Sevigne were those which appealed most directly to public feeling in
France. There really were heroes in that day, the age of chivalric
passions had not passed, great loves, great hates, great emotions of
all kinds, were conceivable and within personal experience. When La
Rochefoucauld wrote to Madame de Longueville the famous lines which
may be thus translated:

_To win that wonder of the world,
A smile from her bright eyes,
I fought my King, and would have hurled
The gods out of their skies_,

he was breathing the very atmosphere of the heroic novels. Their
extraordinary artificial elevation of tone was partly the spirit of
the age; it was also partly founded on a new literary ideal, the tone
of Greek romance. No book had been read in France with greater avidity
than the sixteenth-century translation of the old novel _Heliodorus_;
and in the _Polexandres_ and _Clelies_ we see what this Greek spirit
of romance could blossom into when grafted upon the stock of Louis
XIV.

The vogue of these heroic novels in England has been misstated, for
the whole subject has but met with neglect from successive historians
of literature. It has been asserted that they were not read in England
until after the Restoration. Nothing is further from the truth.
Charles I. read _Cassandra_ in prison, while we find Dorothy Osborne,
in her exquisite letters to Sir William Temple, assiduously studying
one heroic novel after another through the central years of Cromwell's
rule. She reads _Le Grand Cyrus_ while she has the ague; she desires
Temple to tell her "which _amant_ you have most compassion for, when
you have read what each one says for himself." She and the King read
them in the original, but soon there arrived English translations
and imitations. These began to appear a good deal sooner than
bibliographers have been prepared to admit. Of the _Astree_ of
D'Urfe--which, however, is properly a link between the _Arcadia_ of
Sidney and the genuine heroic novel--there was an English version
as early as 1620. But, of the real thing, the first importation was
_Polexandre_, in 1647, followed by _Cassandra_ and _Ibrahim_ in 1652,
_Artamenes_ in 1653, _Cleopatra_ in 1654-8, and _Clelie_ in 1655, all,
it will be observed, published in England before the close of the
Commonwealth.

Dorothy Osborne, who had studied the French originals, turned up her
nose at these translations. She says that they were "so disguised
that I, who am their old acquaintance, hardly knew them." They had,
moreover, changed their form. In France they had come out in an
infinite number of small, manageable tomes. For instance, Calprenede
published his _Cleopatre_ in twenty-three volumes; but the English
_Cleopatra_ is all contained in one monstrous elephant folio.
_Artamenes_, the English translation of _Le Grand Cyrus_, is worse
still, for it is comprised in five such folios. Many of the originals
were translated over and over again, so popular were they; and as the
heroic novels of any eminence in France were limited in number,
it would be easy, by patiently hunting the translations up in old
libraries, to make a pretty complete list of them. The principal
heroic novels were eight in all; of these there is but one, the
_Almahide_ of Mile, de Scudery, which we have not already mentioned,
and the original publication of the whole school is confined within
less than thirty years.

The best master in a bad class of lumbering and tiresome fiction
was the author of the book which is the text of this chapter. La
Calprenede, whose full name was nothing less than Gautier de Costes de
la Calprenede, was a Gascon gentleman of the Guards, of whose personal
history the most notorious fact is that he had the temerity to marry
a woman who had already buried five husbands. Some historians relate
that she proceeded to poison number six, but this does not appear to
be certain, while it does appear that Calprenede lived in the married
state for fifteen years, a longer respite than the antecedents of
madame gave him any right to anticipate. He made a great fame with his
two huge Roman novels, _Cassandra_ and _Cleopatra_, and then, some
years later, he produced a third, _Pharamond_ which was taken out of
early French history. The translator, in the version before us, says
of this book that it "is not a romance, but a history adorned with
some excellent flourishes of language and loves, in which you may
delightfully trace the author's learned pen through all those
historians who wrote of the times he treats of." In other words, while
Gombreville--with his King of the Canaries, and his Vanishing Islands,
and his necromancers, and his dragons--canters through pure fairyland,
and while Mlle. de Scudery elaborately builds up a romantic picture of
her own times (in _Clelie_, for instance, where the three hundred and
seventy several characters introduced are said to be all acquaintances
of the author), Calprenede attempted to produce something like a
proper historical novel, introducing invention, but embroidering it
upon some sort of genuine framework of fact.

