They who see nothing in the chaste queen of angels but an obscure mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts are suggested by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-God! What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, the two most glorious characters of woman!—of that youthful daughter of ancient Israel, who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty.The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a pure-white throne more dazzling than the snow. We there behold her arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning star, harbinger of the Sun of grace; the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her. In that daughter of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the comforter of the afflicted, who, all good, all compassionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger of the Lord.Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young women whose bitter griefs she has assuaged. The mother carries her babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the God of heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds an infant in her arms.
They who see nothing in the chaste queen of angels but an obscure mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts are suggested by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-God! What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, the two most glorious characters of woman!—of that youthful daughter of ancient Israel, who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty.
The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a pure-white throne more dazzling than the snow. We there behold her arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning star, harbinger of the Sun of grace; the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her. In that daughter of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the comforter of the afflicted, who, all good, all compassionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger of the Lord.
Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young women whose bitter griefs she has assuaged. The mother carries her babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the God of heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds an infant in her arms.
Finally, to illustrate the amusing real lack of logic, masking in logical form, of which Chateaubriand was capable,we give the syllogistic-looking conclusion that sums up the book:
Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect.Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle.Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men.If Christianity is not the work of men, it can have come from none but God.If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it but by revelation.Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.
Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect.
Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle.
Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men.
If Christianity is not the work of men, it can have come from none but God.
If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it but by revelation.
Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.
Chateaubriand was long a venerated figure, central in the pure and brilliantsalonof Madame Récamier, that later Marchioness Rambouillet at Paris. His easy airs of patriarchal condescension toward the younger generation of authors who drew around him there naturally engaged them to prolong the long days of his triumphs. But his triumphs may be said to have come to an end when Sainte-Beuve was ready to pronounce, as he did, that this defender of Christianity was a skeptic at heart, this preacher and praiser of purity was a libertine in life. We will not say that we accept this destructive view of Chateaubriand’s character. But we are bound to confess that we wish there were more internal evidence contained in his writings to throw doubt on the justice of a sentence so severe.
De Maistre(Joseph Marie, 1753-1821), is another author who, like Chateaubriand, a little earlier than he, took up a polemic for Christianity as represented in Roman Catholicism. A truly high and nobly earnest spirit was De Maistre, as such contrasting with Chateaubriand, a far deeper and far more philosophical thinker than his brilliant compeer, but wanting in that grace and seductiveness of style which gave to Chateaubriand his life-long wide supremacy in the empire of French letters. It would be not incongruous, if there were room for it in our volume, to prolong this chapter with some brief notice and exemplification of De Maistre’s literary work. We must content ourselves with this respectful bare mention of his name.
The proportionately small space in these pages that, in here ending our notice of him, we allot to Chateaubriand, fails indeed to represent by symbol to the eye the proportionate space that he occupies in the literature of his country. But it has afforded us fairly adequate opportunity to exhibit in description and specimen the characteristic quality of his literary production.
XXI.
BÉRANGER.
1780-1857.
Bérangerwas a song-writer, the whole of him. He was a song-writer and nothing else. It is his own word, “My songs, they are myself.”
Béranger was not the rose-crowned lyrist of love and wine; he was not Anacreon. Béranger was not the hymner of heroes and kings, a maker of odes; he was not Pindar. Béranger was not the poet of the world, the gay world and the wise; he was not Horace. Béranger was not by chance the lowly melodist, who might by chance as well have been a lofty bard; he was not Robert Burns. Béranger was the song-singer of the people; he himself elected to be such, and he was by the people elected to be such; he said himself, “My muse is the people.” In one word, Béranger was—Béranger. There was none like him before, there has been none like him since; Béranger is alone. We do not thus praise him, we simply describe him.
But it is possible to describe him better. We do so by borrowing from Victor Hugo through Sainte-Beuve.
Sainte-Beuve, not in his essay on Béranger (which, in appreciating, somewhat depreciates the poet), but among the interesting things that, under the title “Chateaubriana,” he prints at the close of his monograph in two volumes on Chateaubriand, has the following personal recollection of his own, which, given here, will serve a threefold purpose; thatof hinting incidentally the relation of four celebrated French authors to one another, that of illustrating the ready fecundity and plasticity of Victor Hugo’s genius, and that of setting forth in concrete example Béranger’s master method in his songs, which master method is essentially Béranger, the song-writer, himself. Sainte-Beuve says—of course we translate:
Victor Hugo, returning one morning from the garden of the Luxembourg (1828 or 1829) said to me: “If I should see Béranger, I would give him the subject of a pretty song. I just now met M. de Chateaubriand in the Luxembourg; he did not see me; he was wrapt in thought, intently observing some children who, seated on the ground, were playing and tracing figures in the sand. If I were Béranger I would make a song on the subject: ‘I have been minister, I have been ambassador, etc., I wear the decoration of the Order of the Holy Ghost, that of the Order of the Golden Fleece, that of the order of St. Andrew, etc.; and one sole thing at last amuses me: it is to watch children playing in the sand. I wrote “René,” I wrote the “Genius of Christianity,” I stood up against Napoleon, I opened the poetic era of the century, etc.; and I know only one thing that amuses me: to watch children at play upon the sand. I have seen America, I have seen Greece and Rome, I have seen Jerusalem, etc.’ And after each enumeration of various experiences, forms of greatness or of honor, all kept returning still to this: to watch children playing and tracing circles in the sand.” The plan sketched by Victor Hugo was perfect, far better than I have given it here; but the motive is plain, the idea of the refrain. Never have I had better defined to me the difference that separates the song, even the most elevated in character, from the ode properly so-called.
Victor Hugo, returning one morning from the garden of the Luxembourg (1828 or 1829) said to me: “If I should see Béranger, I would give him the subject of a pretty song. I just now met M. de Chateaubriand in the Luxembourg; he did not see me; he was wrapt in thought, intently observing some children who, seated on the ground, were playing and tracing figures in the sand. If I were Béranger I would make a song on the subject: ‘I have been minister, I have been ambassador, etc., I wear the decoration of the Order of the Holy Ghost, that of the Order of the Golden Fleece, that of the order of St. Andrew, etc.; and one sole thing at last amuses me: it is to watch children playing in the sand. I wrote “René,” I wrote the “Genius of Christianity,” I stood up against Napoleon, I opened the poetic era of the century, etc.; and I know only one thing that amuses me: to watch children at play upon the sand. I have seen America, I have seen Greece and Rome, I have seen Jerusalem, etc.’ And after each enumeration of various experiences, forms of greatness or of honor, all kept returning still to this: to watch children playing and tracing circles in the sand.” The plan sketched by Victor Hugo was perfect, far better than I have given it here; but the motive is plain, the idea of the refrain. Never have I had better defined to me the difference that separates the song, even the most elevated in character, from the ode properly so-called.
