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Art. VII. THE LITERATURE OF THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE.

1. The Literature of the French Renaissance. By Arthur Tilley. Two vols. Cambridge: University Press, 1904. 2. Women and Men of the French Renaissance. By Edith Sichel. London: Constable, 1903.

3. Catherine de' Medici and the French Reformation. By Edith Sichel. London: Constable, 1905.

4. Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France. By A. W. Whitehead. London: Methuen, 1904.

5. The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. I, The Renaissance; vol. II, The Reformation. Cambridge: University Press, 1902-3.

6. Histoire de France. Edited by E. Lavisse.

Vol. V, La France sous Charles VIII, Louis XII, et François Ier. By H. Lemonnier. Paris: Hachette, 1903.

No period in the past, with the exception perhaps of those years during which the genius of Greece touched perfection, can be more interesting alike to the scholar, the theologian, the artist, the man of science, and the politician, than that to which the name of the Renaissance is generally given. The invention of the printing-press enabled the enthusiasm of the learned to diffuse the knowledge of antiquity, and gave vigour to the growth of national literatures. Impatience of the abuses of Rome and of ultramontane domination, together with a more critical study of the title-deeds of the Papacy, broke up the unity and distributed the energies of the western Church. The development of civil life and the diffusion of taste at the courts of princes stimulated the productive activities of artists inspired by the perfection of ancient models. An era of rapid and continuous scientific progress began with the discovery of the New World and of the place of the earth in the universe, and with the substitution of experiment and observation, however imperfectly applied, for the a priori methods of scholastic science. Among the western nations, personal monarchy, more or less despotic, took the place of the looser feudal organisation; while international relations came, for a time, to be solely determined by considerations of self-interest. Such, no doubt, had ever

been the ruling motive, but it had not hitherto been openly avowed, so long as men accepted the ideal of a Christian commonwealth, the members of which were regarded as communities subject to the same divine laws which govern the actions of individuals.

Nor was there ever an epoch more picturesque and more eventful, more fertile in men of marked individuality and conspicuous genius. Never was vice more splendid, corruption more refined, and virtue more heroic. The sense of a newly-gained freedom, of a new and vast inheritance of knowledge, stimulated for good and evil the development of strongly-marked characters. Almost all that was picturesque in the trappings of feudalism and the usages of chivalry was retained or revived, heightened by a pagan delight in the joy of living, all the more poignant because it conflicted with a renewed sense of the vanity of all earthly things and of the supreme importance of man's spiritual life.

In no country can the various impulses and tendencies which composed those multiform movements which we call the Renaissance and the Reformation be better traced than in France; nowhere did they produce more marked and divergent types of character; nowhere was the struggle between them and the old order and between their own conflicting principles more striking. It may therefore excite some surprise that so little should be told us about the French Renaissance in the two first volumes of the 'Cambridge Modern History.' The progress of the Reformation in France is the subject of the excellent chapter written by Mr Tilley. Dr Fairbairn gives a sympathetic and most interesting sketch of the career and doctrines of Calvin. But, while the French Reformation is adequately treated, two pages in Sir R. Jebb's masterly account of the Classical Renaissance, as many in Dr Barry's somewhat tightly packed chapter on Catholic Europe, and three more, devoted to a sensible but rather slight appreciation of Rabelais and Montaigne, in Dr Fairbairn's essay on the tendencies of European thought, contain all that is told us of the progress and results of the Renaissance in France. Various reasons may be given for this omission, the strongest perhaps being that a detailed account of literature and of the arts was not contemplated in the scheme drawn up by Lord Acton, that limits of

space enforced a selection in which politics and international history necessarily took the lion's share, and that while the origins of a movement which affected all Europe were described in the brilliant chapters contributed by Sir R. Jebb and Dr James, the details of the aftergrowth as affecting separate countries could only be lightly touched. Fortunately the student who desires a guide to the literature of the French Renaissance has only to turn to Mr Tilley's book on that subject. To commend the sound judgment and critical insight of an author does but mean that one agrees with him; and the value of such praise must depend on the source whence it proceeds. But Mr Tilley's thorough knowledge of his subject, the self-restraint and sobriety of his appreciations and the skill with which they are illustrated by his references and quotations must be obvious even to those who might be disposed to dissent from his carefully considered criticisms.