To describe the plot of _Pharamond_, or of any other heroic novel,
would be a desperate task. The great number of personages introduced
in pairs, the intrigues of each couple forming a separate thread
wound into the complex web of the plot, is alone enough to make any
following of the story a great difficulty. On the fly-leaf of a copy
of _Cleopatra_ which lies before me, some dear lady of the seventeenth
century has very conscientiously written out "a list of the Pairs of
Lovers," and there are thirteen pairs. _Pharamond_ begins almost in
the same manner as a novel by the late Mr. G.P.R. James might. When
the book opens we discover the amorous Marcomine and the valiant
Genebaud sallying forth along the bank of a river on two beautiful
horses of the best jennet-race. Throughout the book all the men are
valiant, all the ladies are passionate and chaste. The heroes enter
the lists covered with rubies, loosely embroidered over surcoats
of gold and silk tissue; their heads "shine with gold, enamel and
precious stones, with the hinder part covered with an hundred plumes
of different colours." They are mounted upon horses "whose whiteness
might outvie the purest snow upon the frozen Alps." They pierce into
woodland dells, where they by chance discover renowned princesses,
nonpareils of beauty, in imminent danger, and release them. They
attack hordes of deadly pirates, and scatter their bodies along the
shore; and yet, for all their warlike fire and force, they are as
gentle as marmozets in a lady's boudoir. They are especially admirable
in the putting forth of sentiments, in glozing over a subtle
difficulty in love, in tying a knot of silk or fastening a lock of
hair to their bonnet. They will steal into a cabinet so softly that a
lady who is seated there, in a reverie, will not perceive them; they
are so adroit that they will seize a paper on which she has sketched
a couplet, will complete it, pass away, and she not know whence the
poetical miracle has come. In valour, in courtesy, in magnificence
they have no rival, just as the ladies whom they court are unique in
beauty, in purity, in passion, and in self-denial. Sometimes they
correspond at immense length; in _Pharamond_ the letters which pass
between the Princess Hunnimonde and Prince Balamir would form a small
volume by themselves, an easy introduction to the art of polite
letter-writing. Mlle. de Scudery actually perceived this, and
published a collection of model correspondence which was culled bodily
from the huge store-house of her own romances, from _Le Grand Cyrus_
and _Clelie_. These interchanges of letters were kept up by the
severity of the heroines. It was not thought proper that the lady
should yield her hand until the gentleman had exhausted the resources
of language, and had spent years of amorous labour on her conquest.
When Roger Boyle, in 1654, published his novel of _Parthenissa_, in
four volumes, Dorothy Osborne objected to the ease with which the hero
succeeded; she complains "the ladies are all so kind they make no
sport."

This particular 1662 translation of _Pharamond_ appears to be
very rare, if not unique. At all events I find it in none of the
bibliographies, nor has the British Museum Library a copy of it. The
preface is signed J.D., and the version is probably therefore from
the pen of John Davies, who helped Loveday to finish his enormous
translation of _Cleopatra_ in 1665. In 1677 there came out another
version of _Pharamond_, by John Phillips, and this is common enough.
Some day, perhaps, these elephantine old romances may come into
fashion again, and we may obtain a precise list of them. At present no
corner of our literary history is more thoroughly neglected.[1]

[Footnote 1: Since this was written, a French critic of eminence,
M. Jusserand, has made (in _The English Novel in the Time of
Shakespeare_, 1890) a delightful contribution to this portion of our
literary history. The earlier part of the last chapter of that volume
may be recommended to all readers curious about the vogue of the
heroic novel. But M. Jusserand does not happen to mention _Pharamond_,
nor to cover the exact ground of my little study.]




A VOLUME OF OLD PLAYS


In his _Ballad of the Book-Hunter_, Andrew Lang describes how, in
breeches baggy at the knees, the bibliophile hunts in all weathers:

_No dismal stall escapes his eye;
He turns o'er tomes of low degrees;
There soiled romanticists may lie,
Or Restoration comedies_.

That speaks straight to my heart; for of all my weaknesses the weakest
is that weakness of mine for Restoration plays. From 1660 down to 1710
nothing in dramatic form comes amiss, and I have great schemes, like
the boards on which people play the game of solitaire, in which space
is left for every drama needed to make this portion of my library
complete. It is scarcely literature, I confess; it is a sport, a long
game which I shall probably be still playing at, with three mouldy old
tragedies and one opera yet needed to complete my set, when the Reaper
comes to carry me where there is no amassing nor collecting. It would
hardly be credited how much pleasure I have drained out of these
dramas since I began to collect them judiciously in my still callow
youth. I admit only first editions; but that is not so rigorous as it
sounds, since at least half of the poor old things never went into a
second.