There is Béranger, his whole secret, summed up in small by a masterhand. What Béranger, then, did was to choose wisely, with long heed, some single, simple, obvious sentiment, appealing to every body’s experience, shut that sentiment up into a short, neat, striking, rememberable form of words suited to be sung, make of that form of words a refrain to recur at intervals, and finally on that refrain build up, one after another to the end, the stanzas of his song. He worked slowly and painfully. His genius was never very prolific. The time of his chief fruitfulness was short, covering only fifteen years, the fifteen years between Waterloo (1815) and the elevation of Louis Philippe to thethrone of France (1830). During this time his largest product hardly exceeded a dozen songs a year.
Béranger’s first discipline to his art may be considered to have been a certain favorite diversion of his childhood, the carving of cherry-stones. This exercise of skill he practiced sedulously with delight when a boy, and in it learned the long, minute patience of art. The man’s songs were cut gems laboriously finished, like the boy’s carvings in cherry-stones.
Béranger became immensely popular. He remained so to the end. When he died, and it was after prolonged silence on his part—if one can call silence a period marked, indeed, by non-production, but filled with the singing, from land’s end to land’s end, of his songs in every mouth—when he died the empire buried him and the nation attended his funeral. He had been born poor, and he was reared in poverty. Rich he would not be, when a man. He took infinite pains to be of the people, and he succeeded. The people were loving and honoring themselves in loving and honoring Béranger. Sainte-Beuve, with that critical incredulity of his, thought that Béranger carried his demonstrative cultivation of the “people” to the point of something like affectation. Perhaps; but the affectation, if it was such, had a sound basis in it of real instinctive popular sympathy. Still, Béranger’s emphasized identification of himself with the people was not all a matter of instinct with him. It was in part a matter of deliberately adopted policy. He said:
The people wanted a man to speak to them the language they love and understand, and to create imitators to vary and multiply versions of the same text.I have been that man.
The people wanted a man to speak to them the language they love and understand, and to create imitators to vary and multiply versions of the same text.I have been that man.
Béranger was quite willing to make any moral descent that might seem to him necessary in order to reach his audience. He may have been instinctively, but he was also deliberately, low and lewd in some of his songs.
Without their help [said he, that is without the help of such immoral songs] I am disposed to think that the others would not have been able to go so far, or so low, or even so high; no offense in this last word to the virtues of good society.
Without their help [said he, that is without the help of such immoral songs] I am disposed to think that the others would not have been able to go so far, or so low, or even so high; no offense in this last word to the virtues of good society.
Even the best of Béranger’s songs lack any thing like lift and aspiration. They are conceived in a comparatively low tone. The noblest leaven in them is love of France and of liberty. Béranger hated the Bourbons; they persecuted him, but that only helped him sing them off the throne of France. Béranger’s songs did more than any other one individual influence, perhaps they did more than all other individual influences combined, first to overturn the restored Bourbon dynasty after Waterloo, and, second, to bring about the elevation of Louis Napoleon to power.
For Béranger was a passionate admirer of the great Napoleon. True, he deprecated the exhaustions visited on France by the wars of glory which Napoleon waged. But that famous piece of his, “The King of Yvetot,” in which this deprecation found voice, was a protest so lightly conceived and at bottom so genial, that the jealousy of Napoleon himself could afford to laugh at it. The pieces in which, on the contrary, he celebrated the praises of the emperor were written with an emotion contagiously vivid. Let us now have before us “The King of Yvetot,” with an appropriate contrast to it afterward supplied in one of these encomiastic pieces.
“Yvetot” is the name of an ancient French town, situated in a seignory the lord of which once enjoyed the nominal rank of king. The effect of Béranger’s title to his song is of course humorous. The song-writer’s purpose was to draw, in the king whom he describes, a whimsical contrast to the restless Napoleon. Thackeray furnishes us with a happily sympathetic rendering of Béranger’s “King of Yvetot,” as follows; for brevity’s sake we omit one stanza:
There was a king of Yvetot,Of whom renown hath little said,Who let all thoughts of glory go,And dawdled half his days a-bed;And every night, as night came round,By Jenny with a night-cap crowned,Slept very sound.Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!That’s the kind of king for me.And every day it came to passThat four lusty meals made he,And step by step, upon an ass,Rode abroad his realms to see;And wherever he did stir,What think you was his escort, sir?Why, an old cur.Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!That’s the kind of king for me.If e’er he went into excess,’Twas from a somewhat lively thirst,But he who would his subjects bless,Odd’s fish!—must wet his whistle first,And so from every cask they got,Our king did to himself allotAt least a pot.Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!That’s the kind of king for me.To all the ladies of the landA courteous king, and kind, was he;The reason why you’ll understand,They named himPater Patriæ.Each year he called his fighting-men,And marched a league from home, and then,Marched back again.Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!That’s the kind of king for me.*****The portrait of this best of kingsIs extant still, upon a signThat on a village tavern swings,Famed in the country for good wine.The people in their Sunday trim,Filling their glasses to the brim,Look up to him.Singing, ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!That’s the sort of king for me.
There was a king of Yvetot,
Of whom renown hath little said,
Who let all thoughts of glory go,
And dawdled half his days a-bed;
And every night, as night came round,
By Jenny with a night-cap crowned,
Slept very sound.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That’s the kind of king for me.
And every day it came to pass
That four lusty meals made he,
And step by step, upon an ass,
Rode abroad his realms to see;
And wherever he did stir,
What think you was his escort, sir?
Why, an old cur.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That’s the kind of king for me.
If e’er he went into excess,
’Twas from a somewhat lively thirst,
But he who would his subjects bless,
Odd’s fish!—must wet his whistle first,
And so from every cask they got,
Our king did to himself allot
At least a pot.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That’s the kind of king for me.
