From The Cornhill Magazine. SECOND PERIOD. REIGNS OF LOUIS XIV. AND LOUIS XV. I. acquainted with the politics and literature of foreign countries, besides being incomparably finer classics and writers of their own language, than nine-tenths of the Parisian journalists of our own time. This fact should be borne in mind, and also this other that the material condi IN treating of the French Press * during the first period of its existence, tions of French journalism as a medium which ended with the death of Cardinal for imparting news, have altered very little Mazarin, we showed that Parisian newsin the course of two centuries, notwithpapers enjoyed full liberty during the standing telegraphs and railways. Take Fronde, but abused that liberty and fell a copy of the Evening Post of Charles passively under police-rule again as soon II.'s reign, and a comparison of it with The Times of the present day will prove as the civil war was over. These alternatives of license and subjugation have what a giant stride has been made by the marked the history of the French Press Press in England; but a comparison beever since; and we can follow no gradual tween a modern French paper and an old development into freedom and dignity, one suggests just the contrary impression, no growing sense of the responsibilities and one is surprised to see what little of journalism, and no permanent decrease progress has been effected in the amount in the hostility of Government towards and variety of the news supplied, and, newspapers, as is the case in the Press above all, in the veracity of this news. chronicles of some other countries. The The primitive French gazettes made the history of French journalism is indeed most of the resources at their disposal, summed up in the adventures of divers and were really very fairly informed. individual journalists, some of whom They published summaries of foreign inhave been writers of conspicuous talent telligence gathered from despatch bags, and honesty, and some others, men scraps of home news cooked up so as to be amusing, and personalities against whose brilliant, often heroic, crusades against abuses resembled the achieve- rival gazetteers. No doubt a good deal ments of knight-errantry. But the efforts of their news was false, but they had, at of these few have always been nullified least, this excuse, that trustworthy items were difficult to procure and not always by the ignorance and scurrilous effrontery of the many. French journalism has safe to print when found. As much cannever been a disciplined force, but al- not be said for the French papers of our ways a guerilla horde; and for every day, which, having plentiful, and even steady marksman that stood out, there exhaustless, supplies of news always at have been from the first, a hundred hand, decline to make use of them. senseless freebooters, who fired their Your ordinary Parisian editor prints a few shots anyhow, and were a hindrance as foreign telegrams, without a word of comwell as a disgrace to the causes they pre- ment, and, as it is costly to keep a staff tended to serve. This is so now, preof reporters employed in collecting gencisely as it was two hundred years ago; uine intelligence on home subjects, he and the average French journalist of to- finds it simpler to fill his columns with inventions or vague rumours, garnished day is neither better taught, nor more reasonable, nor less conceited than his with spurious embellishments. Nobody brother of Louis XIV.'s reign. He has puts any faith in the parliamentary aneceven degenerated, considering the in- dotes, startling scientific discoveries, creased opportunities he has for instruc- murders, diplomatic intrigues, and horrition and the early conductors of the Ga-ble catastrophes, which abound in Pazette de France, Mercure, Journal des Savants, and Journal de Paris were better * LIVING AGE, No. 1520. risian newspapers. For the most part, such news appear without any specification of date, place, or authority; and the names of the persons concerned in them - 4 are replaced by the convenient formula | that paper. The piracy was eminently "Monsieur X.," or at most by initials. ingenious. The front page offered the Occasionally names of places are given exact reprint of the current number of the - when, say, an imaginary fire has been Gazette, but in the other columns were described but immediately some other interspersed violent lampoons against papers print letters from inhabitants in some ladies of the Court, amongst others, the locality denying the statement with the Duchess of Bouillon, whose husband indignation; whereupon the journal in furious wrath sent four of his footmen taxed with falsehood retorts magnificently with sticks to drag Isaac Renaudot, the that to be caught in a lie now and then editor, into the street and give him a is an evidence of enterprise, seeing that thrashing. Isaac protested, his clerks it is only timid news-sheets which con- took part for him, and there ensued a fine themselves to well-authenticated pitched battle, in the midst of which the facts. As to foreign nations, French Exempts (policemen) of the Châtelet arjournalists disdaining to learn any rived, and laid hands on the man with one tongue but their own, or to admit that eye- by name Collet - who had profited the whole universe is not centered in Paris — are as benighted as ever they were, and England and Germany might be at the antipodes for all they know or care of their doings. In speaking of the Journal des Débats, it is fair to cite at least one journal which