As long as it is Congreve and Dryden and Otway, of course it is
literature, and of a very high order; even Shadwell and Mrs. Behn
and Southerne are literature; Settle and Ravenscroft may pass as
legitimate literary curiosity. But there are depths below this where
there is no excuse but sheer collectaneomania. Plays by people who
never got into any schedule of English letters that ever was planned,
dramatic nonentities, stage innocents massacred in their cradles, if
only they were published in quarto I find room for them. I am not
quite so pleased to get these anonymities, I must confess, as I am to
get a clean, tall _editio princeps_ of _The Orphan_ or of _Love for
Love_. But I neither reject nor despise them; each of them counts one;
each serves to fill a place on my solitaire board, each hurries
on that dreadful possible time coming when my collection shall be
complete, and I shall have nothing to do but break my collecting rod
and bury it fathoms deep.

A volume has just come in which happens to have nothing in it but
those forgotten plays, whose very names are unknown to the historians
of literature. First comes _The Roman Empress_, by William Joyner,
printed in 1671. Joyner was an Oxford man, a fellow of Magdalen
College. The little that has been recorded about him makes one wish to
know more. He became persuaded of the truth of the Catholic faith, and
made a voluntary resignation of his Oxford fellowship. He had to do
something, and so he wrote this tragedy, which he dedicated to Sir
Charles Sedley, the poet, and got acted at the Theatre Royal. The cast
contains two good actors' names, Mohun and Kynaston, and it seems that
it enjoyed a considerable success. But doubtless the stage was too
rough a field for the gentle Oxford scholar. He retired into a
sequestered country village, where he lingered on till 1706, when he
was nearly ninety. But Joyner was none of the worst of poets. Here is
a fragment of _The Royal Empress_, which is by no means despicably
versed:

_O thou bright, glorious morning,
Thou Oriental spring-time of the day,
Who with thy mixed vermilion colours paintest
The sky, these hills and plains! thou dost return
In thy accustom'd manner, but with thee
Shall ne'er return my wonted happiness_.

Through his Roman tragedy there runs a pensive vein of sadness, as
though the poet were thinking less of his Aurelia and his Valentius
than of the lost common-room and the arcades of Magdalen to be no more
revisited.

Our next play is a worse one, but much more pretentious. It is the
_Usurper_, of 1668, the first of four dramas published by the Hon.
Edward Howard, one of Dryden's aristocratic brothers-in-law. Edward
Howard is memorable for a couplet constantly quoted from his epic poem
of _The British Princes_:

_A vest as admired Vortiger had on,
Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won_.

Poor Howard has received the laughter of generations for representing
Vortiger's grandsire as thus having stripped one who was bare already.
But this is the wickedness of some ancient wag, perhaps of Dryden
himself, who loved to laugh at his brother-in-law. At all events,
the first (and, I suppose, only) edition of _The British Princes_ is
before me at this moment, and the second of these lines certainly
runs:

_Which from this island's foes his grandsire won_.

Thus do the critics, leaping one after another, like so many sheep,
follow the same wrong track, in this case for a couple of centuries.
The _Usurper_ is a tragedy, in which a Parasite, "a most perfidious
villain," plays a mysterious part. He is led off to be hanged at last,
much to the reader's satisfaction, who murmurs, in the words of R.L.
Stevenson, "There's an end of that."

But though the _Usurper_ is dull, we reach a lower depth and muddier
lees of wit in the _Carnival_, a comedy by Major Thomas Porter, of
1664. It is odd, however, that the very worst production, if it be
more than two hundred years old, is sure to contain some little
thing interesting to a modern student. The _Carnival_ has one such
peculiarity. Whenever any of the characters is left alone on the
stage, he begins to soliloquise in the stanza of Gray's _Churchyard
Elegy_. This is a very quaint innovation, and one which possibly
occurred to brave Major Porter in one of the marches and
counter-marches of the Civil War.

But the man who perseveres is always rewarded, and the fourth play in
our volume really repays us for pushing on so far. Here is a piece of
wild and ghostly poetry that is well worth digging out of the Duke of
Newcastle's _Humorous Lovers_:

_At curfew-time, and at the dead of night,
I will appear, thy conscious soul to fright,
Make signs, and beckon thee my ghost to follow
To sadder groves, and churchyards, where we'll hollo
To darker caves and solitary woods,
To fatal whirlpools and consuming floods;
I'll tempt thee to pass by the unlucky ewe,
Blasted with cursed droppings of mildew;
Under an oak, that ne'er bore leaf, my moans
Shall there be told thee by the mandrake's groans;
The winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty,
And how thy want of love did murder me;
And when the cock shall crow, and day grow near,
Then in a flash of fire I'll disappear_.