To all the ladies of the land
A courteous king, and kind, was he;
The reason why you’ll understand,
They named himPater Patriæ.
Each year he called his fighting-men,
And marched a league from home, and then,
Marched back again.
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!
That’s the kind of king for me.
*****
The portrait of this best of kings
Is extant still, upon a sign
That on a village tavern swings,
Famed in the country for good wine.
The people in their Sunday trim,
Filling their glasses to the brim,
Look up to him.
Singing, ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!
That’s the sort of king for me.
In his autobiography, an interesting book, Béranger says that hardly any other writer equally with himself could have dispensed with the help of the printer. His songs traveled of themselves from mouth to mouth without the interventionof printed copies. In fact, Béranger was already famous before his works went into print. It was this oral currency of his songs that made them such engines of power. That brilliant Bohemian wit among Frenchmen, Chamfort, defined, it is said, before Béranger’s time, the government of France to be absolute monarchy tempered by songs. This celebrated saying does not overstate the degree, though it may misstate the kind, of influence that Béranger exercised with his lyre. He was, by conviction and in sympathy, a determined and ardent republican, and yet, in fact, he founded, or played the chief part in founding, the imperial usurpation of Louis Napoleon. This he did by getting the glories of the great emperor sung by Frenchmen throughout France, until the very name of Napoleon became an irresistible spell to conjure by. We now give the most celebrated of these Bonaparte songs. Mr. William Young, an American, has a volume of translations from Béranger. Of this particular song, Mr. Young’s version is so felicitous that we unhesitatingly choose it for our readers. The title of the song is, “The Recollections of the People.” It was, we believe, founded on an incident of Béranger’s own observation; we shorten again by a stanza:
Aye, many a day the straw-thatched cotShall echo with his glory!The humblest shed, these fifty years,Shall know no other story.There shall the idle villagersTo some old dame resort,And beg her with those good old talesTo make their evenings short.“What though they say he did us harmOur love this cannot dim;Come, Granny, talk of him to us;Come, Granny, talk of him.”“Well, children—with a train of kingsOnce he passed by this spot;’Twas long ago; I had but justBegun to boil the pot.On foot he climbed the hill, whereonI watched him on his way;He wore a small three-cornered hat;His overcoat was gray.I was half frightened till he spoke;‘My dear,’ says he, ‘how do?’”“O, Granny, Granny, did he speak?What, Granny! speak to you?”*****“But when at length our poor ChampagneBy foes was overrun,He seemed alone to hold his ground;Nor dangers would he shun.One night—as might be now—I heardA knock—the door unbarred—And saw—good God! ’twas he, himself,With but a scanty guard.‘O what a war is this!’ he cried,Taking this very chair.”“What! Granny, Granny, there he sat?What! Granny, he sat there?”“’I’m hungry,’ said he: quick I servedThin wine and hard brown bread;He dried his clothes, and by the fireIn sleep drooped down his head.Waking, he saw my tears—’Cheer up,Good dame!’ says he, ‘I go‘Neath Paris’ walls to strike for FranceOne last avenging blow.’He went; but on the cup he usedSuch value did I set—It has been treasured.” “What! till now?You have it, Granny, yet?”“Here ’tis; but ’twas the hero’s fateTo ruin to be led;He, whom a pope had crowned, alas!In a lone isle lies dead.’Twas long denied: ‘No, no,’ said they,‘Soon shall he re-appear;O’er ocean comes he, and the foeShall find his master here.’Ah, what a bitter pang I felt,When forced to own ’twas true!”“Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look,Will kindly look on you.”
Aye, many a day the straw-thatched cot
Shall echo with his glory!
The humblest shed, these fifty years,
Shall know no other story.
There shall the idle villagers
To some old dame resort,
And beg her with those good old tales
To make their evenings short.
“What though they say he did us harm
Our love this cannot dim;
Come, Granny, talk of him to us;
Come, Granny, talk of him.”
“Well, children—with a train of kings
Once he passed by this spot;
’Twas long ago; I had but just
Begun to boil the pot.
On foot he climbed the hill, whereon
I watched him on his way;
He wore a small three-cornered hat;
His overcoat was gray.
I was half frightened till he spoke;
‘My dear,’ says he, ‘how do?’”
“O, Granny, Granny, did he speak?
What, Granny! speak to you?”
*****
“But when at length our poor Champagne
By foes was overrun,
He seemed alone to hold his ground;
Nor dangers would he shun.
One night—as might be now—I heard
A knock—the door unbarred—
And saw—good God! ’twas he, himself,
With but a scanty guard.
‘O what a war is this!’ he cried,
Taking this very chair.”
“What! Granny, Granny, there he sat?
What! Granny, he sat there?”
“’I’m hungry,’ said he: quick I served
Thin wine and hard brown bread;
He dried his clothes, and by the fire
In sleep drooped down his head.
Waking, he saw my tears—’Cheer up,
Good dame!’ says he, ‘I go
‘Neath Paris’ walls to strike for France
One last avenging blow.’
He went; but on the cup he used
Such value did I set—
It has been treasured.” “What! till now?
You have it, Granny, yet?”
“Here ’tis; but ’twas the hero’s fate
To ruin to be led;
He, whom a pope had crowned, alas!
In a lone isle lies dead.
’Twas long denied: ‘No, no,’ said they,
‘Soon shall he re-appear;
O’er ocean comes he, and the foe
Shall find his master here.’
Ah, what a bitter pang I felt,
When forced to own ’twas true!”
“Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look,
Will kindly look on you.”
There was not in Béranger’s genius much innate and irrepressible buoyancy toward poetry, as we English-speakers conceive poetry. But he practiced a severely self-tasking art of verse, which at last yielded a product sufficiently consummate in form to command the admiration of qualified critics. He became unquestionably first among the song-writers of France; he even elevated song-writing, popular song-writing, to the rank of acknowledged literature. His fashion, and, with his fashion, his currency, are rapidly becoming things of the past; but the real merit of his achievement, and, more than that, the fact of his extraordinary influence make his name securely immortal in the literary history, and in the literature, of France.
XXII.
LAMARTINE.
1791-1869.
