INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

OF THE

HISTORY OF FRENCH POETRY.

THE papers of which this volume is composed, were originally published in various numbers of the London Magazine, between the years 1821 and 1825, at which time that periodical could reckon among its contributors names of no less note than those of Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincy, Allan Cunningham, Thomas Hood, Thomas Carlyle, and the author's highly valued friend George Darley. contributions of many of these have long since been published in a separate form, and their works occupy no mean place in our standard literature. Their success, added to a conviction of the merit of the work itself, has induced me to collect together the following papers, and to offer them to the public under their author's name.

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In doing this, one difficulty presented itself: the notices of the several French poets should properly stand in their chronological order, so that the reader might be enabled to see the progress made in the

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art at the several periods in which the different schools of poetry flourished. But this was impracticable, without frequent alterations of the text, for that the later written papers contain references to former ones, though these may happen to carry us further forward in the history. The papers themselves, though doubtless written with a view of being afterwards published in a separate form, were composed and printed as at the time best suited the author's mood or convenience. That on Thibaut, King of Navarre, which appears second in this volume for the reason stated in the note at the beginning of that article, was sent out first as a specimen ; its success warranted the subsequent series.

To obviate the defect in the chronological arrangement, I have prefixed a table, in which all are placed according to their dates, a guide that will probably content most readers, without their having recourse to the more tedious process of following me through a hasty review of the History of French Poetry, from its first beginnings to the time of Malherbe, wherein I propose not only to connect historically the several authors, of whom we have an account in this work, but also to fill up the interstices or gaps in the history, by notices of such others as either in their day produced an influence on their country's literature, or still retain a prominent place in its annals.

By way of introduction a few words must be said

of the origin of the French language, and of the earliest French poets, the Trouvères.

The French language was originally formed from a mixture of the ancient Gallic with the Latin, on which was afterwards engrafted the Tudesque or language of the Franks, consequent on their occupation of the country. Each province had its separate dialect, but the most marked and comprehensive distinction is that which is made between the langue d'oc and the langue d'oil,* the former used in the parts south, the latter in the parts north of the river Loire the principal difference consists in the terminations of words, the former or langue d'oc being in that respect very similar to the Latin, the latter or the langue d'oil approaching nearer to the Tudesque. The former again was the language of the Provençal troubadours, the latter of their imitators and successors the trouvères, who may be considered as the first parents of the French language and poetry in all the various changes they have successively undergone from that time to the present. With them, therefore, our account properly begins.

Towards the latter part of the twelfth century the trouvères, successors of the Provençal troubadours,†

* Oc and oil are the affirmative particles of the respective dialects, both meaning "yes."

+ The troubadours cannot properly be considered as the fathers of French poetry, except so far as they

first begun to write poems in the French, or, more correctly speaking, the Romance language. The subjects of these early rhymers were drawn from three chief sources,* namely, traditions derived from the ancients, whence the romances of Alexander, of Philip of Macedon, Æneas, and the like; secondly, from the traditions of the Britons, whence the romances of which Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are the heroes; lastly, from their own national traditions, whence those poems of which the deeds of Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France form the subject.

Many, who may properly be called Chroniclers, contented themselves with putting into rhyme the history of their times and country. Thus Grain d'Or de Douay wrote an account of the first crusade,

were imitated by the trouvères. The languages are so distinct, that it is quite possible to understand the one and not the other. Thus the first half of the first volume of Les Poètes François depuis le XIIe siècle par M. Auguis, Paris, 1824, consists of selections from the troubadours, the latter half of selections from the trouvères; the latter may be easily understood by a moderate French scholar, the former I confess myself unable to make out for many consecutive lines, even with the help of a dictionary and the glossary that accompanies the work itself.

* See the Dissertation prefixed to Li Romans de Berte aus grans piés, par M. Paulin Paris, published at Paris, 1832.

and Robert Wace, an Anglo-Norman, the Wars of the Conquest of England by William of Normandy. Numbers of fables were intermingled with these accounts, and the writers of chronicles drew from the same sources as the writers of romances.

In the thirteenth century this class of writers increased to such an extent, that no fewer than two hundred rhymers are reckoned of that æra.

But it is in vain to look for any thing approaching to poetical taste in these romances. All appears formed in the same mould; everywhere the same personages, the same incidents are met with. If therefore we would form a favourable opinion of the poetical productions of this period, we must have recourse to their fabliaux, tales in verse, the subjects of which were chiefly drawn from the manners of the times; their Serventes, originally songs,* composed in honour of the deity, or in praise of some great man,

* This appears to have been the original design of the Serventes, whence the name as expressing service or worship. Roquefort so describes it in his dictionary v. "Servantois," and adds " Borel is mistaken in saying they were satires." Yet this same Roquefort, without noticing the inconsistency, says in a subsequent work (De la Poésie Françoise dans les XIIe et XIIIe siècles, p. 221, 222) that they were generally satirical, but often contained a mixture of satire and praise. Goujet says Serventes were satires against all sorts of people. Bibliothèque Françoise, x. 42, 43.