was so pronounced a type of the jolly companion and good fellow, that the head of the family held him in tender regard (qu'il aimoit fort tendrement). Monsieur the wine-merchant (wholesale by the way) was well known to people about Court; and in Paris and at the Court his son Vincent was brought up. Now as the Court, according to Pellisson, is the theatre of envy, young Voiture's birth was often made a subject of malicious witticism. Was it not natural that, in such a sphere, his father's son should be made a butt of? He one day accidentally entered a room in which some officers, guests of the Duke of Orleans, were tippling to the top of their bent; and one of them, the Baron de Blot, is said to have improvised this couplet, glass in hand: Quoi! Voiture, tu dégénère? (Whereas worthy Voiture père did both, and both wholesale too.) Another time the following epigram was made, on the report that Vincent was courting the daughter of a Purveyor of Meat to His Majesty, and that the match was likely to come off: O que ce beau couple d'amants great ladies and great gentlemen with whom he was allowed to mingle, appear to have amused themselves without much scruple at the expense of his origin. He is told at a game of proverbs that his last is of bad vintage-he had better broach another cask. He is told, after beginning what he means to be a good story, that the company have had that before, many times over-can't he "draw" them something fresher than that? M. de Bassompierre said it was a pity Voiture was not of his father's trade, "because being so fond of sweets (les douceurs), he would have made us drink nothing but hypocras." And again, that whereas "wine gave heart and life to other men, it made Voiture swoon away;" from which we infer that Voiture hated to hear of the shop, and was perhaps as sensitive to allusions to cellarage and wine-casks, as was Sir Piercie Shafton to the remotest reference to bodkin or shears. He held an appointment of some trust in the household of the Duke of Orleans, whom he followed into retirement in Languedoc, and by whom he was despatched on business to Spain. At Madrid he was "highly esteemed," and wrote some Spanish verses of such purity of diction that "everybody believed them to be by Lope de Vega." Olivarez is said to have delighted in his company, and, at parting, to have solicited his correspondence. From Spain he made a visit of curiosity to Africa. Twice he visited Rome, and was sent to Florence with the news of the birth of Louis XIV. He filled various offices at Court, receiving wages to the amount of 900 livres as one of the king's maîtres-d'hôtel, and 2000 livres as "l'introducteur des ambassadeurs chez Monsieur" (Gaston, Duc d'Orléans). He enjoyed some pretty pensions too-according to Tallemant more than eighteen thousand livres in one year. M. d'Avaux, the Surintendant of Finance, appointed Voiture his commis, merely to let him receive the emoluments of what was an absolute sinecure. If the winemerchant's son was not rich when he died, the cause (For this effect defective comes by cause) lay in his passion for gaming. He lost fifteen hundred pistoles in one night, as Pellisson records with emphasis. According to the same authority, he was "of a very amorous temperament, or at least pretended to be so," and boasted of his bonnes fortunes high and low, rich and poor, one with another. He died unmarried, aged fifty or thereabouts. He was small of stature, with a well-formed head, black eyes and hair, and a face not over-burdened with expression. He had a happy manner of saying good things, avec une naïveté ingénieuse. Such, at least, is the portrait given of him by himself and his friends. In Mlle. de Scudéry's great Portrait Gallery he appears to less advantage, and the artiste, it must be allowed, was a quick discerner of character, and certainly not disposed to set down aught in malice. Voiture is the Callicrate in her "Grand Cyrus :"-a "man of low enough birth, who, by his esprit, had come to be on an equal footing with whatever was great at Paphos, whether among men or women. He wrote very agreeably both in prose and verse, and in a style so gallant and so far from common that he might almost be said to have invented it: at least I am quite sure that I have never seen anything it could be said to imitate, and I think I may say that no one will ever imitate it but imperfectly. For in fact, out of the merest trifle he would make an agreeable letter; and if the Phrygians say true, that whatever Midas touched was turned to gold, it is yet more true to say that whatever passed through the mind of Callicrate became a diamond: it being certain that from the most barren, mean, and least galant topic, he would extract something brilliant and pleasurable. His conversation too was highly diverting at certain times and seasons, but it was very unequal, and there were times when he bored others nearly as much as most people bored him. In fact, there was in his esprit a delicacy which might occasionally be better called caprice than delicacy, so excessive was it. His person was not over well made; however, he made an open profession of gallantry, but that universal, for it is true that one may speak of having loved persons of every rank in life. One quality he had, perilous for a lover, it being certain that he was as fond of making believe to be beloved, as of being so. . . . . Moreover, it has always been known to everybody