Some account of the literary and artistic side of the French Renaissance is also to be found in Miss Sichel's entertaining books; but she is at her best when dealing with the social and lighter aspects of her subject. She is more fortunate in the central figure of her first than of her second volume. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Margaret of Angoulême-that 'unworldly woman of the world,' so interested in literature in art and religion, the student of Dante, the author of spiritual poetry and of the Heptameron, that strange medley of edifying sentiment and coarse adventure-was an 'epitome of the earlier French Renaissance'; but Catherine de' Medici was assuredly not 'one of those figures which sum up whole periods.' It is the more surprising that Miss Sichel should so describe the Queen-mother, since she analyses her character, with all its limitations, very well.

Catherine was essentially Italian, the type of nothing French. Her difficulties were often due to the fact that she neither understood nor sympathised with the people among whom she lived. Her politics were those of the later Italian Renaissance. The State appeared to her to be an artistic mechanism existing for the benefit of the ruler, power an end in itself to be pursued by the politician regardless of the restraints of law, morality, or tradition. But this could not be the ideal of either Leaguer or

Huguenot. The common-sense which was, as Miss Sichel says, the best side of Catherine, only made her more incapable of foreseeing or understanding the actions of men swayed by fanaticism or passion rather than by their own personal advantage.

But although Catherine's disregard of religious questions and her studies in Italian statecraft-Machiavelli was said to be her Bible-led her to miscalculate the force of motives of which she had no experience, it must not be forgotten that she introduced into French politics a new principle, and one full of future promise, when she regulated her policy without any care for the interests of this or that creed, and accepted indifferently the services of Romanist or Protestant. The Chancellor l'Hôpital has been often praised as the first truly tolerant French statesman, because he was averse from persecution, and desired some large measure of compromise which should reconcile the Huguenots to the Church. But he still believed in the intimate connexion of Church and State, and declared that two religions could not possibly exist side by side in the same country-a belief held as an axiom in the Middle Ages, and accepted alike by Catholic and Calvinist, but one which made toleration impossible, or at all events illogical. Catherine was really tolerant because, like the Italian tyrants, she believed the State to be a purely secular institution, existing for the benefit of the Prince. This conception of politics, as something wholly apart from religion, was afterwards adopted by great and patriotic statesmen, by Henry IV and Richelieu, but with the essential difference that they identified the interests of the State, not with those of the ruler, but with those of the community. The reign of Lewis XIV was a period of reaction and retrogression, and perhaps in nothing more so than in rejecting this idea of a secular State, which the modern world owes to the Italian Renaissance.

The modesty of Miss Sichel's preface disarms criticism. But, when a 'minor' historian writes so much that is good and in a manner so vivid and attractive, we are justified in regretting all that suggests careless workmanship. Miss Sichel, for instance, says that Admiral Chabot who, although he was the patron of the discoverer of Canada, had not much more to do with the sea than Admiral

Coligny, was perhaps the greatest sailor of later times,' and so leads us to suspect that she was confusing the favourite of Francis I with the navigator Cabot. When she calls du Bellay's 'Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse' the 'Défense de poésie,' has she not allowed her mind to wander to Sidney's 'Defence of Poetrie'? while to describe the minister Briçonnet as 'the son of a priest whom Julius II excommunicated,' inspires suspicions probably unjust. The bouc,' the tragic goat given by his friends to Jodelle, a beast famous in the history of the French drama, figures in Miss Sichel's pages as a 'buck.' Not to be familiar with Horace or the origins of the Greek stage is no reproach to a lady; but so good a French scholar must know that similarity of sound is a trap for the unwary translator. Sometimes also the reader is led by Miss Sichel's lively exuberance to wonder what may be the extent of her acquaintance with the authors of whom she is speaking. It is a compliment to her judgment to doubt whether, if she had lately read Des Perier's 'Cymbalum Mundi,' she would have called it 'a great book.'

Miss Sichel in an interesting chapter insists that the sceptical temperament of the French was the main cause of their indifference to the Reformation. She would agree with M. Faguet that his countrymen are inclined to compromise and averse from extremes, swayed rather by common-sense than by enthusiasm. This is true, but there has always been in France a minority among whom a passionate devotion to ideals has been combined with a logical impatience of middle courses; and sometimes, as in the earlier days of the Revolution, this minority has dominated the apathy of the majority. Had there been among the Jacobins a real statesman, a leader of genius, capable of seizing the opportunity, the Republic might have been established on a more enduring foundation. So, too, it is just possible that Protestantism might have prevailed, had the reformers been united under the guidance of a man of transcendent political ability. Yet it may be doubted whether, in the most favourable circumstances, Jacobinism aspiring to be a rule of life could have been imposed on France, and whether a people not oppressed by a sense of the graver problems of existence, nor generally emotional, could have been induced to

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