But I cannot persuade myself that his Grace of Newcastle wrote those
lines himself. Published in 1677, they were as much of a portent as a
man in trunk hose and a slashed doublet. The Duke had died a month or
two before the play was published; he had grown to be, in extreme old
age, the most venerable figure of the Restoration, and it is possible
that the _Humorous Lovers_ may have been a relic of his Jacobean
youth. He might very well have written it, so old was he, in
Shakespeare's lifetime. But the Duke of Newcastle was never a very
skilful poet, and it is known that he paid James Shirley to help him
with his plays. I feel convinced that if all men had their own,
the invocation I have just quoted would fly back into the works of
Shirley, and so, no doubt, would the following quaintest bit of
conceited fancy. It is part of a fantastical feast which Boldman
promises to the Widow of his heart:

_The twinkling stars shall to our wish
Make a grand salad in a dish;
Snow for our sugar shall not fail,
Fine candied ice, comfits of hail;
For oranges, gilt clouds will squeeze;
The Milky Way we'll turn to cheese;
Sunbeams we'll catch, shall stand in place
Of hotter ginger, nutmegs, mace;
Sun-setting clouds for roses sweet,
And violet skies strewed for our feet;
The spheres shall for our music play,
While spirits dance the time away_.

This is extravagant enough, but surely very picturesque. I seem to see
the supper-room of some Elizabethan castle after an elaborate
royal masque. The Duchess, who has been dancing, richly attired in
sky-coloured silk, with gilt wings on her shoulders, is attended to
the refreshments by the florid Duke, personating the river Thamesis,
with a robe of cloth of silver around him. It seems the sort of thing
a poet so habited might be expected to say between a galliard and a
coranto.

At first sight we seem to have reached a really good rhetorical play
when we arrive at Bancroft's tragedy of _Sertorius_, published in
1679, and so it would be if Dryden and Lee had never written. But its
seeming excellence is greatly lessened when we recollect that _All for
Love_ and _Mithridates_, two great poems which are almost good
plays, appeared in 1678, and inspired our poor imitative Bancroft.
_Sertorius_ is written in smooth and well-sustained blank verse, which
is, however, nowhere quite good enough to be quoted. I suspect that
John Bancroft was a very interesting man. He was a surgeon, and his
practice lay particularly In the theatrical and literary world. He
acquired, it is said, from his patients "a passion for the Muses,"
and an inclination to follow in the steps of those whom he cured or
killed. The dramatist Ravenscroft wrote an epilogue to _Sertorius_, in
which he says that--

_Our Poet to learned critics does submit,
But scorns those little vermin of the pit,
Who noise and nonsense vent instead of wit_,

and no doubt Bancroft had aims more professional than those of the
professional playwrights themselves. He wrote three plays, and lived
until 1696. One fancies the discreet and fervent poet-surgeon, laden
with his secrets and his confidences. Why did he not write memoirs,
and tell us what it was that drove Nat Lee mad, and how Otway really
died, and what Dryden's habits were? Why did he not purvey magnificent
indiscretions whispered under the great periwig of Wycherley, or
repeat that splendid story about Etheredge and my Lord Mulgrave? Alas!
we would have given a wilderness of _Sertoriuses_ for such a series of
memoirs.

The volume of plays is not exhausted. Here is Weston's _Amazon Queen_,
of 1667, written in pompous rhymed heroics; here is _The Fortune
Hunters_, a comedy of 1689, the only play of that brave fellow, James
Carlile, who, being brought up an actor, preferred "to _be_ rather
than to _personate_ a hero," and died in gallant fight for William
of Orange, at the battle of Aughrim; here is _Mr. Anthony_, a comedy
written by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery, and printed in
1690, a piece never republished among the Earl's works, and therefore
of some special interest. But I am sure my reader is exhausted, even
if the volume is not, and I spare him any further examination of
these obscure dramas, lest he should say, as Peter Pindar did of Dr.
Johnson, that I

_Set wheels on wheels in motion--such a clatter!
To force up one poor nipperkin of water;
Bid ocean labour with tremendous roar
To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore_.

I will close, therefore, with one suggestion to the special student
of comparative literature--namely, that it is sometimes in the minor
writings of an age, where the bias of personal genius is not strongly
felt, that the general phenomena of the time are most clearly
observed. _The Amazon Queen_ is in rhymed verse, because in 1667
this was the fashionable form for dramatic poetry; _Sertorius_ is
in regular and somewhat restrained blank verse, because in 1679 the
fashion had once more chopped round. What in Dryden or Otway might be
the force of originality may be safely taken as the drift of the age
in these imitative and floating nonentities.