that in his heart he rather adored Venus Anadyomene than Venus Urania; for, in short, he could not understand that there could be such a thing as passion apart from the senses, and he had not a little difficulty in believing that an entirely pure affection existed in the world. Nevertheless, not only was it his lot to be endured by all the ladies, but by several he was actually beloved; so that we are not to be astonished if Parthénie [Madame de Sablé], toute sage as she was, tolerated him; and so much the less from his living with her more respectfully than with any other lady, and never telling her he was in love with her, unless by way of raillery, and in a manner which would not allow her to take offence," &c. Victor Cousin expresses his conviction that the portrait of Callicrate was drawn from an intimate acquaintance with the life and character of Voiture; and that Mlle. de Scudéry was animated, when she painted it, by the generous desire of vindicating her sex, and of defending the cause of "noble and perfect gallantry," which had suffered wrong from this bel esprit corrompu. They seem to have got tired of him at last at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where he took liberties that now and then went a little too far. That Hotel was not by any means a Liberty Hall, but he set up for its chartered libertine. "Voiture seul s'y licenciait un peu, mais Voiture était sans conséquence, et sur ce pied-là on lui passait bien des bouffonneries." While all the fine gentlemen of that circle were surrounding Angélique Paulet with the most "gallant homage," Voiture ventured a little further. "She had considerable relish for his wit, and there grew between them a sufficiently tender intimacy, all within the bounds sanctioned in that noble society; but on his presuming to overpass these bounds, she repulsed him still more rudely than Julie had done." This refers to his having the impudence, one day, to kiss the arm of the fair Julie d'Angennes, who thereupon showed him her opinion of his effrontery in prompt and legible style. Angélique could appreciate his esprit, but she could not stand being chucked under the chin like a little girl, and she too snubbed Voiture on the spot. The fact is, Monsieur Vincent Voiture was inordinately vain, and seems to have thought he might go all lengths, conquering and to conquer. Self-interest was, in his case, the only counterpoise to self-love. His position among high folks compelled him to flatter, whereas his natural disposition led him to snarl and bite. He was annoyed when others were successful-for alien success appeared to him a usurpation of his own exclusive and indefeasible rights.* He would fain have all the world to himself, and occupied about him, without a moment's interruption. His only éloges were for those who could eulogise him in return. He was the hanger-on of great people, from whom he received good places and pensions as many as he could hold; but then, from fear of appearing to be under obligations and in a state of inferiority to them, he affected an almost insolent air of familiarity with his patrons, insomuch that Condé once said, "Really this man would be unbearable if he were one of ours." He was obsequious and peevish by turns; now charming and sensible, anon domineering and ill-behaved. Such was his irritability that you had to be extremely cautious what you said to him, and how you said it-the least slip might provoke a storm. Out of pure vanity he aspired to be reckoned le mourant des grandes dames, and is said to have adopted mean contrivances to keep up this character. Meanwhile, in private life, he was a libertine and debauchee. No wonder that the writer of the "Grand Cyrus" had a dislike for a man so blind to the beauty, so unversed in the doctrines and practice of Platonic love. The Letter he wrote on Tasso has been called his "patent of literary nobility," as proving him to be "too gallant a man to be allowed to remain in the bourgeoisie." In corroboration of his pretensions to move in the best society, he fought four duels-two of them, we are told, "after the most romantic fashion of a poet,”—in one instance by the light of the *See Cousin's La Société Française au XVII Siècle. T. ii. pp. 20 sqq. * moon, in another by that of four torches. But he knew that literary reputation had been the making of him, and that to stand his ground among dukes and duchesses he must maintain his pre-eminence among letter-writers and sonneteers. Not that he was a professed or professional author. So far from that, he never printed his "works," which, when eventually collected and published after his death, consisted of epistles and vers de société, an unfinished romance entitled "History of Acidalis and Zelide," and some miscellaneous poems in Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He and Balzac are commonly held to divide honours among the beaux esprits of the ruelles. Both of them, says M. Demogeot, owe the best part of their celebrity to the letters they wrote: both of them use so as to abuse "the charming, perilous gift of esprit." Balzac is more serious and dignified, Voiture more facile and ingenious; the former shows more of the author, the latter is more the man of the world: if Balzac recals the emphatic gravity of Spain, Voiture's is rather the artificial elegance of Italy. Yet, as Philarète Chasles has remarked, over and over again, in one and another of his volumes of Compared Literatures, the mignardises galantes of Voiture, though they retain something of an Italian tint, are, above all, Castilian. He was of the Italian section, in short, of the Spanish school. It was Marini who "gave birth to his beribboned poetics" and his concetti-hispano-italiens.