especially as afterwards developed in the apocalyptic Paroles
d’un croyant (1839) are to be discerned many of the tendencies
of the Romantic school, particularly its hardy and picturesque
choice of language, and the disdain of established and accepted
methods which it professed. The signs of the revolution itself
were, as was natural, first given in periodical literature. The
feudalist affectations of Chateaubriand and the legitimists
excited a sort of aesthetic affection for Gothicism, and Walter
Scott became one of the most favourite authors in France.
Soon was started the periodical La Muse française, in which the
names of Hugo, Vigny, Deschamps and Madame de Girardin
appear. Almost all the writers in this periodical were eager
royalists, and for some time the battle was still fought on political
grounds. There could, however, be no special connexion
between classical drama and liberalism; and the liberal journal,
the Globe, with no less a person than Sainte-Beuve among its
contributors, declared definite war against classicism in the
drama. The chief “classical” organs were the Constitutionnel,
the Journal des débats, and after a time and not exclusively,
the Revue des deux mondes. Soon the question became purely
literary, and the Romantic school proper was born in the famous
cénacle or clique in which Hugo was chief poet, Sainte-Beuve
chief critic, and Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, the brothers Émile
(1791–1871) and Antony (1800–1869), Deschamps, Petrus Borel
(1809–1859) and others were officers. Alfred de Vigny and
Alfred de Musset stand somewhat apart, and so does Charles
Nodier (1780–1844), a versatile and voluminous writer, the very
variety and number of whose works have somewhat prevented
the individual excellence of any of them from having justice
done to it. The objects of the school, which was at first violently
opposed, so much so that certain academicians actually petitioned
the king to forbid the admission of any Romantic piece at the
Théâtre Français, were, briefly stated, the burning of everything
which had been adored, and the adoring of everything which
had been burnt. They would have no unities, no arbitrary
selection of subjects, no restraints on variety of versification, no
academically limited vocabulary, no considerations of artificial
beauty, and, above all, no periphrastic expression. The mot
propre, the calling of a spade a spade, was the great commandment
of Romanticism; but it must be allowed that what was
taken away in periphrase was made up in adjectives. Musset,
who was very much of a free-lance in the contest, maintained
indeed that the differentia of the Romantic was the copious use
of this part of speech. All sorts of epithets were invented to
distinguish the two parties, of which flamboyant and grisâtre
are perhaps the most accurate and expressive pair—the former
serving to denote the gorgeous tints and bold attempts of the
new school, the latter the grey colour and monotonous outlines
of the old. The representation of Hernani in 1830 was the culmination
of the struggle, and during great part of the reign of
Louis Philippe almost all the younger men of letters in France
were Romantics. The representation of the Lucrèce of François
Ponsard (1814–1867) in 1846 is often quoted as the herald or sign
of a classical reaction. But this was only apparent, and signified,
if it signified anything, merely that the more juvenile excesses
of the Romantics were out of date. All the greatest men of
letters of France since 1830 have been on the innovating side,
and all without exception, whether intentionally or not, have had
their work coloured by the results of the movement, and of those
which have succeeded it as developments rather than reactions.
Drama and Poetry since 1830.—Although the immediate subject on which the battles of Classics and Romantics arose was dramatic poetry, the dramatic results of the movement have not been those of greatest value or most permanent character. The principal effect in the long run has been the introduction of a species of play called drame, as opposed to regular comedy and tragedy, admitting of much freer treatment than either of these two as previously understood in French, and lending itself in some measure to the lengthy and disjointed action, the multiplicity of personages, and the absence of stock characters which characterized the English stage in its palmy days. All Victor Hugo’s dramatic works are of this class, and each, as it was produced or published (Cromwell, Hernani, Marion de l’Orme, Le Roi s’amuse, Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor, Ruy Blas and Les Burgraves), was a literary event, and excited the most violent discussion—the author’s usual plan being to prefix a prose preface of a very militant character to his work. A still more melodramatic variety of drame was that chiefly represented by Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), whose Henri III and Antony, to which may be added later La Tour de Nesle and Mademoiselle de Belleisle, were almost as much rallying points for the early Romantics as the dramas of Hugo, despite their inferior literary value. At the same time Alexandre Soumet (1788–1845), in Norma, Une Fête de Néron, &c., and Casimir Delavigne in Marino Faliero, Louis XI, &c., maintained a somewhat closer adherence to the older models. The classical or semi-classical reaction of the last years of Louis Philippe was represented in tragedy by Ponsard (Lucrèce, Agnes de Méranie, Charlotte Corday, Ulysse, and several comedies), and on the comic side, to a certain extent, by Émile Augier (1820–1889) in L’Aventurière, Le Gendre de M. Poirier, Le Fils de Giboyer, &c. During almost the whole period Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) poured forth innumerable comedies of the vaudeville order, which, without possessing much literary value, attained immense popularity. For the last half-century the realist development of Romanticism has had the upper hand in dramatic composition, its principal representatives being on the one side Victorien Sardou (1831–1909), who in Nos Intimes, La Famille Benoîton, Rabagas, Dora, &c., chiefly devoted himself to the satirical treatment of manners, and Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895), author in 1852 of the famous Dame aux camélias, who in such pieces as Les Idées de Madame Aubray and L’Étrangère rather busied himself with morals and “problems,” while his Dame aux camélias (1852) is sometimes ranked as the first of such things in “modern” style. Certain isolated authors also deserve notice, such as Joseph Autran (1813–1877), a poet and academician having some resemblance to Lamartine, whose Fille d’Æschyle created for him a dramatic reputation which he did not attempt to follow up, and Gabriel Legouvé (b. 1807), whose Adrienne Lecouvreur was assisted to popularity by the admirable talent of Rachel. A special variety of drama of the first literary importance has also been cultivated in this century under the title of scènes or proverbes, slight dramatic sketches in which the dialogue and style are of even more importance than the action. The best of all of these are those of Alfred de Musset (1810–1857), whose Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée, On ne badine pas avec l’amour, &c., are models of grace and wit. Among his followers may be mentioned especially Octave Feuillet (1821–1890). Few social dramas of the kind in modern times have attained a greater success than Le Monde où l’on s’ennuie (1868) of Édouard Pailleron (1834–1899). (See also Drama.)
In poetry proper, as in drama, Victor Hugo showed the way. In him all the Romantic characteristics were expressed and embodied—disregard of arbitrary critical rules, free choice of subject, variety and vigour of metre, splendour and sonorousness of diction, abundant “local colour,” Victor Hugo. and that irrepressible individualism which is one of the chief, though not perhaps the chief, of the symptoms. If the careful attention to form which is also characteristic of the movement is less apparent in him than in some of his followers, it is not because it is absent, but because the enthusiastic conviction with which he attacked every subject somewhat diverts attention from it. As with the merits so with the defects. A deficient sense of the ludicrous which characterized many of the Romantics was strongly apparent in their leader, as was also an equally representative grandiosity, and a fondness for the introduction of foreign and unfamiliar words, especially proper names, which occasionally produces an effect of burlesque. Victor Hugo’s earliest poetical works, his chiefly royalist and political Odes, were cast in the older and accepted forms, but already displayed astonishing poetical qualities. But it was in the Ballades (for instance, the splendid Pas d’armes du roi Jean, written in verses of three syllables) and the Orientales (of which may be taken for a sample the sixth section of Navarin, a perfect
