A New Study of Fénelon

READERS at a distance are more likely to remember certain eminent Englishmen by their family names than by the titles bestowed upon them late in life. We recall Sir Stafford Northcote rather than Lord Iddesleigh, and probably do not remember at all the second title, now borne by that statesman’s grandson, who has proved in his brilliant monograph on Fénelon¹ his own claim to distinction. He also proves — though no proof was needed — that an impartial estimate of his subject is as yet more likely to be compassed by a well-instructed and clear-sighted foreign observer, than by a Frenchman to whom Fénelon’s name has always been in some sort a party watchword. In the world as he knew it, from being viewed as a Saint by devoted disciples, he came later to be regarded as the precursor of the eighteenth - century sentimentalists and philanthropists, and even as an apostle of toleration. Since the Revolution he has appeared as the “typical enlightened priest blessing the typical enlightened despotism ” of Cardinal Bausset’s biography (which work, it may be said, has practically shaped the idea of Fénelon held everywhere by the general reader) ; he has been hailed as the champion of “ a progressive Papacy at war with illiberal Kings and Bishops ; ” while to-day the dominant note is praise of his great opponent Bossuet.

No one of these aspects of his subject escapes Lord St. Cyres ; he follows Fénelon from youth to age, not only in the incidents of his life, but still more in his mental and spiritual history. Always it is the work of a trained thinker, intelligent, tolerant, not wanting in delicate insight, and so abounding in felicities of description and characterization, as to make the reading a constant delight. Unlike some of his predecessors, this writer can discuss Fénelon’s Mysticism and even the Maxims of the Saints, and be not only admirably intelligible, but steadily interesting. The measure of truth in the differing views regarding him is faithfully set forth, though it need hardly be said that the legend of his tolerance is summarily set aside. The young priest sent to Saintonge to complete the missionary work so effectively begun by the dragoons was more humane than others, and by nature a proselytizer, not a persecutor; but for those steadfast (he would have said stubborn) souls not to be moved by torture or persuasion, he too desired no mercy. Above all an ecclesiastic, and an ecclesiastic of his time, it was not given to him to discern in some dim wise the infamy of the Revocation or even its disastrous impolicy. Yet this churchman and mystic was all his life a political reformer, and if his good sense was sometimes obscured by extravagant theories none saw more clearly the desperate condition of France. Through his tremendous Letter to the King “ rings the Dies Iræ of the old régime.”

That the author of The Education of Girls and the preceptor of the Duke of Burgundy was a genuine reformer in educational methods need not be said, nor how his life at Cambrai might typify that of the ideal Christian prelate. These are more grateful themes than his intercourse with the hysterical prophetess, who was to prove the evil genius of his life, or the miserable contest with Bossuet resulting therefrom ; but nowhere are the writer’s mental lucidity and fairness and his easy mastery of his subject more convincingly shown than in the sketch of Madame Guyon and the history of the ills which followed in her train. Perhaps it may be contended that his studiously impartial attitude — an attitude which must often require a certain effort in studying a man whose extraordinary personal charm can still be felt in his written words — makes the critic occasionally seem too strenuously just, or even at times self-contradictory. But this could hardly be otherwise in any thoughtful and comprehensive treatment of so complex a character. Lord St. Cyres has so realized the time, and the men and women playing their parts in it, that it is earnestly to be hoped this may be only his first study therein. And it is well that the first should be of Fénelon.

S. M. F.