Lamartine,the man, was an image incongruously molded of gold and of clay. Take him at his best, and what is there better? Take him at his worst, and you would not wish worse.
The same contrast holds, but not in the same degree, in Lamartine the author. He is at once one of the most admirable, and one of the least admirable, of writers.
There are few figures in history worthier to command the homage of generous hearts than the figure of Lamartine in 1848, calming and quelling the mob of Paris by the simple ascendant of genius and of bravery. There are few figures in history more abject than the figure of Lamartine, towardthe close of his life, in the garb of a beggar holding out his hat to mankind for the pence and half-pence of wonder, of sympathy, and of sympathetic shame.
Perhaps we instinctively fall into some contagious conformity to Lamartine’s own exaggerating rhetoric in expressing ourselves as we do.
The chief facts of the life of Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine are briefly these. Well-born, having for mother a woman of more than Cornelian, of Christian, virtue, who herself mainly educated her son, he traveled, loved, lost, wept “melodious tears”—mixed much in Parisian society, until, at thirty, he published under the title “Meditations,” a volume of verse which made him instantly, brilliantly, triumphantly, famous. Every thing desirable was easy to him now. He married an Englishwoman of wealth, he wrote and published more poetry, amusing himself meantime with various diplomatic service, was made member of the French Academy, and in 1832 went traveling in the East, like an Eastern prince for lavish splendor of equipage and outlay. His book, “Memories of the Orient,” published three years after, was the fruit of what he saw and felt and dreamed during this luxurious experience of travel. Dreamed, we say, for Lamartine drew freely on his imagination to expand and embellish his memories of the East. Other volumes of verse, his “Jocelyn,” his “Fall of an Angel,” and his “Recollections” followed speedily.
The Revolution of 1830 had seated Louis Philippe on the throne. Lamartine under him had been elected to the legislature of France and had been making reputation as an orator. The poet and orator would now be historian. Lamartine wrote his celebrated “History of the Girondists,” which, after first appearing in numbers, was issued in volume in 1847. This book had in it the fermenting principle of a fresh revolution. In 1848 that revolution came, and Louis Philippe fled from Paris and from France, in precipitate abdication of his throne.
Now was the moment of glory and of opportunity forLamartine. During the three months following, he may be said to have ruled France. Eloquence and bravery together never won triumphs more resplendent than were Lamartine’s during this swift interval of his dizzy elevation to power. He was in title simply minister for foreign affairs, in a provisional government which he had had himself the decision and the intrepidity among the first to propose. But his personal popularity, his serene courage, his magical eloquence, gave him much the authority of dictator. It cannot be asserted that Lamartine, in this crisis, proved himself a statesman able to cope with the stern exactions of the hour. The candidate for such distinction success only can crown, and Lamartine did not succeed. He fell, as suddenly and as swiftly as he had risen. Yesterday omnipotent, he was absolutely impotent to-day.
But nothing can deprive Lamartine of the pacific glory his due from several extraordinary feats of eloquence achieved by him, at imminent risk to himself, on behalf of mankind. A mob of forty thousand Parisian fanatics roared into the street before the Hôtel de Ville to compel the Provisional Government sitting there to adopt the red flag as the ensign of the republic. This meant nothing less than a new reign of terror for France. Lamartine, single-handed, met the wild beast to its teeth, and with one stroke of the sword that went forth from his mouth laid it tamed at his feet. “The red flag you bring us,” cried the orator to the mob, he shining the while resplendent in a personal beauty touched with the gleam of genius and glorified with the consecration of courage—like a descended Apollo, the rattling quiver borne on his shoulder—“The red flag you bring us,” said he, “has only gone round the Champ de Mars, trailed in the blood of the people—in 1791 and in 1793; while the tricolor has gone round the world, with the name, the glory, and the liberty of our country.” This eloquent condensation of history, untremblingly shot, at close quarters, full in the face of those wild-eyed insurgents, felled them, as if it had been a ball from a cannon. But ranks from behindstill pressed forward with menacing cries. “Down with Lamartine!” “Down with the time-server!” “Off with his head! His head! His head! Lamartine’s head!”
The brandished weapons were in Lamartine’s very face. But that gentle blood never blenched. “My head, citizens? You want my head? Indeed, but I wish you had it, every one of you. If Lamartine’s head were now on each pair of shoulders among you, you would be wiser than you are, and the revolution would go on more prosperously.” The mob was in Lamartine’s hand again, taken captive with a jest.
It is generally granted that Lamartine saved the nation from a new reign of terror. But eloquence is not statesmanship; and Lamartine, weighed in the balance, was found wanting. He served at last only to hand over the state to Louis Napoleon, first president, and then emperor.
Under Napoleon, Lamartine, now and henceforward simply a private citizen, found his affairs embarrassed. He had been a prodigal spender of money. He toiled at letters to mend his broken fortunes. But his sun was past its meridian, and it settled hopelessly in cloud toward its west. He wrote a pseudo-biography of himself and published it as a serial in one of the Paris daily newspapers. He almost literally with his own hands performed the profaneness execrated by the poet, and “tare his heart before the crowd”—or would have done so, if his production, the “Confidences,” so called, had really been what it purported to be, the actual story of his life. It was in fact as much imagination as revelation. But the once overwhelmingly popular author now cheapened himself before the public in almost every practicable way. He brought his own personal dignity to market in his works—and did this over and over again. The public bought their former idol at his own cheapened price, and he still remained poor. In 1850 a public subscription was opened for his relief. As a last humiliation, the proud patrician submitted to accept a pension from the empire of Louis Napoleon. This he enjoyed but two years, for in two years after he died. A further space of two years, and the empire itselfthat granted Lamartine his pension had met its Sedan and ceased to be.
Fresh from admiring the radiant pages of Lamartine’s rhetoric in prose, from admiring the iridescent play in color, the deliquescent melody in sound, of his verse, we feel it painful to admit to ourselves that so much indisputably fine effect goes for little or nothing, now that the fashion of that world of taste and feeling for which this writer wrote has passed returnlessly away. But so it is. Lamartine, like Chateaubriand, and for substantially the same reason, namely, lack of fundamental genuineness, has already reached that last pathetic phase, well-nigh worse than total eclipse, of literary fame, the condition of an author important in the history of literature, rather than in literature.
