought about the liberal reaction which ended in emancipation and reform.

The Parisian Globe was marked with the greatest generosity of criticism towards foreign excellence. The chef d'œuvres of Byron, Göthe, Scott, were welcomed and criticised by it in terms of the highest admiration. And the young men writers, who began with criticisms of foreign literature, ended by introducing the freedom of foreign literature into their own. What might have been the result it is impossible now to say; for the Events of 1830 blighted the harvest, and flung the quiet student, as well as the bustling intriguer, into the coarse arena of politics. They put a stop to all the labour of the study or the cabinet, and converted France into a forum, where nothing but public affairs and interests were listened to. The poet, the philosopher, ths historian, the Lamartines, the Cousins, and the Thierses, were put in political harness, and made to drag the State; and all classes of Letters were melted up together into that compound of which mere journalists are made.

We have thus digressed into English politics merely for the purpose of showing what the young French school, embodied in Le Globe journal, meditated by commencing a literary and philosophical opposition. They felt that the then existing opposition to ultramonarchic and ultra-religious ideas was based The effect of the Revolution of 1830, on on a worn-out and worthless foundation: that highest class of intellectual researches namely, on the materialist and military creed which concerns mind itself, was singular. It of the empire: and this they deemed perni- silenced the rational and learned professor; cious, and incompatible with constitutional but it gave birth to a crowd of empirics and progress. They therefore took stand on ano-enthusiasts, who believed that the world was

on the point of regeneration, and that they The sentiment that ran through a novel was were called especially to aid in the great generally but the essence of Berenger, diffused work. The St. Simonians undertook to in the washy medium of three volumes. The found a new religion: a new social, and of year of 1830 did away with this mass of sencourse a new political, system. They pur-timent obligé, and put an end in France, at chased the Globe, and converted it to these least, to the empire of Paul de Kock and Pimystic and absurd preachings. From St. Si- gault-Lebrun. It is not our purpose to enter monism, or by the side of it, sprung a host of here into the merits, as novelists, of Balzac, philosophico-social schools; which flourished Sand, Hugo, and Dumas; although the pecuwhile their system was in nubibus, but no liar taste which created them, or which they sooner was it applied or realized, than its ab- modified, would be worthy of something betsurdity became too manifest even to the eyes ter in the way of analysis, than that with of the interested neophytes. One philoso- which they judge our works of light literapher indeed wisely determined to keep always ture. on the wing, and never to advance from fan- The great difference between the lighter cy to reality. He, like Hegel, could never literature of the French and our own, is that be refuted, seeing that he never asserted any- French efforts of this kind derive their source thing. Thanks to this prudent precaution, and spirit from the drama; the education and and to a certain mystic eloquence, Ballanche inspiration of all French novelists being thehas not only earned and kept a reputation, atrical. The theatre is the temple of their but has even forced his way into the Acade-literature, and the parterre its tribunal: no my.

One should have hoped that the Revolution, which interrupted literary studies, would at least have given birth to excellence in positive and practical science. But no. When that noblest of all professional chairs, the professorship of Comparative Legislation, was founded by the Duc de Broglie, he was obliged to fill it by a demi-St.-Simonian, a madman of talent, fitter to touch on any subject than that of legislation. And when the chair of political economy was to be filled, the French were obliged to apply to Geneva, invite Count Rossi, vote him to be a Frenchman, and make him a Peer.

one daring to appeal to any other more select. No French writer has sate down in the solitude of rural life, and given loose reins to his imagination to narrate simply, as for the amusement of a few idle and intellectual friends. His solitude is not more remote than a grenier of the Rue Richelieu; and his recueillement or reflection is no more than a brief morning's space.

Were Christopher North in his old ill-humour, as we hope he still is in his pristine vigour, he might stigmatize the whole body of French writers as cockney. They are at home in the puddle and the pavement, and even George Sand describes the country with the peculiar relish of a cit. Town and theatre are words and things, that go together; and dramatic criticism, in converse as in print, is with the Parisian a matter of the very first importance. With the French writer, it is the same. He looks to have his volumes criticised as a play, and he aims at giving it as much of what he considers the good qualities of a play as possible.

However inimical to professional chairs and historical studies, the Revolution did but give increased activity to the caterers for the stage and the circulating library. It is singular that in times which offered such ample materials for history, historical studies should be interrupted, and people become too absorbed in the history of the present to give attention to the chronicles of the past. Yet it was not leisure that was wanting; there soon having When the present race of French novelists arisen an increased demand for the imagina- started up to cater for the public, they had tive and the light. Novelists came forth in the world before them. No such thing as scores; the legion of vaudevillists was, if pos- true pictures of life, its daily habits, vicissi sible, augmented; and a new class of readers tudes, either past or present, had ever been seemed to spring up, eager for the daily fare represented in French novels. And The of literature. Previous to 1830 common Natural was a mine that one would think they readers required a seasoning of politics in ev- might have explored. But the drama was erything. They required to have their pal- not in the natural mood for the then present. ate tickled by hidden allusions to the glories Scribe had exhausted the natural and the of the empire, the old-womanishness of the simple, as far as these in actual life presented Bourbons, the hypocrisy of priests, and the traits and characters sufficiently striking for the tyranny of prefects. Berenger, with his point- stage. And a melodramatic taste had arisen, ed yet covered satire on all these things, was with a craving for strong emotions. Hugo the concentration of national feeling, and of came to dose the public with imaginative course his popularity was beyond bounds. cayenne. His horrors told upon the stage: