The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-07-27
LAMARTINE.

of Rabelais and Calvin, and later on of
Amyot and Montaigne, and it could
not be but that the literature of the
! country should receive and retain the
! impress as regards style, phraseology
and method, of a treatment of these
! great masters In. poetry it was the
! age of Ronsard and the Pleiade. that
| remarkable group of scholars who con-
/ sciously and formally endeavored to
! mold French poetry and the literary
! language of France upon the models of
| the classic literatures of Greece and
Rome; the age, too, when Jodeile, one
of the Pleiade, instituted the French
! tragic drama upon the restricted plan
OF the Latin dramatist, Seneca. But,
on the whole, il was an uncritical age,
with many eXtravagances, many incon-
gruities and much verbal infelicity and
uncouthneSs.
Next followed the early half of the
seventeenth century. In this age NAL
herbe, the uncOmpromising stickler for
conformity to time-honored patterns
was the dominant influence. French
poetry became a thing of highly fin
ished and definitely constructed art. So
also did the drama. Corneille, by his
vigor of thought and Imagination, was
able, it is true, to give the drama
dignity and power. But he worked
wholly within conventional limits. Be
yond these he dared not go. In prose,
too. the elder Balzac, by the example
of a style at once chaste. clear, pre-
else and logical established a model
which the sentiment of the age set up
as obligatory. The vocabularies which
Malherbe allowed and BalZac used be-
came the standard literary vocabu
laries of the language.
Then followed the age of Louis XIV.
the age, that is to say, of Moliere and
Racine and Boileau. Boileau had be-
come the great literary lawgiver of the
land, and he strictly followed Malher-
be. only with a still more arbitrary
rule. with narrower ideas. less knowl-
edge of the literature of the world, less
sympathy for that which was innovat-
ing or unconventional. Classicism-the
following of exact models, the strict
use of the standard vocabulary and of
accepted phraseology. the employment
only of characters and situations and
incidents sanctioned by traditional au-
thority-reached its ne plus ultra.
Then followed the eighteenth centu-
ry, an age which. in respect to literary
ideals, adopted to the last extreme the
conventions which had descended 70 1t
from the preceding age. 1t was an age
great in some forms of literature, as,
for example in ridicule and satire, in
the hands of Voltaire; in historic and
socioiogic congratulations. in the hands
of Montesquieu; but in respect to those
branches of literature with which lit
erary form is most concerned 1t was
sterile and barren. The one great eN-
ception was Rousseau, and with Rous-
seau first began that great reaction
against cut-and- dried theories in the
literary art which later on was called
the romantic movement.
Following in the eighteenth century
was the age of Napoleon-an age of
transition. an age of continued decad-
ence. but also of continued and increas-
ing reaction against classicism. The
constructive effort of the Napoleonlc
age is seen almost wholly in the work
OF Chateaubriand. who has been right
fully called father of the romantic
movement" The critical and EXPOSE
tory work of the age, so far as the re-
action against classicism is concerned,
is seen almost wholly in the work of
Nine de Stael. But Nine. de Stael was
something more than a mere critic
and expositor. In her enthusiasm for
liberty, and in her sympathy with the
emotions and impulses of womankind.
she gives indication of the approach
of the new era. both in its better and
in its less admirable phases. She is
indeed its true herald.
There was an interval. however. A
new generation had to be born. In
the meantime Lamartine GT90-1S69) APP
peared and became an almost exactly
representative connecting link between
the old era and the new. He had the
reverence for established form, the
spirit of uniform compliance with ac-
cepted canons of taste which ever char
acterized the classicists. But he also
had the note of sympathy with nature,
which was one of the characteristic
features of the new era; but the note
had no real power. in ii, no dynamic
quality, no vital intrinsic character or
individuality. 1t was merely a pre-