Poet, orator, historian, statesman, this munificently gifted nature was most profoundly, most controllingly, poet. But he was French poet, which is to say that his poetry is removed, if not quite from access to the English mind, at least from access to the English mind through translation. He, however, enjoyed at first high English reputation as poet, and the publication of “Jocelyn,” his masterpiece in verse, may be said to have been even a European event in literary history.
The story of “Jocelyn” is avouched by the author to be almost a series of actual occurrences. This assertion, to those familiar with Lamartine’s style in asserting, will not be quite so conclusive as on its face it appears. At any rate, if “Jocelyn” be truth, Lamartine has made truth read like fiction, and fiction of a highly improbable sort. The story, true or fictitious—and which it is, as nobody now knows, so nobody now cares—we need not detain our readers to report.
The poet staggered his public by printing on the title-page to his “Jocelyn” the words, “An Episode,” as much as to say that a certain “Epic of Humanity,” which he might finally (but which, as a matter of fact, he never did) produce, would be large enough to make shrink into the dimensions of a mere episode this poem of ten thousand lines more or less!
Now for an extract or two. In the “Edinburgh Review,” of a date not far from fifty years past now, we find our translation. A day of festival, followed by a long evening of out-door dancing to music, has just closed. The breaking-up is described, with the sequel of young Jocelyn’s pensive and yearning emotions:
Then later, when the fife and hautboy’s voiceBegan to languish like a failing voice,And moistened ringlets, by the dance unstrung,Close to the cheek in drooping tresses clung,And wearied groups along the darkening greenGliding, in converse soft and low, were seen,What sounds enchanting to the ear are muttered!Adieus, regrets, the kiss, the word half uttered—My soul was stirred; my ear with sweet sounds rifeDrank languidly the luscious draught of life;I followed with my step, my heart, my eye,Each maiden that with wearied eyes went by,Thrilled at the rustle of each silken dress,And felt that each that passed still left a joy the less.At last the dance is hushed, the din at rest,The moon is risen above the mountain’s crest;Only some lover, heedless of the hour,Wends homeward, dreaming, to his distant bower;Or, where the village paths divide, there standSome loitering couples, lingering hand in hand,Who start to hear the clock’s unwelcome knell,Then dive and vanish in the forest dell.And now I am at home alone. ’Tis night.All still within the house, no fire, no light.Let me, too, sleep. Alas! no sleep is there!Pray then. My spirit will not hear my prayer.My ear is still with dancing measures ringing,Echoes which memory back to sense is bringing;I close my eyes: before my inward glanceStill swims thefête, still whirls the giddy dance;The graceful phantoms of the vanished ballCome flitting by in beauty each and all;A glance still haunts my couch; a soft hand seemsTo press my hand, that trembles in my dreams,Fair tresses in the dance’s flight brought nigh,Just touch my cheek, and like the wind flow by,I see from maiden brows the roses falling,I hear beloved lips my name recalling—Anne, Lucy, Blanche!—Where am I—What is this?What must love be, when even love’s dream is bliss!
Then later, when the fife and hautboy’s voice
Began to languish like a failing voice,
And moistened ringlets, by the dance unstrung,
Close to the cheek in drooping tresses clung,
And wearied groups along the darkening green
Gliding, in converse soft and low, were seen,
What sounds enchanting to the ear are muttered!
Adieus, regrets, the kiss, the word half uttered—
My soul was stirred; my ear with sweet sounds rife
Drank languidly the luscious draught of life;
I followed with my step, my heart, my eye,
Each maiden that with wearied eyes went by,
Thrilled at the rustle of each silken dress,
And felt that each that passed still left a joy the less.
At last the dance is hushed, the din at rest,
The moon is risen above the mountain’s crest;
Only some lover, heedless of the hour,
Wends homeward, dreaming, to his distant bower;
Or, where the village paths divide, there stand
Some loitering couples, lingering hand in hand,
Who start to hear the clock’s unwelcome knell,
Then dive and vanish in the forest dell.
And now I am at home alone. ’Tis night.
All still within the house, no fire, no light.
Let me, too, sleep. Alas! no sleep is there!
Pray then. My spirit will not hear my prayer.
My ear is still with dancing measures ringing,
Echoes which memory back to sense is bringing;
I close my eyes: before my inward glance
Still swims thefête, still whirls the giddy dance;
The graceful phantoms of the vanished ball
Come flitting by in beauty each and all;
A glance still haunts my couch; a soft hand seems
To press my hand, that trembles in my dreams,
Fair tresses in the dance’s flight brought nigh,
Just touch my cheek, and like the wind flow by,
I see from maiden brows the roses falling,
I hear beloved lips my name recalling—
Anne, Lucy, Blanche!—Where am I—What is this?
What must love be, when even love’s dream is bliss!
There is an indefinable French difference, but, that apart, the foregoing is somewhat like Goldsmith in his “Deserted Village.” Or is it the resemblance of meter that produces the impression?
“Jocelyn,” though certainly intended by the author to be pure, wavers at points on the edge of the exceptionably ambiguous. The following spring song, however, put by the poet into the mouth of his Laurence, is an inspiration as innocent as it is sweet:
See, in her nest, the nightingale’s mute mate,Hatching her young, her patient vigil hold.See how with love her fostering wings dilate,As if to screen her nurslings from the cold.Her neck alone, in restlessness upraised,O’ertops the nest in which her brood reposes,And her bright eye, with weary watching glazed,Closing to sleep, with every sound uncloses.Care for her callow young consumes her rest,My very voice her downy bosom shakes,And her heart pants beneath its plumy vest,And the nest trembles with each breath she takes.What spell enchains her to this gentle care?Her mate’s sweet melody the groves among,Who, from some branching oak, high poised in airSends down the flowing river of his song.Hark! dost thou hear him, drop by drop distillingThe sighs that sweetest after transport be,Then suddenly the vault above us fillingWith foaming cataracts of harmony?What spell enchains him in his turn—what makesHis very being thus in languor melt—But that his voice a living echo wakes,His lay within one loving heart is felt!And, ravished by the note, his mate still holdsHer watch attentive through the weary time;The season comes, the bursting shell unfolds,And life is music all, and love, and prime.
See, in her nest, the nightingale’s mute mate,
Hatching her young, her patient vigil hold.
