Chapter III THE CAUSES WHICH, BEFORE THE TIME OF ROUSSEAU, PAVED THE WAY FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE COSMOPOLITAN SPIRIT I. Circumstances which contributed to the diffusion of the cosmopolitan spirit during the first half of the century-Decline of the patriotic idea-Exhausted state of the national literature. II. Spread of the scientific spirit, and its literary results. III. The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in its relation to the influence of England; in him the Latin genius is combined with the Germanic. I THE refugees and Muralt, Voltaire and the abbé Prévost had prepared opinion in France for the influence of English literature, and by means of this influence, for that also of other Northern literatures. They all contributed, some with full consciousness and intention, others from simple intellectual curiosity and without any calculation of the consequences their action might entail, to impair the venerable prestige of classical literature by affording the French mind a glimpse of a literature which to all appearance at any rate was absolutely indigenous, was profoundly original, and, instead of being founded on tradition, tended exclusively in the direction of progress. "It seems," wrote Gottsched in 1739, " that the English are setting themselves to drive the French out of Germany."1 In France the invasion of English literature took place more slowly. Nevertheless, between 1700 and 1760, approximately speaking, a few of those who aspired to educate the masses were promoting 1 Manuscript letter preserved in the Zurich Library and quoted by M. de Greierz, in his Muralt. し L the cross-fertilization of the two literatures. 66 Many circum In the first place, it must be admitted, the decay of the patriotic idea. "The eighteenth century," it has been justly said, was neither Christian nor French." That is why, no less in literature than in everything else, it failed to maintain what for two centuries had been regarded as the national tradition. It is curious that the periods of the recrudescence of anglomania should coincide exactly with our most painful defeats or most disastrous treaties. Our admiration of England was never more lively than in 1748 and 1763, or thereabouts, and during the war with America. During the seven years war, it • reached fever-heat. In vain did a few patriots raise their voices in denunciation of "that detestable country, the horrible resort of the savages of Europe, where reason, humanity and nature are unable to make their voices heard." 2 In vain did the press pour forth its pamphlets and satires. We read in a poem issued in 1762: "Blood-nurtured tigers! Your Lockes and Newtons never taught you such barbarous lessons as these. From them arose your imperishable renown; they have absolved you from a Cromwell's crimes." 3 4 The author of a Petit catéchisme politique des Anglais, par demandes et par réponses, endeavours to rouse the national sentiment over the Port Mahon affair: "How do we define the science of government?" the English are supposed to be asked. "It is the practical knowledge of everything that is unjust and dishonest.—What is 'natural right'?—It is an ancient code of law implanted in the human heart, which we have just 1 E. Faguet, xviiie siècle, preface. 2 Les Sauvages de l'Europe. Berlin, 1750. (See the Journal encyclopédique, 1st June 1764.) 3 D'Arnauld, A la Nation, 1762. 41756. (Journal encyclopédique, September 1756). See also the Adresse à la nation anglaise, a patriotic poem, by a citizen, Paris, 1757, 12mo: "It has been thought permissible," says the author, in language which is highly significant, "to tell the truth boldly to a nation which tells it so frankly to its own kings"; and La difference du patriotisme national chez les Français et chez les Anglais (by Basset de la Marelle. Paris, 1766) in which the author calls attention very decidedly to the decline of the patriotic sentiment. amended in accordance with patterns only to be found in Barbary... What is a treaty ?-The thing for which we care less than for anything else in the world. What are boundaries? We have not the slightest desire to know.— What are friends?—What we shall never possess." "I Friends they possessed, nevertheless, and very warm ones. . Gibbon, who visited Paris in 1763, writes: "Our opinions, our manners, and even our dress were adopted in France; a ray of his nation's glory illumined every Englishman, and he was always supposed to be a patriot and a philosopher born." 1 "What did you think of the French?" Voltaire once asked Sherlock. found them agreeable, intelligent and refined," his guest replied. "I only noticed one fault in them: they imitate the English too much.” 2 Immediately after the conclusion of the disastrous peace which deprived France of her fairest colonies, Favart celebrated the union of the two peoples in his Anglais à Bordeaux: "Courage and honour knit nations together, and two peoples equal in virtue and intelligence throw down the barriers their decrees have raised, that they may be for ever friends."3 So strangely feeble was the national sentiment that these lines were applauded to the skies, and their author dragged on to the stage and loudly cheered. We must therefore note, as one of the causes which assisted the diffusion of anglomania, the decline of the patriotic idea. By a strange inconsistency, the virtues which the French 、admired in their neighbours were just those in which they themselves were most deficient. They envied the patriotism of the English, with all its fierceness and brutality. Even in 1728, Marivaux expressed his astonishment at these inconsistencies in a 1 Mémoires, ch. xv. 2 Lettres d'un voyageur anglais, p. 135. 