The French Government--one may say, every Government on the Continent in those days--had the special weakness of all bureaucracies; namely, that want of moral force which compels them to fall back at last on physical force, and transforms the ruler into a bully, and the soldier into a policeman and a gaoler.AGovernment of parvenus, uncertain of its own position, will be continually trying to assert itself to itself, by vexatious intermeddling and intruding pretensions; and then, when it meets with the resistance of free and rational spirits, will either recoil in awkward cowardice, or fly into a passion, and appeal to the halter and the sword.Such a Government can never take itself for granted, because it knows that it is not taken for granted by the people.It never can possess the quiet assurance, the courteous dignity, without swagger, yet without hesitation, which belongs to hereditary legislators; by which term is to be understood, not merely kings, not merely noblemen, but every citizen of a free nation, however democratic, who has received from his forefathers the right, the duty, and the example of self-government.
Such was the political and social state of the Ancien Regime, not only in France, but if we are to trust (as we must trust) M.de Tocqueville, in almost every nation in Europe, except Britain.
And as for its moral state.We must look for that--if we have need, which happily all have not--in its lighter literature.
I shall not trouble you with criticisms on French memoirs--of which those of Madame de Sevigne are on the whole, the most painful (as witness her comments on the Marquise de Brinvilliers's execution), because written by a woman better and more human than ordinary.Nor with "Menagiana," or other 'ana's--as vain and artificial as they are often foul; nor with novels and poems, long since deservedly forgotten.On the first perusal of this lighter literature, you will be charmed with the ease, grace, lightness with which everything is said.On the second, you will be somewhat cured of your admiration, as you perceive how little there is to say.The head proves to be nothing but a cunning mask, with no brains inside.
Especially is this true of a book, which I must beg those who have read it already, to recollect.To read it I recommend no human being.We may consider it, as it was considered in its time, the typical novel of the Ancien Regime.A picture of Spanish society, written by a Frenchman, it was held to be--and doubtless with reason--a picture of the whole European world.Its French editor (of 1836) calls it a grande epopee; "one of the most prodigious efforts of intelligence, exhausting all forms of humanity"--in fact, a second Shakespeare, according to the lights of the year 1715.Imean, of course, "Gil Blas." So picturesque is the book, that it has furnished inexhaustible motifs to the draughtsman.So excellent is its workmanship, that the enthusiastic editor of 1836 tells us--and doubtless he knows best--that it is the classic model of the French tongue; and that, as Le Sage "had embraced all that belonged to man in his composition, he dared to prescribe to himself to embrace the whole French language in his work." It has been the parent of a whole school of literature--the Bible of tens of thousands, with admiring commentators in plenty; on whose souls may God have mercy!
And no wonder.The book has a solid value, and will always have, not merely from its perfect art (according to its own measure and intention), but from its perfect truthfulness.It is the Ancien Regime itself.It set forth to the men thereof, themselves, without veil or cowardly reticence of any kind; and inasmuch as every man loves himself, the Ancien Regime loved "Gil Blas," and said, "The problem of humanity is solved at last." But, ye long-suffering powers of heaven, what a solution! It is beside the matter to call the book ungodly, immoral, base.Le Sage would have answered: "Of course it is; for so is the world of which it is a picture." No;the most notable thing about the book is its intense stupidity; its dreariness, barrenness, shallowness, ignorance of the human heart, want of any human interest.If it be an epos, the actors in it are not men and women, but ferrets--with here and there, of course, a stray rabbit, on whose brains they may feed.It is the inhuman mirror of an inhuman age, in which the healthy human heart can find no more interest than in a pathological museum.
That last, indeed, "Gil Blas" is; a collection of diseased specimens.No man or woman in the book, lay or clerical, gentle or ******, as far as I can remember, do their duty in any wise, even if they recollect that they have any duty to do.Greed, chicane, hypocrisy, uselessness are the ruling laws of human society.A new book of Ecclesiastes, crying, "Vanity of vanity, all is vanity;" the "conclusion of the whole matter" being left out, and the new Ecclesiastes rendered thereby diabolic, instead of like that old one, divine.For, instead of "Fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of main," Le Sage sends forth the new conclusion, "Take care of thyself, and feed on thy neighbours, for that is the whole duty of man." And very faithfully was his advice (easy enough to obey at all times) obeyed for nearly a century after "Gil Blas" appeared.
About the same time there appeared, by a remarkable coincidence, another work, like it the child of the Ancien Regime, and yet as opposite to it as light to darkness.If Le Sage drew men as they were, Fenelon tried at least to draw them as they might have been and still might be, were they governed by sages and by saints, according to the laws of God."Telemaque" is an ideal--imperfect, doubtless, as all ideals must be in a world in which God's ways and thoughts are for ever higher than man's; but an ideal nevertheless.