See how with love her fostering wings dilate,
As if to screen her nurslings from the cold.
Her neck alone, in restlessness upraised,
O’ertops the nest in which her brood reposes,
And her bright eye, with weary watching glazed,
Closing to sleep, with every sound uncloses.
Care for her callow young consumes her rest,
My very voice her downy bosom shakes,
And her heart pants beneath its plumy vest,
And the nest trembles with each breath she takes.
What spell enchains her to this gentle care?
Her mate’s sweet melody the groves among,
Who, from some branching oak, high poised in air
Sends down the flowing river of his song.
Hark! dost thou hear him, drop by drop distilling
The sighs that sweetest after transport be,
Then suddenly the vault above us filling
With foaming cataracts of harmony?
What spell enchains him in his turn—what makes
His very being thus in languor melt—
But that his voice a living echo wakes,
His lay within one loving heart is felt!
And, ravished by the note, his mate still holds
Her watch attentive through the weary time;
The season comes, the bursting shell unfolds,
And life is music all, and love, and prime.
Passing now from Lamartine’s poetry, expressly such, we go to his prose, which, however, is scarcely, if at all, less poetical. Poetry, or at least, the presence in power, and in great proportionate excess of power, of imagination, lording it over every thing else, over memory, judgment, taste, good sense, veracity—characterizes all that proceeded from Lamartine’s pen. His history is valueless, almost valueless, as history. His travels are utterly untrustworthy as records of fact. Lamartine cannot tell the simple truth. Persons, things, events, suffer a sea-change, always to something rich and strange seen by him looming in the luminous haze of atmosphere with which his imagination perpetually invests them. His men are ennobled, like Ulysses transfigured by Pallas-Athene. His women are beautiful as houris fresh from paradise. The aspects of ocean and shore and wood and stream and mountain and sky, are all, to Lamartine, washed with a light that never was on sea or land or in heaven overhead, the consecration and the poet’s dream. This quality in Lamartine’s style does not prevent his being very fine. He is very fine; but you feel, Oh, if this all were also true!
On the whole, large, splendid, scenic, admirable in instinct for choosing his point of view, as Lamartine is in his histories, brilliant even, and fecund in suggestion, we turn from the ostensibly historical in our author to the ostensibly autobiographical, in order to find our prose specimens of his quality in the “Confidences.” Lamartine never perhaps did any thing finer, any thing more characteristic, than in telling his story of “Graziella” in that work. This story is an “episode” where it appears; or rather—for it is hardly so much as let into the continuous warp and woof of the “Confidences”—it is a separable device of ornament embroidered upon the surface of the fabric. It is probably, indeed, tosome extent autobiographic; but the imagination had as much part in it as the memory. For instance, the actual girl that is transfigured into the “Graziella” of the story was not a coral-grinder, as she is represented by Lamartine, but an operative in a tobacco factory. The real beauty of the tale is, by a kind of just retribution on the author, inseparably bound up with unconscious revelation on his part of heartless vanity and egotism in his own character. You admire, but while you admire you wonder, you reprobate, you contemn. A man such as this, you instinctively feel, was not worthy to live immortally as an author. You are reconciled to let Lamartine pass.
“Graziella” is a story of love and death, on one side, of desertion and expiation—expiation through sentimental tears—on the other. One would gladly trust, if one could, that the reality veiled under the fiction was as free in fact from outward guilt as it is idealized to have been by the writer’s fancy. But neither this supposition, nor any other charitable supposition whatever, can redeem “Graziella” from the condemnation of being steeped in egregious vanity, egotism, and false sentiment, from the heart of the author.
We strike into the midst of the narrative, toward the end. There has been described the growth of relation between the author and the heroine of the idyll, a fisherman’s daughter. And now this heroine, Graziella, is desired in marriage by a worthy young countryman of hers. Such a suitor—for she loves, though secretly, the author (this by the way is a thing almost of course with Lamartine)—the girl cannot bring herself to accept. In despair she flees to make herself a nun. She is found by the autobiographer alone in a deserted house. He ministers to her in her exhausted state—and this to the following result:
“I feel well,” said she to me, speaking in a tone of voice that was low, soft, even, and monotonous, as if her breast had completely lost its vibration and its accent at the same time, and as if her voice had only retained one single note. “I have in vain sought to hide it from myself—I have in vain sought to hide it forever from thee. I may die, but thou art theonly one that I can ever love. They wished to betroth me to another; thou art the one to whom my soul is betrothed. I will never give myself to another on earth, for I have already secretly given myself to thee. To thee on earth, or to God in heaven! that is the vow I made the first day I discovered that my heart was sick for thee! I well know that I am only a poor girl, unworthy to touch thy feet even in thought; therefore, have I never asked thee to love me. I never will ask thee if thou dost love me. But I—I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!” And she seemed to concentrate her whole soul in those three words. “Now despise me, mock me, spurn me with thy feet! Laugh at me if thou wilt, as a mad thing who fancies she is a queen in the midst of her tatters. Hold me up to the scorn of the whole world! Yes, I will tell them with my own lips—’Yes, I love him. And had you been in my place you would have done as I have—you would have loved him or have died.’”
“I feel well,” said she to me, speaking in a tone of voice that was low, soft, even, and monotonous, as if her breast had completely lost its vibration and its accent at the same time, and as if her voice had only retained one single note. “I have in vain sought to hide it from myself—I have in vain sought to hide it forever from thee. I may die, but thou art theonly one that I can ever love. They wished to betroth me to another; thou art the one to whom my soul is betrothed. I will never give myself to another on earth, for I have already secretly given myself to thee. To thee on earth, or to God in heaven! that is the vow I made the first day I discovered that my heart was sick for thee! I well know that I am only a poor girl, unworthy to touch thy feet even in thought; therefore, have I never asked thee to love me. I never will ask thee if thou dost love me. But I—I love thee, I love thee, I love thee!” And she seemed to concentrate her whole soul in those three words. “Now despise me, mock me, spurn me with thy feet! Laugh at me if thou wilt, as a mad thing who fancies she is a queen in the midst of her tatters. Hold me up to the scorn of the whole world! Yes, I will tell them with my own lips—’Yes, I love him. And had you been in my place you would have done as I have—you would have loved him or have died.’”