A CENSOR OF POETS

The Lives of The Most Famous English Poets, _or the Honour of
Parnassus; in a Brief Essay of the Works and Writings of above Two
Hundred of them, from the Time of K. William the Conqueror, to the
Reign of His Present Majesty King James II. Written by William
Winstanley. Licensed June 16, 1686. London, Printed by H. Clark, for
Samuel Manship at the Sign of the Black Bull in Cornhil,_ 1687.


A maxim which it would be well for ambitious critics to chalk up on
the walls of their workshops is this: never mind whom you praise, but
be very careful whom you blame. Most critical reputations have struck
on the reef of some poet or novelist whom the great censor, in his
proud old age, has thought he might disdain with impunity. Who
recollects the admirable treatises of John Dennis, acute, learned,
sympathetic? To us he is merely the sore old bear, who was too stupid
to perceive the genius of Pope. The grace and discrimination lavished
by Francis Jeffrey over a thousand pages, weigh like a feather beside
one sentence about Wordsworth's _Excursion_, and one tasteless sneer
at Charles Lamb. Even the mighty figure of Sainte-Beuve totters at the
whisper of the name Balzac. Even Matthew Arnold would have been wiser
to have taken counsel with himself before he laughed at Shelley. And
the very unimportant but sincere and interesting writer, whose book
occupies us to-day, is in some respects the crowning instance of the
rule. His literary existence has been sacrificed by a single outburst
of petulant criticism, which was not even literary, but purely
political.

The only passage of Winstanley's _Lives of the English Poets_ which
is ever quoted is the paragraph which refers to Milton, who, when it
appeared, had been dead thirteen years. It runs thus:

"_John Milton_ was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a
place amongst the principal of our English Poets, having written
two Heroick Poems and a Tragedy, namely _Paradice Lost, Paradice
Regain'd_, and _Sampson Agonista_. But his Fame is gone out like a
Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have
ever lived in honourable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor,
and most impiously and villanously bely'd that blessed Martyr, King
_Charles_ the First."

Mr. Winstanley does not leave us in any doubt of his own political
bias, and his mode is simply infamous. It is the roughest and most
unpardonable expression now extant of the prejudice generally felt
against Milton in London, after the Restoration--a prejudice which
even Dryden, who in his heart knew better, could not wholly resist.
This one sentence is all that most readers of seventeenth-century
literature know about Winstanley, and it is not surprising that it has
created an objection to him. I forget who it was, among the critics of
the beginning of this century, who was accustomed to buy copies of the
_Lives of the English Poets_ wherever he could pick them up, and burn
them, in piety to the angry spirit of Milton. This was certainly more
sensible conduct than that of the Italian nobleman, who used to build
MSS. of Martial into little pyres, and consume them with spices, to
express his admiration of Catullus. But no one can wonder that the
world has not forgiven Winstanley for that atrocious phrase about
Milton's fame having "gone out like a candle in a snuff, so that his
memory will always stink." No, Mr. William Winstanley, it is your own
name that--smells so very unpleasantly.

Yet I am paradoxical enough to believe that poor Winstanley never
wrote these sentences which have destroyed his fame. To support my
theory, it is needful to recount the very scanty knowledge we possess
of his life. He is said to have been a barber, and to have risen by
his exertions with the razor; but, against that legend, is to be posed
the fact that on the titles of his earliest books, dedicated to public
men who must have known, he styles himself "Gent." The dates of his
birth and death are, I believe, a matter of conjecture. But the _Lives
of the English Poets_ is the latest of his books, and the earliest was
published in 1660. This is his _England's Worthies_, a group of what
we should call to-day "biographical studies." The longest and the most
interesting of these is one on Oliver Cromwell, the tone of which is
almost grossly laudatory, although published at the very moment
of Restoration. Now, it is a curious, and, at first sight, a very
disgraceful fact, that in 1684, when the book of _England's Worthies_
was re-issued, all the praise of republicans was cancelled, and abuse
substituted for it. And then, in 1687, came the _Lives of the
English Poets_, with its horrible attack on Milton. The character of
Winstanley seems to be as base as any on literary record. I have come
to the conclusion, however, that Winstanley was guilty, neither of
retracting what he said about Cromwell, nor of slandering Milton. The
black woman excused her husband for not answering the bell, "'Cause
he's dead," and the excuse was considered valid. I hope that when
these interpolations were made, poor Winstanley was dead.