during seventy years has maintained a character for truth, accurate knowledge, and able writing; but repressive laws, by rendering journalistic property insecure, have prevented this exception among French papers from ever growing in power as an organ of world-wide information. It is a candid vehicle of political and literary criticism, but not a newspaper, and it cannot compete in point of enterprise with the most insignificant of London to say nothing of American-journals. However, if the national press, such as it is, weighs so heavily on the official mind in France, one may judge how it operated on Louis XIV. This King was gracious to the rhymster, Loret, because Loret was a prudent man, who never let his pen say all he thought; but there were other newsmen less cautious, and though no pains were spared to hunt these out of their clandestine printingshops, the edicts as to unlicensed publications were repeatedly infringed until, in 1665, three years after Mazarin's death, the King took sharp measures, which showed he was not be trifled with. That year an unlucky man with one eye, and who professed himself unable to read, was caught at the very door of the Gazette de France office selling pirated copies of by the disturbance to sell his counterfeits at a premium. Isaac Renaudot easily proved that he was not responsible for the lampoons, so Collet was removed to prison, and the next day, by the King's special orders, subjected to torture to make him reveal his accomplices. Under pressure of hot irons applied to his arms and the calves of his legs, Collet roared that he had been employed by one Joseph Lebrun in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, and by-and-by this Lebrun being also questioned with hot irons, swore that the author of the lampoons was a nobleman, who had been supplying him with defamatory squibs in prose and verse, and also with capital to print the same, for the past two years. The name of this nobleman was never made public, for the King decided to hush up the matter; but Collet and Lebrun were flogged at the cart's tail and sent to the galleys, after which a census of all the printing-presses in Paris was taken, and it was reported that there were 123 of them; that is, 103 more than were licensed. All these superfluous presses were at once confiscated, and the owners of them fined and imprisoned: a raid was further made on the manuscript newsmen, who continued to haunt the Tuileries, and one of these persecuted beings, Louis de Roderay, has left a burlesque poem, describing how he slipped out of the hands of the Exempts, and was chevied as far as the Rue des Juifs, the public charitably tripping up the Exempts as they ran, in order to give Roderay every chance. However, the the news-letters, because their reports of Versailles' doings were more graphic than complimentary, and served to inocculate the provincial nobility with a poor opinion of royal morals. But he loved jokes at small people just as he loved pastry; and epigrams against his enemies, good verses and smart criticisms on dull books, were as agreeable to him as the champagne which was his usual drink. Therefore, when leave was asked him to found a journal which should deal with literary events as the Gazette de France did with II. matter had ceased to be a joke. Louis | lives of his favourite great ladies and of XIV. contemplated nothing less than con- his racy young bishops, and he detested stituting the traffic in news-letters, manuscript or otherwise, into a Government monopoly to be managed by the Lieutenant-General of Police. He was stimulated to this course by the Jesuits, who were beginning to be all-powerful at that time, and who of course would have taken care that the letters were edited conformably with their views. But the scheme -which was only the prototype of the wholesale official journalism which Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. since tried to establish fell through for want of a definite plan and a master-hand to exper-political, and afterwards another journal iment it, and the news-letters soon re- which should be the organ of social topvived as before, until finally superseded ics, lively but loyal and discreet, he readby printed papers. As to the presses, it ily consented, and thus were established is not likely that the census included all the Journal des Savants and the Merthose which really existed in Paris, cure, which remained household words for the wooden hand-presses of that in Frenchmen's mouths until the Revolutime were easy to hide; besides which tion. many noblemen had private presses, and the police had no right to pry into noble mansions. But Louis XIV.'s severity inspired a wholesome terror to the entire tribe of newsfolk, and if unlicensed gazettes cropped up now and again, vendors of them were tremely wary about plying their trade, and contrived to linger about the pre-ical faculty to a rare extent, being able to cincts of the Temple and the Abbaye, which, being sanctuaries, afforded them a harbour of refuge in case of pursuit. It is to be noted, too, that the clandestine papers of Louis XIV.'s time, though often flagrantly subversive, were almost always issued under the patronage of some courtier-nobleman, who wished to wreak his spite on a brother courtier; but these gentlemen shielded themselves very craftily behind subordinates, so that their offences could never be clearly brought home to them, and they chivalrously allowed their hirelings to bear the full responsibility of the anonymous lampoons - the chiefly of stripes. M. THE