



Produced by Lee Dawei, Josephine Paolucci and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.









A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON  BOMBAY  CALCUTTA  MADRAS  MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO
DALLAS  SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.
TORONTO




A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH

VOL. I

FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917

COPYRIGHT




PREFACE


In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect--and dangerously
imperfect--product.

In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
never, at such length, attempted before--the history of a Kind, and a
Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
communicating to readers the _pleasure_ of literature. I might almost
say that it is the history of that pleasure, quite as much as the
history of the kind itself, that I wish to trace. In doing so it is
obviously superfluous to include inferiorities and failures, unless they
have some very special lesson or interest, or have been (as in the case
of the minorities on the bridge of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries) for the most part, and unduly, neglected, though they are
important as experiments and links.[1] We really do want here--what the
reprehensible hedonism of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his submission to what
some one has called "the eternal enemy, Caprice," wanted in all
cases--"only the chief and principal things." I wish to give a full
history of how what is commonly called the French Novel came into being
and kept itself in being; but I do not wish to give an exhaustive,
though I hope to give a pretty full, account of its practitioners.

In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the
way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus
who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall
hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the
French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us
in possessing the general term _Roman_, and I have perhaps taken a
certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it
to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"--that of _roman_
would need no extension--to include, not only the prose books, old and
new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances
of the earlier period.

The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong
familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my
holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during
my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure
which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at
Elizabeth College, Guernsey, I read more French than any other
literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late
'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round
off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate
account of French literature in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, for a
long series of articles on French novelists in the _Fortnightly Review_,
and for the _Primer_ and _Short History_ of the subject which I wrote
for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a _Saturday
Review_er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.

Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
of the once familiar field "_parc_ and infrequent." But I doubt whether
any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
gone more than a little farther.

For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
story-abstract now and then.

There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
_History_ has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
with my own library (save a few books with a reserve _pretium
affectionis_ on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of course in some
cases on previous writing of my own, than ever before, though, except in
one special case,[2] there will be found, I think, not a single page of
mere "rehashing." I mention this without the slightest desire to beg
off, in one sense, from any omissions or mistakes which may be found
here, but merely to assure my readers that such mistakes and omissions
are not due to idle and careless bookmaking. That "books have fates" is
an accepted proposition. In respect to one of these--possession of
materials and authorities--mine have been exceptionally fortunate
hitherto, and if they had any merit it was no doubt largely due to this.
I have, in the present, endeavoured to make the best of what was not
quite such good fortune. And if anybody still says, "Why did you not
wait till you could supply deficiencies?" I can only reply that, after
seventy, [Greek: nyx gar erchetai] is a more insistent warrant, and
warning, than ever.[3]

                          GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

    [_Edinburgh, 1914-15; Southampton, 1915-16_]
    1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _May 31, 1917_.




ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA


P. 3, _note_.--This note was originally left vague, because, in the
first place, to perform public and personal fantasias with one's spear
on the shield of a champion, with whom one does not intend to fight out
the quarrel, seems to me bad chivalry, and secondly, because those
readers who were likely to be interested could hardly mistake the
reference. The regretted death, a short time after the page was sent to
press, of Mr. W. J. Courthope may give occasion to an acknowledgment,
coupled with a sincere _ave atque vale_. Mr. Courthope was never an
intimate friend of mine, and our agreement was greater in political than
in literary matters: but for more than thirty years we were on the best
terms of acquaintance, and I had a thorough respect for his
accomplishments.

P. 20, l. 5.--_Fuerres de Gadres._ I wonder how many people thought of
this when Englishmen "forayed Gaza" just before Easter, 1917?

P. 46, mid-page.--It so happened that, some time after having passed
this sheet for press, I was re-reading Dante (as is my custom every year
or two), and came upon that other passage (in the _Paradiso_, and
therefore not known to more than a few of the thousands who know the
Francesca one) in which the poet refers to the explanation between
Lancelot and the Queen. It had escaped my memory (though I think I may
say honestly that I knew it well enough) when I passed the sheet: but it
seemed to me that perhaps some readers, who do not care much for
"parallel passages" in the pedantic sense, might, like myself, feel
pleasure in having the great things of literature, in different places,
brought together. Moreover, the _Paradiso_ allusion seems to have
puzzled or misled most of the commentators, including the late Mr. A. J.
Butler, who, by his translation and edition of the _Purgatorio_ in 1880,
was my Virgil to lead me through the _Commedia_, after I had sinfully
neglected it for exactly half a life-time. He did not know, and might
easily not have known, the Vulgate _Lancelot_: but some of those whom he
cites, and who evidently _did_ know it, do not seem to have recognised
the full significance of the passage in Dante. The text will give the
original: the _Paradiso_ (xvi. 13-15) reference tells how Beatrice
(after Cacciaguida's biographical and historical recital, and when
Dante, in a confessed outburst of family pride, addresses his ancestor
with the stately _Voi_), "smiling, appeared like her who coughed at the
first fault which is written of Guinevere." This, of course (see text
once more), is the Lady of Malahault, though Dante does not name her as
he does Prince Galahault in the other _locus_. The older commentators
(who, as has been said, _did_ know the original) do not seem to have
seen in the reference much more than that both ladies noticed, and
perhaps approved, what was happening. But I think there is more in it.
The Lady of Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that
Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her
cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as
she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that _pride_ was even
more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance
of it: but still it _was_ an instance--and the "smile" which is _not_
recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have _caught_ you out."
Even if this be excessive "reading into" the texts, the juxtaposition of
them may not be unsatisfactory to some who are not least worth
satisfying. (Since writing this, I have been reminded that Mr. Paget
Toynbee did make the "juxtaposition" in his Clarendon Press _Specimens
of Old French_ (October, 1892), printing there the "Lady of Malahault"
passage from MSS. copied by Professor Ker. But there can be no harm in
duplicating it.)

P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
which the strength of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ helped to beget the
sweetness of _The Water Babies_.

Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.--After I had "made my" own "sie