Any one who reads the _Lives of the English Poets_ carefully, will be
impressed with two facts: first, that the author had an acquaintance
with the early versifiers of Great Britain, which was quite
extraordinary, and which can hardly be found at fault by our modern
knowledge; while, secondly, that he shows a sudden and unaccountable
ignorance of his immediate contemporaries of the younger school.
Except Campion, who is a discovery of our own day, not a single
Elizabethan or Jacobean rhymester of the second or third rank escapes
his notice. Among the writers of a still later generation, I miss no
names save those of Vaughan, who was very obscure in his own lifetime,
and Marvell, who would be excluded by the same prejudice which mocked
at Milton. But among Poets of the Restoration, men and women who were
in their full fame in 1687, the omissions are quite startling. Not a
word is here about Otway, Lee, or Crowne; Butler is not mentioned, nor
the Matchless Orinda, nor Roscommon, nor Sir Charles Sedley. A careful
examination of the dates of works which Winstanley refers to, produces
a curious result. There is not mentioned, so far as I can trace, a
single poem or play which was published later than 1675, although the
date on the title-page of the _Lives of the English Poets_ is 1687.
Rather an elaborate list of Dryden's publications is given, but it
stops at _Amboyna_ (1673). On this I think it is not too bold to
build a theory, which may last until Winstanley's entry of burial is
discovered in some country church, that he died soon after 1675. If
this were the case, the recantations in his _English Worthies_ of 1684
would be so many posthumous outrages committed on his blameless tomb,
and the infamous sentence about Milton may well have been foisted into
a posthumous volume by the same wicked hand. If we could think that
Samuel Manship, at the Sign of the Black Bull, was the obsequious
rogue who did it, that would be one more sin to be numbered against
the sad race of publishers.

In studying old books about the poets, it sometimes occurs to us to
wonder whether the readers of two hundred years ago appreciated the
same qualities in good verse which are now admired. Did the ringing
and romantic cadences of Shakespeare affect their senses as they do
ours? We know that they praised Carew and Suckling, but was it "Ask me
no more where June bestows," and "Hast thou seen the down in the air,"
which gave them pleasure? It would sometimes seem, from the phrases
they use and the passages they quote, that if poetry was the same
two centuries ago, its readers had very different ears from ours. Of
Herrick Winstanley says that he was "one of the Scholars of Apollo of
the middle Form, yet something above _George Withers_, in a pretty
Flowry and Pastoral Gale of Fancy, in a vernal Prospect of some Hill,
Cave, Rock, or Fountain; which but for the interruption of other
trivial Passages, might have made up none of the worst Poetick
Landskips," and then he quotes, as a sample of Herrick, a tiresome"
epigram," in the poet's worst style. This is not delicate or acute
criticism, as we judge nowadays; but I would give a good deal to meet
Winstanley at a coffee-house, and go through the _Hesperides_ with
him over a dish of chocolate. It would be wonderfully interesting to
discover which passages in Herrick really struck the contemporary
mind as "flowery," and which as "trivial." But this is just what all
seventeenth-century criticism, even Dryden's, omits to explain to us.
The personal note in poetical criticism, the appeal to definite taste,
to the experience of eye and ear, is not met with, even in suggestion,
until we reach the pamphlets of John Dennis.

The particular copy of Winstanley which lies before me is a valuable
one; I owe it to the generosity of a friend in Chicago, who hoards
rare books, and yet has the greatness of soul sometimes to part with
them. It is interleaved, and the blank pages are rather densely
inscribed with notes in the handwriting of Dr. Thomas Percy, the
poetical Bishop of Dromore. From his hands it passed into those of
John Bowyer Nichols, the antiquary. Percy's notes are little more than
references to other authorities, memoranda for one of his own useful
compilations, yet it is pleasant to have even a slight personal relic
of so admirable a man. Mr. Riviere has bound the volume for me, and
I suppose that poor rejected Winstanley exists nowhere else in so
elegant a shape.




THE ROMANCE OF A DICTIONARY

HISTOIRE DE L'ACADEMIE FRANCOISE: _avec un Abrege des Vies du Cardinal
de Richelieu, Vaugelas, Corneille, Ablancourt, Mezerai, Voiture,
Patru, la Fontaine, Boileau, Racine Et autres Illustres Academiciens
qui la Composent_.

_A La Haye, MDCLXXXVIII_.