Journal des Savants was founded by Denis Sallo, Councillor of the Parliament, and it flourishes to this day. Sallo was a man of deep learning, great ex-industry, and exquisite manners; and, in additon to this, he possessed the crit judge a book in a few terse lines as impartial as they were shrewd. Colbert took him under his protection as Richelieu had done with Théophraste Renaudot; and he seems to have been anxious that the Journal des Savants should be a more valuable work altogether than the Gazette de France, for the French Ambassadors abroad received orders to send M. Sallo complete lists of the books that appeared in foreign countries, and also copies of the books themselves when it was worth the while. Journal des Savants, though, was an unlucky title, for it was associated in people's minds with abstruse Latin treatises, and it needed nothing less than M. Sallo's exceptional literary merit both Louis XIV., however, had no wish to as writer and editor to surmount the prehinder journalism as a purely literary in- judice which this suspicion of pedantry stitution. He objected to the flying suggested. The first number appeared sheets which poked fun at Court appoint- on January 5th, 1665, and was published ments, dealt maliciously with the private every Monday without interruption till said responsibility consisting with ink-bottles, and he continued his criticisms without condescending to justify their sincerity. Nevertheless, his enemies were too powerful for him. In the first place, he stung the author Ménage, and as a specimen of seventeenth century criticism we may as well quote the review which secured him the implacable resentment of that eminent author. M. Ménage had just published his Amanitates Juris Civilis, and Denis Sallo thus wrote of it: This book is divided into forty chapters; but it is enough to read the first and the last, work by these means as by perusing the whole. for as much will be learned of the scope of the In the first chapter there is an investigation as to whether the word dialectician used in Law 88, ad legem Falcidiam, refers to the Stoics or the Megarians; in the second, we find an inquiry as to whether responsitare de jure is the same thing as respondere de jure. One of the March 30th, when M. Sallo was dis- for M. Sallo. From that day M. Sallo missed from his editorship by a Jesuit remarked philosophically that it was no intrigue. The paper was of quarto size, use arguing with men who answered you having twelve pages of two columns each, and cost one sou. It attracted little attention at first, and it is on record that a crier venturing into one of the markets with fifty copies under his arm was apostrophized by a fruit-woman, who told him he had much better sell her the whole lot there and then as waste paper, for he would infallibly have to get rid of them in that way by-and-by. But when the authors of Paris discovered that they were going to be handled once a week by a man of strong mind, who was determined to speak fearlessly, it' was another matter, and the Journal des Savants was gratified at once with a large circulation, and an inveterate pack of en,emies. Criticism was almost a novelty then. There was a fine collection of writers — especially dramatic writers who had never been told that their works were bad, and had no wish to be told it. Some of these were in the pay of noble-three last chapters treats us to an exhaustive men, and as strictures on the books or comedies which they dedicated to their patrons, reflected in a manner on these patrons themselves for countenancing such effusions, Sallo began to receive hints from Dukes and Marquises that he had better leave this and that author alone. The better class of writers, too, were not slow in taking offence, for it is an unfortunate fact that from the day when a man first put his thoughts upon paper, down to our present intellectual age, authors have resented any questioning of their talent with a curious bitterness, Sallo's criticisms were courteous and temperate, but this made no difference. He was charged with animus, envy, imbecility, and bad taste. When he praised M. Ménage could not digest this noone author all the others shouted that he tice, and he speedily found an ally in was venal; and if he left any one un- Charles Patin, brother to Dr. Guy Patin noticed the thing was attributed to an ig- who had made Dr. Renaudot's life so noble desire that the scribbler in ques- burdensome. Guy Patin may be taken tion should remain ignored. Modern as the embodiment of conventional recritics, who are initiated by long usage spectability in seventeenth century to the sort of treatment which was a new France. He differed little from the same experience to Sallo, may sympathize with type of man in our own day, for he disthe bewilderment in which he sought to liked innovation and truth; would adexplain that his intentions were pure. mit of no common sense in any head but He was laughed to scorn, and one after- his own; and was for putting down clever noon as he was coming out of his office people as adventurers. It was quite in with one of his sub-editors, the Abbé the nature of things that such a man Gallois, that ecclesiastic had his head punched and was anointed with a bottle of ink. Three unappreciated authors had selected this mode of vindicating their genius, only they mistook l'Abbé Gallois dispute as to the meaning of the word graccu lus, which has been rendered diversely as jay and crow; but the author, after examining all the proofs, concludes for crow; and it may be hoped that