The Press. — London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

APRIL 29, 1854. yiteraturt. Julian; or, the CloB6 of an Era. By L. F. Bungener. London: Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co. The Priest and the Huguenot; or, Persecution in the Beign of Louis the Fifteenth. From the French of Louis Felix Bungener. London : Nelson and Sons. OUR readers may recollect that we introduced M. Bungener to their notice in the course of last year. (PRESS, VOL i., p. 400.) We re corded at the time our surprise at the little attention that had been paid in this country to his highly-interesting and curious work called " The Preacher and the King ; or, a Ser mon under Louis the Fourteenth." He has since published two new fictions, brought out almost simultaneously for English circulation, in the hope that they may prove acceptable to general readers. We fear, however, that of these works, criti cised as fictions, we cannot give a very favour able report. They are neither popular novels nor historical essays, but literary galleries of French public characters, interspersed with acute remarks on the hollowness of Voltairian philosophy, and the theological errors and political tyranny of the Church of Rome. With all the talents that adorn the professor's chair, M. Bungeuer's wants the subtlety and pathos required to interest the heart. In structing our minds, he cannot sway our feel ings, and, while we admire his polemical powers and approve of the direction in which he applies them, we could wish that he was able to vary the profound by the introduction of the pathetic. He can teach but he cannot thrill. He wants the wealth of imagination, that not only creates ideal beings, but assigns them original and peculiar careers. Acquirements, analysis, a certain narrative power, will no more make a novelist than a poet. To produce a good fiction there must be combination in the plot along with creation in the characters. In his former work, " The Preacher and the King," M. Bungener succeeded, because the subject was both real and fresh, and, while there was reasonable ingenuity in the plot, some of the characters (especially Bourdaloue) were portrayed artistically. We were intro duced into a little-known corner of the Court of Louis XIV., and our curiosity was stimulated with a near view of the mechanics of sermon making in the days of Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Claude. We were taken, as it were, into the romance of the pulpit, and the throes of genius struggling for human applause on a celestial theme were depicted to us with nicety of remark and rare vigour of style. But iu "Julian, or the Close of an Era," the spirits of the French encyclopredists, with their ghastly phantasms and grinning mock ery, are let loose upon us. The Biographic Universelle is ransacked ; Grimm's correspon dence is re-edited and moralised and Protes tantised for us ; in place of characters fit for fiction, we have chapters of censure, and, when we arrive at the end of these delineations and disquisitions, we are not half as instructed as we might be by the perusal of the memoirs of Mallet du Pan, or that most remarkable of recent memoirs, the correspondence of Mira beau with Count de la Marck. The form is that of a novel, the matter is that of a history, and the animating spirit that of a reviewer. Thus we are asked to admire fiction without invention, and to accept as reality what has no authenticity. But we need not proceed with any criticism on these works. The first few lines of the "De Arte Poetic& " contain all that a Lessing or a Schlegel would care to say about such a misapplication of eminent lite rary talent. We are afraid, also, that the multitude of general readers are beginning to find the eighteenth century becoming n a bore. either They can anticipate nearly ev eryth ing that moralist can utter or novelist suggest about Parisian saloons, Louis XV., the Misfile, cor ruption, seduction, infidel abbes and petits soupers, reckless young viscounts, and rapa cious farmers-general, and the growl of popu- THE PRESS. lar discontent muttered at intervals. The eighteenth century, regarded from a Pa risian point of view, with its prolonged levity and its impending catastrophe, seems to us like looking at a scene of revellers by Wat teau, under a thunder-cloud painted in by Turner. We have in truth been made over-familiar with the period ; and even as an essayist M. Bungener has to contend against the numbers who unconsciously de scribed it at the time, along with his own con temporaries, who have sketched, preached, and lectured about it from every point of view. It is, therefore, not wonderful that on so exhausted ground his toil should not be well repaid. Julian is a Roman Catholic priest, with a pietistic spirit, an amiable character, and a wavering faith. He is used merely as a sort of lay figure, for the purpose of grouping about him all the characters of the time of Louis XV., stuck up in one posture in their familiar historical costume, and inevitably suggesting to us Madame Tussaud's ex hibition. Our author appears amidst these stiff mechanical figures, and stalks round them, moralising about each, and making us feel that ethics are out of place amongst such waxworks. Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Marie Antoinette, Madame du Deffand, and MMes. Philippon and Necker in their teens (the Roland and De Stael of history), de Mau repas , La Harpe, the Due de Chartres, Mirabeau, Robespierre, and, last not least, Doctor Guil lotin (whose bones we thought were Mr. Croker's peculium), with many more, figure as " characters " in "Julian." Then in " The Priest and the Huguenot" there is a similar parading of historical names, interspersed with passages that read like extracts from ser mons. A reference to the table of contents will at a glance show the motley nature of the literary fare offered to us : L'Esprit of Helvetius A strange Auto•da fe l9O The Character and Works of Helvetius French Journals in the Eighteenth Century Voltaire's Implacability Peculiarities of Rousseau l9O The Encyclopaedists observe the Auto-da-fe from a distance - Recantations of the Infidels Want of Candour of Authors of the present Day Helvetius becomes thoughtful—Sad Discovery caus ing serious Reflections Noble Career of Antoine Court Literary Labours of Court de Gebelin And again : State of the Foreign Relations of France, Broglie and Soubise Richelieu's Studies Richelieu and his Task A Bankrupt Nation Diplomacy Fruitless Consultations—The Navy Plans of the Protestants _ _ _ We are more sorry for this, as M. Bungener has a mind of remarkable breadth, and wields a pen of masculine eloquence on themes suited to his discursive and reflective genius. We rank him very high amongst the composers of philosophical