It is not often, in these days, when the pastime of bibliography is
reduced to a science, that one is rewarded, as one so often was a
quarter of a century ago, by picking up an unregarded treasure on the
bookstalls. But the other day I really had a pleasant little "find,"
and it was the reward of virtue. It came of having a tender heart.
My eye caught what Mr. Austin Dobson would call "a dear and dumpy
twelve," lying open upon other books, face downward, in the most
ignominious posture. I saw at a glance, from the tooling on its faded
and half-broken back, that it was French and of the seventeenth
century, and that somebody had prized it once. I could read the
lettering _Academ. Franc_., and I gave the pence which were wanted
for it. It proved a most rewarding little volume. It was published
at The Hague in 1688, and it was a new edition of the _Histoire de
l'Academie Francaise_. A preface says that "for the honour of our
nation" (the French, presumably, not the Dutch), the publisher has
thought it proper to issue an edition "more correct and more elegant"
than has hitherto been seen, brought down to date with many new and
curious pieces. Among other things, the said publisher thinks that
"the English will not be displeased to see the Panegyric" of King
Louis XIV. "admirably rendered in their language by a Person of their
Nation." But what immediately caught my attention, and filled me with
delight, was an absolutely contemporary account, written specially for
this 1688 edition, of the great quarrel between the French Academy and
the Abbe Furetiere. Of this I propose to speak to-day.

We live in an age of Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, which we look
upon as universal panaceas for culture. There was a similar rage for
dictionaries in France two hundred and fifty years ago. We may very
rapidly remind ourselves that the French Academy was constituted in
1634 with thirty-five members, who became the stationary and immortal
Forty in 1639. One of its original functions was the preparation of a
great Dictionary of the French language, under the special care of
the eminent grammarian, Vaugelas, who had through his lifetime
made collections--"various beautiful and curious observations," as
Pellisson calls them--towards a reasoned philological study of French.
The poet Chapelain was appointed a sort of general editor of the
projected Dictionary, which was solemnly started early in 1638. For
the next four years the Academicians were very active, spurred on by
Richelieu, but when, in 1642, the Cardinal died, their zeal relented,
and when, in 1650, Vaugelas's presence ceased to urge them forward, it
flagged altogether. Vaugelas died bankrupt, and his creditors seized
his writing-desks, the drawers of which contained a great part of the
MS. collections for the Dictionary. It was only after a lawsuit that
the Academy recovered those papers, and Mezeray was then set to
continue the editing of the work. Still twice a week the Academy met
to consult about the Dictionary, but so languidly and with so little
fire, that Boisrobert said that not the youngest of the Forty could
hope to live to print the letter G. As a matter of fact, not one of
those who started the Dictionary lived to see it published.

In this slow fashion, with long Rip Van Winkle slumbers and occasional
faint awakenings, the French Academy faltered on with fitful
persistence towards the completion of its famous Dictionary. But, as
I have said, it was a period of great enthusiasm about all such
summaries of knowledge, and Paris was thirsting for grammars,
lexicons, inventories of language and the like. The Academy insisted
that the world must wait for the approach of their vast and lumbering
machine; but meanwhile public curiosity was impatient, and all sorts
of brief and imperfect dictionaries were issued to satisfy it. The
publication of these spurious guides to knowledge infuriated the
Academy, until in 1674 the dog permanently occupied the manger by
inducing the King to issue a decree "forbidding all printers and
publishers to print any new dictionary of the French language, under
any title whatsoever, until the publication of that of the French
Academy, or until twenty years have expired since the proclamation of
the present decree." This cut the ground from under the feet of all
rivals, and the Academy could meet twice a week as before and mumble
its definitions with serene assurance. From this false security it was
roused by the incident which my "dumpy twelve" recounts.

It was from the very heart of their own body that the great attack
upon their privileges unexpectedly fell upon the Academicians. In 1662
they had elected (in the place of De Boissat, a very obscure original
member) the Abbe of Chalivoy, Antoine Furetiere. This man, born in
Paris of poor parents in 1619, had raised himself to eminence as an
Orientalist and grammarian, and was welcomed among the Forty as likely
to be particularly helpful to them in their Dictionary work. He was
probably one of those men whose true character does not come out until
they attain success. But no sooner was Furetiere an Immortal than he
began to distinguish himself in unanticipated ways. He proved himself
an adept in parody and satire, and so long as he contented himself
with laughing at people like Charles Sorel, the author of _Francion_,
who had no friends, the Academicians were calm and amused, But
Furetiere was not merely the author of that extremely amusing medley,
_Le Roman Bourgeois_ (1666), which still holds its place in French
literature as a minor classic, but he was also a real student of
philology, and one of those who most ardently desired to see the
settlement of the canon of French language. It incensed him beyond
words that his colleagues dawdled so endlessly over their committees
and their definitions. He began to make collections of his own, no
doubt at first with the perfectly loyal intention of adding them to
the common store. Meanwhile he lashed the rest of the Academy with
his tongue. Other Academicians did this also, such men as Patru and
Boisrobert, but they had not Furetiere's nasty way of putting things.
One perceives that about the year 1680 the sarcasms of Furetiere had
really become something more than the rest of the Immortals could put
up with.

