French - Page 2

terms: from this it comes that in rhyming dictionaries one finds twenty terms suitable for comic poetry, for one for more exalted use; and it is, further, a reason why Marot never succeeded in a serious style, and why Amyot could render Plutarch's elegance only with naïveté.

French acquired vigour beneath the pen of Montaigne; but it still had neither nobility nor harmony. Ronsard spoiled the language by bringing into French poetry the Greek compounds which the doctors and philosophers used. Malherbe repaired Ronsard's mischief somewhat. The language became more noble and more harmonious with the establishment of the Académie Française, and acquired finally, in the reign of Louis XIV., the perfection whereby it might be carried into all forms of composition.

The genius of this language is order and clarity; for each language has its genius, and this genius consists in the facility which the language gives for expressing oneself more or less happily, for using or rejecting the familiar twists of other languages. French having no declensions, and being always subject to the article, cannot adopt Greek and Latin inversions; it obliges words to arrange themselves in the natural order of ideas. Only in one way can one say "Plancus a pris soin des affaires de César." That is the only arrangement one can give to these words. Express this phrase in Latin--Res Cæsaris Plancus diligenter curavit: one can arrange these words in a hundred and twenty ways, without injuring the sense and without troubling the language. The auxiliary verbs which eke out and enervate the phrases in modern languages, still render the French tongue little suited to the concise lapidary style. The auxiliary verbs, its pronouns, its articles, its lack of declinable participles, and finally its uniform gait, are injurious to the great enthusiasm of poetry, in which it has less resources than Italian and English; but this constraint and this bondage render it more suitable for tragedy and comedy than any language in Europe. The natural order in which one is obliged to express one's thoughts and construct one's phrases, diffuses in this language a sweetness and easiness that is pleasing to all peoples; and the genius of the nation mingling with the genius of the language has produced more agreeably written books than can be seen among any other people.

The pleasure and liberty of society having been long known only in France, the language has received therefrom a delicacy of expression and a finesse full of simplicity barely to be found elsewhere. This finesse has sometimes been exaggerated, but people of taste have always known how to reduce it within just limits.

Many persons have thought that the French language has become impoverished since the time of Amyot and Montaigne: one does indeed find in many authors expressions which are no longer admissible; but they are for the most part familiar