eloquence. There is a struggle in his intellect between the German and Gallivan modes of looking at life, its duties, and its mysteries. Born in 1814 at Marseilles, Laurence Louis Felix Bungener inherited from his father (a native of Heddesdorf, near Neuweid, in Rhenish Prussia) the contem plativeness of German character. His mother was a Swiss Vaudoise, and it appears that in his early years he displayed many signs of a deeply meditative mind. He was remarkable, even in boyhood, for his long solitary walks amid the wild rock scenery of Marseilles, and at eleven years of age he wrote a sermon which arrested special notice from an accom plished clergyman. He studied both at Mar seilles and Geneva, and was ordained a minis ter at the latter city in 1839, as it seems that he was not entitled to the rights of a French citizen. In the professor's chair, and in the pulpit, he lost no time in grappling with Romanism, against which he has preached and written with a union of strenuous logic and serene power rarely found in polemical literature. Without the vehemence of Merle D'Aubigne, or the rhapsodical bursts of Michelet, M. Bungener has assailed the Church of Rome with sturdy spirit and a skilful use of theological argumentation, that can unmask sophistry even to vulgar percep- 198 202 203 204 200 207 399 tion, and lay bare a Jesuit with an avengin g adroitness that might make Mr. Gladstone shudder with nervous apprehensions. Peelite abettors of Romanism are sure to be seized with cold tremors on observing the manner in which M. Bungener can rend into fragments the cobweb tissues of Puseyite casuistry. His talents seem to us the more admirable because he can refute without railing, and employ the severest logic while using a popular style without ever sinking into the rhetoric of a scold. Like Pascal, he appears to hold that in controversy " one should have an interior logic while speaking like the people." Possibly, if M. Bungener sojourned amongst us, he would feel that some of our Exeter-hall theologians often do not serve our scriptural faith, in their well-meant but not very skilful onslaughts against the Wisemans and New mans of the day. Appreciating M. Bungener as a reasoner and thinker, we could wish that he would give up the composition of fiction and exercise his faculties in history and philosophy. But, as he comes before us as a novelist, we shall ex tract some specimens of his style. Here we have a view of Julian after his becoming a priest:— Julian soon found that in his functions of priest he should have to teach that which he rejected in childhood and which as a simple scholar he had been ashamed to, learn. But once a priest he thought he could more quickly abandon this dishonest casuistry, and with respect to mo rality there was nothing to give up. It was supposed by many that he took orders for the purpose of having some share in the wealth of the Church ; under the patronage of Madame de Luxembourg, he would soon obtain some rich abbey, the revenues of which he would dissipate, like so many others, at Paris. The world, therefore, was much astonished to see him seriously assume his new character, ask for a country cure, and, notwithstanding all that was said about it, establish himself there. He wished it to be in one of the distant provinces, but Madame de Luxem bourg insisted that he should not go far off. During six months, however, he only went two or three times to Paris. Having devoted himself entirely to the duties of his voca tion, he congratulated himself at first on the success of his plan. For the first two months he had been left as little as possible to his own thoughts, having only time and strength to fulfil the daily routine of his office. He regu larly said mass, regularly read his breviary, regularly read his daily discourse on Sunday ; he lived by clockwork, and happy—as a clock. Nobody in the parish appeared to require anything further of him. The minister for these poor peo ple was the man of the mass, the man of baptisms, burials, and marriages. He was also, it is true, the man of the confessional ; but Julian shunned it ; he would not risk meeting there with distracted' souls who might recal his own conflicts. Christianity was there what Humanism always makes it when things follow their natural course, that is to say, a certain union of observances and ceremo nies, a spiritualism in which everything that can devolve into formalism does so, and about the rest the pastor is often as ignorant as his flock. Nothing, therefore, could have served Julian's purposes better than this poor village. To cultivate this spiritual field it did not require a greater degree of intelligence and capacity than the care of the pastor's garden. But woe to him who is reduced to reckon upon the anni hilation of his own being ! A living man cannot of his own accord become a corpse. Life soon returned to Julian, and, with life, suffering. To his old griefs he had joined that of a perpetual lie, having condemned himself to this in order to drive away the others. It pained him to be the minister of such puerile super stitions, such gross I.•ractices, for he was not of those who by the aid of a little poetry found everything beautiful, as if the beautiful must of necessity be the true, or the ab surd could ever be beautiful. It pained hint to bestow on the penitents that absolution which he felt hod alone could give, since hod only can read the heart. Again, he was grieved at the confidence shown him by his parishioners, and all the marks of respect which they paid him, and he spurned to receive the salary (paltry though it was) which rewarded his labours. Was it not, he asked himself, the price of hypocrisy and hes ? Even good works, on which he had so greatly depended to throw a happy influence over the rest, did not possess that sweetness which he had anticipated. Good.works had brought happiness to a sceptic, settled and quiet in his un belief, as for instance to Helvetias ; but to a distracted soul they were mere observances, withered fruits, a body without a soul. " Faith without works is dead," with the Scripture ; but Julian felt it intensely that works also are dead without faith. He sought to give them life, which must first be in the individual, and Julian had it not. What was to be done ? To tell the people that their re ligion was worth nothing would be a scandal, and still more a cruelty, unless he had another and a better one to offer them. He might leave them without an explanation ; but he would have to explain himself elsewhere, and how I would the world understand his scruples ? ' He confided them to his bishop, but he, unfortunately, was the man least calculated to comprehend them. Julian attends the deathbed of Madame L de Deffand, and the following scene takes • place : I