He delivered himself into their hands, and here my little volume takes
up the tale. On the 3rd of January, 1685, the French Academy met to
mourn the death of its most illustrious member, the great Pierre
Corneille, and to elect his younger brother to take his place. While
the members were chatting together their Librarian handed about among
them copies of a "privilege" which had just been obtained by the Abbe
Furetiere to publish "a universal Dictionary containing generally all
French words, old as well as modern, and the terms employed in all
arts and sciences." So declares my little book; but it would seem
that the officers of the Academy at least a week earlier had their
attention drawn to what Furetiere was doing. Perhaps it was not until
the election of Thomas Corneille that an opportunity occurred of
making the members generally aware of it. One wonders whether
Furetiere himself was present on the 3rd of January; if so, what
puttings of periwigs together there must have been in corners, and
what taps of gold-headed canes on lace-frilled cuffs! It was felt, as
my little volume puts it, that "Monsieur the Abbe Furetiere, being one
of the Forty Academicians, ought not to have been privately busying
himself on a work which he knew to be the principal occupation of the
whole Academy." It is surprising, in the face of the monopoly which
that body had secured, that Furetiere was able to obtain a Privilege
for his own Dictionary, but in all probability, as he was one of the
Forty, the censors supposed that he was acting in concert with his
colleagues.

Then began a hue and cry with which the learned world of Paris rang
for months. Never was such a scandal, never such a rain of pamphlets
and lampoons on one side and the other. One has only to glance at the
contemporary portraits of Furetiere to see that he was not the man to
yield a point; his wrinkled face looks the very mirror of sarcastic
obstinacy and brilliant ill-nature. The Academy, in solemn session,
appointed Regnier Desmarais, their secretary, to wait on the
Chancellor to demand the cancelling of Furetiere's privilege. But the
Abbe had powerful friends also, and by their help the Chancellor's
action was delayed, while Furetiere hurried out a specimen of his
work. He says in the preface that no author ever had a more pressing
need for the protection of a prince than he has who sees the labour
of years about to be sacrificed to the envy of others. He goes on to
explain that he has never dreamed of interfering with the work of the
Academy, for which he has the greatest possible respect, but that
he only hopes to render service to the public by supplementing its
labours. The Academy, in fact, had expressly declined to include in
its Dictionary the technical terms of art and science, and it is
particularly with these that Furetiere is occupied. His answer to
those who accuse him of stealing from the unpublished _cahiers_ of the
Academy is the uniformity of his work from A to Z; whereas, if he had
stolen from his colleagues, he must have stopped at O-P, which was the
point they had reached in 1684.

The Academy was not pacified, and began to take counsel how they could
turn Furetiere out of their body. There was no precedent for such
a degradation, but a parallel was sought for in the fact that the
Sorbonne had successfully ejected one of its most famous doctors,
Arnauld. Meanwhile the suit went on, the Thirty-nine versus the One.
Furetiere is said to have bowed for a moment beneath the storm,
offering to blend his work in the general Dictionary of the Academy,
or to remove from it all words not admitted to deal technically with
art and science. But passion had gone too far, and on the 22nd of
January, 1685, at a general meeting, twenty Academicians being
present, Furetiere was expelled from the body by a majority of
nineteen to one. It is believed that the one who voted for mercy was
the most illustrious of all, Racine. Boileau and Bossuet also defended
the Abbe, and when the matter became at last so serious that the King
himself was obliged to take cognisance of it, it was understood that
his sympathies also were with Furetiere.

My little volume (written, I think, in 1687) does not know anything
about the expulsion, which was therefore probably secret. It says:
"As to Monsieur Furetiere, he no longer puts in an appearance at
the meetings of the Academy, but it is not known whether any other
Academician is to be elected in his place." As a matter of fact, the
society hesitated to go so far as this, and the seat was left vacant.
Not for long, however; the unanimous rancour of so many men of
influence and rank had successfully ruined the fortune and broken
the spirit of the old piratical lexicographer. Before retiring into
private life, however, he poured out in his _Couches de l'Academie_
a torrent of poison, which was distilled through the presses of
Amsterdam in 1687. One of his earlier colleagues at the Academy
supplied the bankrupt man with the necessaries of life, until, on the
14th of May, 1688, probably just as the "dumpy twelve" was passing
through the press, he died in Paris like a rat in a hole. His
Dictionary, being suppressed in France, was edited, after his death,
in 1690, at The Hague and Rotterdam, and enjoyed a great success. We
learn from a letter of Racine to Boileau that in 1694 the publisher
ventured to offer a copy of a new edition of it to the King of France,