The man thus wooed by the maid assures her of his reciprocal affection. But the author explains to his readers:
Alas! it was not real love, it was but its shadow in my heart. But I was too young and too ingenuous not to be deceived by it myself. I thought that I adored her as so much innocence, beauty, and love deserved to be adored by a lover. I told her so, with that accent of sincerity which emotion imparts; with that impassioned restraint which is imparted by solitude, darkness, despair, and tears. She believed it because she required that belief to live, and because she had enough passion in her own heart to make up for its insufficiency in a thousand other hearts.
Alas! it was not real love, it was but its shadow in my heart. But I was too young and too ingenuous not to be deceived by it myself. I thought that I adored her as so much innocence, beauty, and love deserved to be adored by a lover. I told her so, with that accent of sincerity which emotion imparts; with that impassioned restraint which is imparted by solitude, darkness, despair, and tears. She believed it because she required that belief to live, and because she had enough passion in her own heart to make up for its insufficiency in a thousand other hearts.
The autobiographer is summoned away by his mother, and he goes, lacerating Graziella’s heart, but swearing a thousand oaths of fealty to his beloved. Alas! the “treacherous air of absence” undid all—with him, though not with her. He blames himself in retrospect—gently—and pities himself lamentably, as follows:
I was at that ungrateful period of life when frivolity and imitation make a young man feel a false shame in the best feelings of his nature ... I would not have dared to confess ... the name and station of the object of my regret and sadness.... How I blush now for having blushed then! and how much more precious was one of the joy-beams or one of the tear-drops of her chaste eyes than all the glances, all the allurements, all the smiles for which I was about to sacrifice her image! Ah! man, when he is too young, cannot love! He knows not the value of any thing! He only knows what real happiness is after he has lost it.... True love is the ripe fruit of life. At twenty, it is not known, it is imagined.
I was at that ungrateful period of life when frivolity and imitation make a young man feel a false shame in the best feelings of his nature ... I would not have dared to confess ... the name and station of the object of my regret and sadness.... How I blush now for having blushed then! and how much more precious was one of the joy-beams or one of the tear-drops of her chaste eyes than all the glances, all the allurements, all the smiles for which I was about to sacrifice her image! Ah! man, when he is too young, cannot love! He knows not the value of any thing! He only knows what real happiness is after he has lost it.... True love is the ripe fruit of life. At twenty, it is not known, it is imagined.
A farewell letter from Graziella dying:
“The doctor says that I shall die in less than three days. I wish to say farewell to thee ere I lose all my strength. Oh! if I had thee near me, I would live! But it is God’s will. I will soon speak to thee, and forever, from on high. Love my soul! It shall be with thee as long as thou livest. I leave thee my tresses, which were cut off for thy sake one night. Consecrate them to God in some chapel in thy own land, that something belonging to me may be near thee!”
“The doctor says that I shall die in less than three days. I wish to say farewell to thee ere I lose all my strength. Oh! if I had thee near me, I would live! But it is God’s will. I will soon speak to thee, and forever, from on high. Love my soul! It shall be with thee as long as thou livest. I leave thee my tresses, which were cut off for thy sake one night. Consecrate them to God in some chapel in thy own land, that something belonging to me may be near thee!”
The autobiographer “complied with the order contained in her dying behest.” He says: “From that day forward, a shadow of her death spread itself over my features and over my youth.” He apostrophizes the remembered Graziella as follows:
“Poor Graziella! Many days have flown by since those days. I have loved, I have been loved. Other rays of beauty and affection have illumined my gloomy path. Other souls have opened themselves for me, to reveal to me in the hearts of women the most mysterious treasures of beauty, sanctity, and purity that God ever animated on earth, to make us understand, foretaste, and desire heaven; but nothing has dimmed thy first apparition in my heart.... Thy real sepulcher is in my soul. There every part of thee is gathered and entombed. Thy name never strikes my ear in vain. I love the language in which it is uttered. At the bottom of my heart there is always a warm tear which filters, drop by drop, and secretly falls upon my memory, to refresh it and embalm it within me.”
“Poor Graziella! Many days have flown by since those days. I have loved, I have been loved. Other rays of beauty and affection have illumined my gloomy path. Other souls have opened themselves for me, to reveal to me in the hearts of women the most mysterious treasures of beauty, sanctity, and purity that God ever animated on earth, to make us understand, foretaste, and desire heaven; but nothing has dimmed thy first apparition in my heart.... Thy real sepulcher is in my soul. There every part of thee is gathered and entombed. Thy name never strikes my ear in vain. I love the language in which it is uttered. At the bottom of my heart there is always a warm tear which filters, drop by drop, and secretly falls upon my memory, to refresh it and embalm it within me.”
The pensive poet even makes poetry on the subject, twenty years afterward, poetry which, in his customary triplets of expression, he calls “the balm of a wound, the dew of a heart, the perfume of a sepulchral flower.” He wrote it, he says, “with streaming eyes.” He prints his stanzas—for Lamartine is eminently of those who, as it has been said, weep in print and wipe their eyes with the public—and with a sigh, says:
Thus did I expiate by these written tears the cruelty and ingratitude of my heart of nineteen. I have never been able to reperuse these verses without adoring that youthful image which the transparent and plaintive waves of the Gulf of Naples will roll eternally before my eyes ... and without detesting myself! But souls forgive on high. Hers has forgiven me. Forgive me also, you!—I have wept.
Thus did I expiate by these written tears the cruelty and ingratitude of my heart of nineteen. I have never been able to reperuse these verses without adoring that youthful image which the transparent and plaintive waves of the Gulf of Naples will roll eternally before my eyes ... and without detesting myself! But souls forgive on high. Hers has forgiven me. Forgive me also, you!—I have wept.
We ought not to disturb, with any further words of our own, the impression of himself which Lamartine has now made on the reader. He has given us here his own true image. He is the weeping poet. It is fit—let him dissolve, let him exhale, from view in tears.
Lachrymose Lamartine, farewell!
XXIII.
THE GROUP OF 1830.
VICTOR HUGO: 1802-1885;SAINTE-BEUVE: 1804-1869;BALZAC: 1799-1850;GEORGE SAND: 1804-1876;DE MUSSET: 1810-1857.