learned men will henceforth cease to debate on a point which, to be sure, had not largely engrossed public attention. In the last chapter but one are collected all the etymologies scattered about in the works of jurisconsults; and the final chapter of all investigates the unsettled question as to whether the sort of men who guard the seraglios of Eastern princes are in a condition to carry arms. The contents of the other chapters are whence one may infer that the book is of too as interesting and erudite as the above; scholarly an order to be studied by any save men of rare attainments. should have a respectable brother, who wrote a book called Introduction à Phistoire par les médailles, and Sallo would have done better to leave the respectable book and brother alone, as facts too weighty to be interfered with. But he XIII., for if the Journal des Savants criticised the brother, and the brother could have lasted ten years instead of retorted by a pamphlet. Guy Patin and three months only, under Sallo's direcother respectable people raised the hue-tion, it might have propagated ideas and-cry against this interloper who had which were not disseminated till sixty come and set himself up as a sovereign years afterwards, when the Encyclopæ judge of better men's works, and Colbert, dists revived them, but in a dangerous irritated at such insults against a writer form. This, however, has always been whom he knew to be the soul of honesty, the way in France. A reformer arises, threatened Charles Patin with the Bas- intent upon doing good work by peacetille. Thereupon Guy Patin, writing to able means, but, being an innovator, is a friend, broke out after his wont in at once silenced. In course of time, Latinwhen his ideas have been sullenly fermenting in the public mind, without being able to find a vent, some noisy fanatics start up, let loose all the ventpegs at once, and sweep resistance off its legs by a flood, in which there is as - checked by a bar, behind which refuse of all sorts accumulates along with the water. One day the bar bursts, and in the place of a pure rivulet, irrigating slowly but surely as it flows, you have a troubled torrent, racing madly over the country and reducing it to a swamp. The stream is progress by enlightenment; the bar, official stupidity; and the torrent is revolution-of which the French must have seen enough by this time to understand the simile. When Sallo was removed, all the usefulness of his paper went with him. His successor was l’Abbé Gallois, the same who had the ink-bottle poured over him : but the Journal des Savants now applied itself to conciliating literary cliques, and apportioning praise or blame according as authors were powerful or fractious or the reverse. It became, in fact, the organ of literary respectability, and its altered character soon appeared in this, that it grew popular with men of letters, an infallible sign that its opinions were no longer worth having. Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas, and he bestirred himself so actively in organizing a league of social ostracism against Sallo, that the unfortunate man had already two-thirds of Paris arrayed against ; much rubbish as sense-a flood which him, when, at the beginning of March | ravages instead of fertilizing. It is the that is, when his paper was just two old story of the stream whose course is months old he ventured to meddle in ecclesiastical business, and put himself in his enemies' power. The Papal Index had condemned the famous work by Marca, De Concordantia Sacerdotii et Imperii, and also a treatise by Launay, which assailed the abusive privileges of religious orders. Sallo, who was a staunch Gallican as well as an expert jurist, took the defence of these incriminated works, both on theological and legal grounds; and he thus ended the article" The censorship of the Inquisitors cannot detract anything from the esteem which will be awarded to the books of MM. Marca and Launay by all good Frenchmen, for these works contain only sound maxims, such as are the basis of civil liberty in all free states." This was quite enough for the Jesuits, who had been watching with alarm the independent spirit of the Journal des Savants, and had actively seconded Guy Patin's cabal, hoping, doubtless, that they might get the management of the paper into their own hands. They set the It was not till the middle of the eighPapal Nuncio to work, and this dignitary teenth century that the Journal des requested that the journal might be sup- Savants recovered a part of its early pressed. Louis XIV. refused five times, prestige, but by that time its place as an but the sixth he reluctantly gave his outspoken organ of criticism had been consent, for the influences brought to usurped by the Mercure. This amusing bear on him were too many and importu- paper, the forerunner of the modern nate for further resistance. So Denis Figaro, was started in 1672 by Donneau Sallo lost his place, and it was a heavy de Visé, who was a literary Bohemian, blow to him, for he had begun to take neither honest nor learned, but very bold pride in his paper. It does the King and clever. He was born in 1640, and credit that he should have endeavoured had been trained for the Church, but, to protect the journalist, and it is a pity feeling no taste for that profession, had that Colbert should not have possessed fled from home and set up as a publisher's in this instance the same ascendancy hack, writing anything that would bring over him as Richelieu did over Louis him money. By dint of perseverance |