francaise_ at a later period, which was in its turn succeeded by the
_Revue des deux mondes_. On the other hand, parliamentary eloquence was
even more important than journalism during the early period of the
Revolution. Mirabeau naturally stands at the head of orators of this
class, and next to him may be ranked the well-known names of Malouet and
Meunier among constitutionalists; of Robespierre, Marat and Danton, the
triumvirs of the Mountain; of Maury, Cazales and the vicomte de
Mirabeau, among the royalists; and above all of the Girondist speakers
Barnave, Vergniaud, and Lanjuinais. The last named survived to take part
in the revival of parliamentary discussion after the Restoration. But
the permanent contributions to French literature of this period of
voluminous eloquence are, as frequently happens in such cases, by no
means large. The union of the journalist and the parliamentary spirit
produced, however, in Paul Louis Courier a master of style. Courier
spent the greater part of his life, tragically cut short, in translating
the classics and studying the older writers of France, in which study he
learnt thoroughly to despise the pseudo-classicism of the 18th century.
It was not till he was past forty that he took to political writing, and
the style of his pamphlets, and their wonderful irony and vigour, at
once placed them on the level of the very best things of the kind. Along
with Courier should be mentioned Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), who,
though partly a romance writer and partly a philosophical author, was
mainly a politician and an orator, besides being fertile in articles and
pamphlets. Lamennais, like Lamartine, will best be dealt with later, and
the same may be said of Beranger; but Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael
must be noticed here. The former represents, in the influence which
changed the literature of the 18th century into the literature of the
19th, the vague spirit of unrest and "Weltschmerz," the affection for
the picturesque qualities of nature, the religious spirit occasionally
turning into mysticism, and the respect, sure to become more and more
definite and appreciative, for antiquity. He gives in short the romantic
and conservative element. Madame de Stael (1766-1817) on the other hand,
as became a daughter of Necker, retained a great deal of the Philosophe
character and the traditions of the 18th century, especially its
liberalism, its _sensibilite_, and its thirst for general information;
to which, however, she added a cosmopolitan spirit, and a readiness to
introduce into France the literary and social, as well as the political
and philosophical, peculiarities of other countries to which the 18th
century, in France at least, had been a stranger, and which
Chateaubriand himself, notwithstanding his excursions into English
literature, had been very far from feeling. She therefore contributed to
the positive and liberal side of the future movement. The absolute
literary importance of the two was very different.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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