3 The treaty of Paris was concluded in February. The play was produced in March 1763. The author submitted it to the English ambassador, who altered its title, and caused the performance to be preceded by that of Brutus, "a patriotic tragedy in the English style." In consequence of this disgraceful success, the Journal encyclopédique says: "The author formulates the charge that at Paris the English are represented as a great and generous nation which seeks to rival the French in talent and in virtue, an accusation which the public endorses by its applause." (1st March 1763.) 4 delightful passage: "It is an amusing nation-ours; its vanity is not like the vanity of other peoples; they are vain in a perfectly natural fashion; they don't strive to be subtle with it as well; they think a hundred times more of what is made in their own country than of anything made anywhere else on earth; there is not a trifle they possess but is superior to everything we have, no matter how beautiful; they speak of it with a respect they dare not fully express for fear of spoiling it; and they believe they are quite right, or, if ever there are times when they do not believe it, they are careful not to say so, for, if they did, where would be the honour of their country? There is some sincerity in vanity of this sort. . . . But as for us Frenchmen, we cannot let well alone, and have altered all that; our vanity, forsooth, is of a much more ingenious sort, we are infinitely more cunning in our self-conceit. Think highly of anything made in our own country! Why, whatever should we come to if we had to praise our fellow-countrymen? They would get too conceited, and we should be too much humiliated. No, no! It will never do to give such an advantage to men we spend all our lives with, and may meet wherever we go. Let us praise foreigners, by all means; they will never be rendered vain by it. Behold your portrait, Messieurs les Français. One would never believe how a Frenchman enjoys despising our best works, and preferring the silly nonsense which comes from a distance. Those people think more than we do,' says he, speaking of foreigners and at heart he doesn't believe it, and if he thinks he does I assure him he is mistaken. Why, what does he believe then? Nothing; but the fact is men's self-conceit must be kept alive. . . . When he ranks foreigners above his own country, however, Monsieur is no longer a native of it, he is the man of every nation" -the cosmopolitan. To be a citizen "of every nation," not to belong to one's t "native country "-this was the dream of French writers in the eighteenth century, and that is why "the silly nonsense which comes from a distance" met with such success. Is it not a mark of the "philosopher" to possess just this absolute deL'Indigent philosophe, 5th No. (1728). tachment from that national bond which may very well be one of the most absurd prejudices handed down from early ages? Where Marivaux was mistaken was in seeing in it nothing more than a fashion. It was one of the most profound tendencies of the age, one of its essential characteristics. Now that which distinguishes nations from one another, that which differentiates races, is, strictly, literature or art, that is to say, the expression of their manners and inherent genius. What unites them, on the other hand, is the philosophical or scientific spirit. Art is infinitely various, philosophy is one. The relativity of the former is opposed to the universality of the latter. And, by a natural consequence, as the influence of science increases, the power of art wanes. These two results were verified in the earlier half of the eighteenth century. Its first twenty years were, in a literary sense, barren. They witnessed little more than the liquidation of the grand siècle. One by one the survivors of the great epoch passed away; in 1704 Bossuet and Bourdaloue, in 1706 Bayle, in 1707 Vauban and Mabillon, in 1711 Boileau, and in 1715 Fénelon and Malebranche, as well as Louis XIV. The prominent writers of the eighteenth century, on the other hand, were but just coming into existence : Duclos was born in 1704, Buffon in 1707, Gresset and Mably in 1709, Rousseau in 1712, Diderot and Raynal in 1713, Helvétius, Vauvenargues and Condillac in 1715, d'Alembert in 1717, Fréron in 1718, Marmontel, d'Holbach and Grimm in 1723. Fontenelle alone-and herein lies his originality-formed, with Lesage, a connecting link between the two centuries. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Marivaux and Prévost were just taking the field, and indeed already opening fire. But if the period witnessed the disappearance of many figures in the literary world, it was marked also by the publication of many posthumous works; Bourdaloue's sermons, in 1707; the Politique tirée de l'Écriture Sainte, in 1709; the Mémoires of Retz, in 1717; the Dialogues sur l'éloquence de la chaire, in 1718; followed by the Traité de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même (1722), the Mémoires of Mme. de Motteville (1723), the Lettres |