† With these, however, Voiture contrived to hit to a T the taste of the times. His aimables et spirituelles correspondantes found him delightful. His grand art has been said to consist in surprise-his perfection, in inventing something unexpected, be it ever so whimsical or absurd. He was more free and frisky than Balzac in his correspondence, more far-fetched in his conceits, more intricate in his compliments. He turned trifles and tinsel to more account, and made more show of his spangles. He says still less than Balzac in a greater number of words. He knows better how to combine the light allusions, the pretty caprices of language current in the society he affects. Balzac had at the least some general ideas with Voiture all is local, we have the wit of a réunion of initiés, a papillotage of pretty little nothings, of imperceptible details of enigmas of gallantry, such as frequently require the reader's most unflagging attention. A clever child of twelve years old, Mlle. de Bourbon, has characterised Voiture better than any of his critics; her opinion was that he ought to be preserved in sugar.' Seduced by his engaging faults, his contemporaries saw in him the most perfect of writers: people disputed over his letters: the Condés, Grammonts, Lavalettes, D'Avaux were the correspondents of a wine-merchant's son. Boileau himself was carried away by this torrent of admiration : without hesitation he placed Voiture by the side of Horace. This infatuation of an age may be extravagant, but is never inexplicable. The fact is that Voiture reintroduced into French literature what France loves best of all, l'esprit. His writings were a welcome reaction against the wearisome style so much cultivated in the sixteenth century. The grateful nation forgave much to a writer who was the first See Demogeot's "Hist. de la Litt. Fr.," ch. xxix. † See Chasles, "Le XVIII Siècle en Angleterre," pp. 285, 317; "Etudes sur l'Espagne," pp. 110, 276, 287, 294; "Etudes sur le Moyen Age," p. 100, &c. Lettre de Voiture à Mlle. Paulet. to make no pretence to be other than a man of the world. Voiture was the spoilt child of public opinion."* M. de Sacy's comparison of Voiture with Balzac is somewhat different: "Balzac," he says, "cannot be mentioned without naming Voiture as well. They are two celebrities whom posterity has indissolubly associated together, two geniuses, however, of a very distinct cast. Voiture is not a declaimer of words, but a declaimer d'esprit. He seeks what is acute and ingenious in thought, as Balzac does what is brilliant and pompous in expression." The same critic, in another of his Essays, claims for both these authors a first-class place in French authorship: "Balzac and Voiture, with faults that it was perhaps inevitable for them to have, in order to carry their age along with them, were evidently minds of the first rank. They sinned merely from the exuberance of their endowments. If they are too frequently above what is good, delicate, eloquent, .never do they fall below it. Let us bear in mind that the whole seventeenth century acknowledged them as its masters, and that Boileau himself, Boileau! places Voiture by the side of Horace." M. Cousin, whose endeavours to "draw Voiture out of the undeserved and universal oblivion into which he had long since fallen," have been so far successful as to stir several editors§ to reproduce him, and whose low estimate of the moral character of the man is frankly expressed,-is yet proud of having, as he calls it, "re-established his just rights to renown," and maintained the opinion of Mme. de Sévigné, and Boileau, and La Fontaine. "Voiture est le créateur d'un genre où il est resté le premier, même après Saint-Evremont et jusqu'à Voltaire." His letters and light verses M. Cousin styles un monument unique, all a-glitter with the rarest gifts, with an infinity of esprit, with a comic verve that never dries up, but jets out and spurts up at the slightest hint, a boldness which allows itself entire liberty, and an art which knows how to say whatever is to be said, be the subject or the season what it may. If Pascal gives it as his pensée that a good poet is no more wanted by the State than a good worker in embroidery, M. Sainte-Beuve¶ considers he must have been just reading one of Voiture's sonnets. That, it seems, will alike explain and vindicate-as applied to poetry à la Voiture -pensive Pascal's dictum. Elsewhere, however, Sainte-Beuve allows that "Voiture lui-même a des éclairs de sensibilité dans le brillant,”**and quotes, not without sympathy, the sonnet of "a very good judge in so delicate a question," M. Guttinger, who thus addressed A Lady to whom he sent the Works of Voiture: Voici votre Voiture et son galant Permesse : *Demogeot, § "Influence de l'Espagne." De Sacy: "Variétés Littéraires," i. 93. Ibid. p. 108. E.g. M. Ubicini in 1855; M. Roux in 1856; and, we believe, a still more recent instance. Does the demand actually beget all this supply? "La Société Française au XVII Siècle," par M. Victor Cousin, t. ii. p. 20. "Portraits Contemporains," p. 260. "Tableau de la Poésie Française au XVI Siècle," p. 380 note (ed. 1848). |