Asa convenient method of inclusion and condensation for a number of authors who must by no means be omitted, but for whom there is left little room in these pages, we adopt the plan of making a cluster of important names to be treated in a single chapter. The political and the literary history of France join a sort of synchronism with one another at a certain point of time, which makes this arrangement not only feasible but natural.
The accession of Louis Philippe to the throne of France and the first representation of Victor Hugo’s “Hernani” in Paris both occurred in the year 1830. The Bourbon or absolutist tradition in French politics and the classic tradition in French letters were thus at one and the same moment decisively interrupted. For, as in the commencing reign of Louis Philippe, the “Citizen King” of France, the French people became for the first time, under monarchical rule, a recognized estate in the realm, so, with the triumph of Victor Hugo’s “Hernani” on the stage, the hour may be said to have struck of culmination in splendor and in influence for the romantic movement in French literature. The dominance of the ideas indicated in the expression “the Romantic Movement” was then suddenly for the moment so overwhelmingand so wide that it amounted almost to a usurpation of letters in France. We might indeed have written “The French Romanticists” as a fairly good alternative title to the present chapter.
1. Victor Hugo.
The men of 1830—we thus use a designation which has come to be established in French literary history—began each man his career in letters as a fighting romanticist. Victor Hugo was the acknowledged Achilles of the fight. Whoever wavered backward, Victor Hugo clamped his feet for his lifetime on the bridge of war, where his plume nodded defiance, seeming still to say for its wearer standing with a cliff of adamant at his back,
Come one, come all, this rock shall flyFrom its firm base as soon as I.
Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.
Around Victor Hugo, as the towering central figure among them all, were mustered, though some of them not to remain in this comradeship with him, Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, George Sand, De Musset. There were others than these, but these shall for us here constitute the group of 1830.
We shall be in yet better accord with Victor Hugo’s estimate of himself, if we take for his symbol a being mightier even than a demigod like Achilles. Let us do so and call him a Titan. But the past tense half seems an anachronism in speaking of Victor Hugo. The earth still trembles to his retiring footsteps and to the portentous reaction of his wrestle in war with the gods. This is his glory—he fought against Olympus, and, if he did not overthrow, at least he was not overthrown. Olympus in our parable was classicism in power; Victor Hugo was the genius of insurgent romanticism.
We thus repeat yet again terms which it would be difficult precisely to define. Classicism and romanticism are two forces in literature, seemingly opposed to each other, which, however, need to be compounded and reconciled in a single resultant, in order to the true highest effect from either. Forneither classicism nor romanticism alone concludes the ultimate theory of literature.
Classicism criticises; romanticism creates. Classicism enjoins self-control; romanticism encourages self-indulgence. Classicism is mold; romanticism is matter. Classicism is art; romanticism is nature. Classicism is law; romanticism is life. Romanticism is undoubtedly first and indispensable; but so, not less, classicism is indispensable, though second. Neither, in short, can get along without the other. But Victor Hugo represents romanticism.
Victor Hugo’s personality seems to have been a literary force almost as much as was his genius. As his quantity was immense, so his quality was vivific. Such a man was certain to be not only the master of a school but the center of a worship. Mr. Swinburne’s late volume on Victor Hugo may be cited in extreme example of the deific ascription rendered by many at the shrine of this idolatry. Mr. Matthew Arnold, on the other hand, lost no opportunity to flout with indignity the claims of Victor Hugo to his supreme literary godship.
This great French writer has so recently died that, for the purposes of this book, he might almost be considered still living. At any rate, he has of late been so much talked about in current periodicals; he is, in some of his books, so freshly familiar to all, and, if we must say it, he offers a subject so perplexing to treat at this moment judicially, that we shall in some measure avoid responsibility by presenting him here with the utmost brevity—brevity, however, to be taken rather as a homage, than as a slight, to the unmanageable greatness by imminency of his merit and his fame.
Victor-Marie Hugo wrote verse very early, beginning as a classicist. In later youth he was royalist and religious in spirit. At twenty he acquired the title of “the sublime boy.” How he acquired this title seems a matter of doubt. It is generally supposed to have been given by Chateaubriand, in his quality of patriarch of French letters. But this origin of the sobriquet the present writer has seen seriously suggested to be, along with the sobriquet itself, the pure invention ofVictor Hugo’s own imaginative egotism; which fruitful source of autobiography is said also to have yielded the poet’s noble pedigree—the process of production employed on his part being, in the latter case, the extremely simple one of adopting for ancestry the ancient line of a family, bearing the same name indeed with himself, but otherwise utterly unrelated to his own humble house. The really extraordinary independence of fact with which Victor Hugo undoubtedly made his assertions respecting himself renders any testimony that he bears on this point interesting as imagination rather than instructive as history. For three or four years now he was an irrepressible producer and publisher of verse. At twenty-five he put out his “Cromwell,” a drama, with a belligerent preface in favor of romanticism. After this each play of his was a battle for that literary cause. His “Hernani” (1830) was at last more than a battle—it was a victory.
The royalist in due time became republican. When Louis Napoleon was president, Victor Hugo opposed him. When Louis Napoleon made himself emperor, Victor Hugo denounced him. Banished for this from France, the poet betook himself to Belgium. Repelled from Belgium, he found refuge in England. Here, or, more exactly, in the island of Jersey first, and longer, afterward, in the island of Guernsey, he remained till the second empire fell. He then returned to Paris, and shared the melancholy fortunes of that beleaguered capital during the Prussian siege and during the anarchy of the Commune. Here, finally, he died, and, by his own will and testament, in a quite other than the original meaning of that pregnant Scripture phrase, “was buried”—for his funeral was to be attended with peculiar obsequies. He signified his wish to be treated in burial exactly as one of those paupers of whose cause he had been in his works the life-long champion.
During his long exile, which, notwithstanding his passionate love of Paris, he refused to shorten by any understanding arrived at with the emperor, he kept persecuting that usurper with printed diatribes, both in prose and in verse, which formordant bitterness have probably never been surpassed in the literature of invective. One of these diatribes was a book entitled “The History of a Crime.” To this he prefixed a kind ofimprimaturof his own, which may be quoted here as well exemplifying the high oracular style of expression characterized by short sentences and short paragraphs—these often of a single sentence only—that he habitually affected: