Scarron, PAUL, the creator of French burlesque, was born at Paris in 1610, son of a counsellor of Parliament, of good family and fortune. His mother having died early, his father married again, and not happily for the children. The step-mother's dislike of Paul's epigrams forced him at fifteen to leave the house, but at seventeen he returned to Paris, became an abbé, and gave himself up to a life of pleasure. About 1634 he paid a long visit to Italy, and soon after his return began to suffer from that terrible malady which racked him with tortures, and ultimately left him completely paralysed in his limbs. A mythical story used to be told how that he had first caught his disease, hiding in a swamp from the populace of Mans scandalised at an abbé appearing tarred and feathered at the carnival; but, as he had been seized with his disease half-a-dozen years before he obtained a prebend in Mans (1643), it is much more likely he owed it to the excessive debaucheries of his youth. After trying one physician after another, and spending about three years of decorous comfort at Mans, he gave up all hope of remedy, and returned to Paris to depend upon letters for a living. From this time he began to pour forth endless complimentary epistles in verse, sonnets, madrigals, songs of drinking and of eating, and satires; in 1644 published Typhon, ou la Gigantomachie, a long jocose poem in five cantos describing the war of the Giants against the Gods; and next year made a still greater hit with his laughable metrical comedy, Jodelet, ou le Maître Valet, followed quickly by Les Trois Dorothées, ou Jodelet souffleté and Les Boutades du Capitan Matamore et ses Comédies—the last apparently never represented. The plots of these Scarron owed to the Spanish, and similarly the idea of his Virgile Travesti he borrowed from the Italian poet J. B. Lalli's Eneide Travestita. The first part of this famous work of Scarron's appeared in 1648; the whole included only eight of Virgil's books, and of these the first and fourth were translated into English, in all their coarseness and vigour, by a kindred spirit, Charles Cotton. In 1648 appeared also the popular comedy, L'Héritier Ridicule, which, it is said, the young king Louis XIV. liked so much that he had it performed twice in one day. During the struggle of the Fronde countless satires appeared against Mazarin, and one of the bitterest of these, entitled La Mazarinade, was ascribed to Scarron. On the cardinal's return to Paris in triumph the facile poet addressed him in terms of unmeasured flattery—'Jule, autrefois l'objet de l'injuste satire.' But he did not recover his pensions, although the famous Surintendant Fouquet made good the loss to the poor poet. Scarron was a consummate beggar, but he always did it like a humorist and without spleen or meanness. The exceptional sufferings of this 'living epitome of human misery' extenuate his ceaseless applications for relief, and the facility with which he accepted everything, money, books, a carriage, pies, poultry, puppies. His importunities were so jocular that they never estranged him from his friends, and he never lost his own kindness of heart, for we find him troubling his powerful friends for their good offices on behalf of others, as well as sheltering within his house two nuns thrown on the world through the bankruptcy of their convent—with one of these, Céleste Palaiseau, in earlier days he had been in love.
In 1651 appeared the first part of his famous work Le Roman Comique (2d part, 1657), intended as a reaction against the enthusiastic and interminable novels of Mlle. de Scudéry and Honoré d'Urfé, then at the height of popular favour. It describes the adventures of a troop of strolling players in the provinces, and, loose and ill-constructed as it is, has the one surpassing excellence of the creative faculty, of bringing before us real men and women. It inspired Gautier's not altogether superior Capitaine Fracasse; but more important still, gave the impulse out of which sprang the masterpieces of Le Sage, Defoe, Fielding, and Smollett. The third part, which bears the title of 'Suite d'Offray,' was not the work of Scarron. All three were translated into English by Tom Brown, Savage, and others, and an abridgment by Goldsmith was published posthumously. Other works of Scarron's that deserve mention are the comedies, Don Japhet d'Arménie and La Précaution Inutile; his Nouvelles Tragiques, from one of which (Les Hypocrites) Molière took the idea of Tartufe; and the poem, Rélation des Parques et des Poètes sur la Mort de Voiture, prefaced by a characteristically gay description of his own appearance and condition. Few men have had his sufferings, and fewer still his courage—'I hate no man, and could wish all the world had the same feelings for me; I am as blithe as a bird when I have money—and should be much more so were I in health; I am merry enough in company, and am quite happy when I am alone; I bear all my ills pretty patiently.'
The income he derived from his publisher—his
'Marquisat de Quinet'—his pensions, and the fruits of his dedications and his importunities enabled him to enjoy good living and to receive in the Hôtel d'Impécuniosité the visits of the greatest figures of the day in the world of fashion as well as letters. About 1650 he became filled with a desire to visit the islands of America, and actually journeyed as far as Tours in October—'I take my leave of burlesque verse, of comedies and comical romances,' wrote the brave-hearted cripple, 'to go to a happy climate, where there are no affected coxeombs, no canting rascals, no inquisition, no rheumatism to cripple any one, nor no confounded wars to starve me.' But this craze brought him to the strangest adventure of his life. One day a friend brought to his house a beautiful but penniless young girl of fifteen, Françoise d'Aubigné, who had been brought up at Martinique, and whose character remains one of the enigmas of history. The poet was enchanted with her, and in 1652 married her to save her from a convent. In the marriage contract, with characteristic buffoonery, he recognises her as bringing him a dowry of four louis, two large and very expressive eyes, a fine bosom, a pair of beautiful hands, and plenty of intelligence; while he on his part brought her immortality. 'The names of kings' wives die with them,' said he, 'that of the wife of Scarron will live for ever'—a strange prophecy, strangely to be fulfilled in the history of Madame de Maintenon. For eight years she waited on her poor husband with pious care, managed admirably his dubious finances, and brought an unknown decorum and refinement into his Bohemian household. Even his writings henceforward lose their grossness under that gentle influence; although indeed this can hardly be said of the earliest after the marriage, Don Japhet, which is prefaced by a dedication to the king, a masterpiece of begging without humiliation—'Sire, I will endeavour to persuade your Majesty it would not be very wrong to assist me a little, for if you did assist me a little I would be more jovial than I am; and if I were more jovial than I am I would write lively comedies; if I wrote lively comedies your Majesty would be amused by them; and if you were amused the money bestowed on me would not be lost. All this leads to such an inevitable conclusion that I imagine I should be convinced by it if I were a great king instead of being what I am, a poor wretched creature.' Death came at last to relieve the sufferer in October 1660, but he saw it come with anguish; his greatest sorrow, to leave his poor young wife behind in destitution. For a heart beat warmly in that feeble and distorted frame, and in his dying words we feel a penetrating pathos hardly hidden under an effort of irony: 'If there be a hell I have nothing to fear from it, having endured it in this world.' The eight verses of his own epitaph irresistibly touch the heart. Dead, he could lay aside the mask, and confess all that he had borne in silence—'Passer-by, tread lightly here, take care not to awake him, for it is the first night that poor Scarron sleeps.'
There are editions by Bruzen de la Martinière (10 vols. 1737) and by Baume (2 vols. 1877); and the Roman Comique, by Victor Fournel (1857) and A. France (1881). See Christian's Étude (1841); Morillot, Scarron et le genre burlesque (1888); André Le Breton, Le Roman au Dix-Septième Siècle (1890); an excellent article by Van Laun in the Gent. Mag. for April 1885; and Jusserand's introduction to a new edition of Tom Brown's translation of The Comical Works of Scarron (1892).