A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE: Brief biographical and critical notices of thirty-three French poets of the nineteenth ceîitury with expérimental translations from their poems. lA» »*» MJ» WILLIAM JOHN ROBERTSON. LONDON: A. D. INNES & CO. BEDFORD STREET. 1895- Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers lo Her Majesty MA/ a) T///S VOLUME IS DEDICA TED VVITH AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE TO DANIEL FER G US ON RAMSAY AND ARCHIBALD EDWARD BUCHANAN BROWN ^a^^ MIU j-^f:LL Contents. PAGE Ballade against such as speak ill of France (FRANÇOIS villon) xiii Introduction ...... XV ANDRÉ CHÉNIER (1762-1794) I Bacchus 5 The Young Captive 6 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE (1790-1869) 8 The Lake . • 13 The Valley 15 The West . 17 Epistle to Adolphe Dumas 19 To a Young Girl who begged a lock of my hair 21 VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885) ..... 22 Her Name 29 To a Woman 30 New Song to an Old Air . 31 In a Church 32 This Age is great and strong 32 Mixed Commissions 34 Jéricho 35 Stella 36 Dusk yi A Hymn of the Earth 38 Frondage . 42 Reality 43 The Streels and the Woods 44 To the Imperious Beauty . 45 Forerunners 46 Change of Horizon 48 A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE JOSEPH DELORME (1804-1869) To Rhyme To Victor Hugo To the Muse Lausanne . AUGUSTE BARBIER (1805-1882) Popularity Michael-Angelo Allegri Shakespeare GÉRARD DE NERVAL (1808-1855) April Neither Good Morning nor Good Night Lest Lovers Anteros Delphica . Artemis PETRUS BOREL (l 809-1 859) To Iseult ... a medallion Odelet The Old Breton Minstrel ALFRED DE MUSSET (181O-1857) The Night in May Song : When Hope, Lovés wild capricious minion On One Dead THÉOPHILE GAUTIER (181I-1872) Unfaithfulness A Verse of Wordsworth . Secret Affinities Ode in the manner of Anacreon Apollonia . The Nereids 53 56 59 60 61 62 65 66 67 67 70 n 77 78 79 80 81 90 90 92 97 104 104 106 "3 114 115 117 F18 119 Vlll CONTENTS PAGE Carmen ....... 121 Art 122 LECONTEDE LISLE(l8l8-l894) . . 124 Pan .... 129 The Spring . 130 Pholoë .... • 131 Dies Iras .... • 131 Naboth's Vineyard . 136 The Black Panther 140 In the Clear Sky . 142 The Imperishable Perfume • 143 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (182I-1867) • 144 Bénédiction • 153 m Luck .... . 156 Beauty . 156 Idéal Love • 157 Hymn to Beauty . . 158 Exotic Fragrance • 159 Sonnet : In uttdulani robes with 1 tacreou s sheen impearled 160 The Spiritual Dawn 160 Music 161 The Flawed Bell . 162 HENRY MURGER (1822-1861) . 163 The Diver 168 Near Juliet's Balcony . 168 Pygmalion 169 Blanche-Marie 170 THÉODORE DE BANVILLE (1823-1891) 172 The Dawn of the Romance • 175 Home-Sickness . 184 Idolatry . t86 A Love-Song . 187 A Boat-Song 188 IX A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE PAGE The Blacksmiths ..... 190 The Nightingale ..... 192 A Starry Night ..... 193 Herodias ...... 194 Medea ...... 195 Remembrance ..... 196 ANDRÉ THEURIET (1833 .. .) .... 198 The Song of the Willow-Weaver . 200 The Kingfisher ..... 202 On the Water ..... 202 ARMAND SILVESTRE (1837 . . .) . 204 To One by the Sea .... 206 Why should I weep ? . . . . 207 Judith ...... 207 Sonnet : Flowerage of lilies opening to the Dawn 208 A Spring Thought .... 209 Nature's Reflections .... 210 LÉON DIERX (1838 . . .) . 211 Lazarus ...... 213 Funeral March ..... 215 VILLIERS DE L'ISLE-ADAM (1838-1889) . 219 Discouragement ..... 224 Twilight Witchery .... 225 TheGifts 225 Confession ..... 226 ALBERT GL.^TIGNY (1839-1873) .... 227 WildVines ... 231 Roses and Wine ..... 233 In the Arbour ..... 234 The Night is Corne ... 235 AWinterWalk 235 Résurrection . ... 236 CONTENTS PAGE SULLY PRUDHOMME( 1839. . .) , . . . . 237 Where? . . . . 240 Saving Art .... 241 The Light of Truth 241 CATULLE MENDÈS (1840 . . .) 243 The Curses of Hagar 246 The Mother .... 250 The Disciple .... 251 THREE NOVELISTS .... 252 My Wishes. (Emile zola : 1840 . . .) . 254 Three Days of Vintage. (ALPHONSE DAUDET : 1840 . . . ) 255 Passionless Nature. (Alphonse daudet : 1840 . . .) 256 Desires, (GUY de maupassant : 1850-1893) 258 FRANÇOIS COPPÉE (1842 . . .) . 260 An October Morning 263 Pharaoh ..... 263 The Three Birds .... 265 Persistency ... . 266 On a Tomb in Spring-Time 267 JOSÉ-MARIA de HEREDIA (1842 . . .) 268 Sunset ..... 270 The Shell 270 On a Broken Statue 271 STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ (1842 . . .) 272 A Faun's Afternoon (fragment) . 274 Flowers ..... 276 Sonnet : My tomes redosed upon the Paphian name 277 PAUL VERLAINE (1844 • • •) . 278 Résignation ..... . 284 Weariness ...... . 284 Anguish ..... . . 285 XI A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE PAGE An Autumn Song . . . . 286 The Lover's Hour 286 The Nightingale . 287 The Death of Philip the Second 288 A Song at Sunrise 294 The Art of Poetry . 295 PAUL DÉROULÈDE (1846 . . .) 297 The Marseillaise . 299 Credo 300 MAURICE ROLLINAT (1846 . . .) . 301 The Poppy Ravine 303 The Chamber 305 The Song of the Speckled Partridge 307 JEAN RICHEPIN (1849 . . .) 308 The Death of the Gods . 311 The Wanderer 314 The Hun . 316 Ballade of the Swallow 318 HERVÉ-NOËL LE BRETON (1851 . . .) 319 Sic itur ad Astra . 321 The Burden of Lost Soûls 322 A Poet's Grave 326 Hymn to Sleep 327 ARTHUR RIMBAUD (1854-1891) . 330 Love and Labour . 332 Wasted Youth 333 The Vowels 334 JEAN MORÉAS (1856 . . .) 335 The Leaves front the Woodland 338 Little Blue Bird . 338 Sweets to the Sweet 339 INDEX .... 343 Xll Ballade against such as speak ill of France. May he be met by monsters spouting fire, As Jason was, in quest o' the fleece of gold ; Or to a beast be, like Belshazzar's sire, Seven years transformed, and won in field and fold; Or dree such dolorous loss and sore despight As erst the Trojans wreaked for Helen's flight ; Or swallovvëd be, like Tantalus of old And Proserpîne, in Pluto's pool obscène ; Be worse than Job in grievous suiiferance, Or held as thrall in Dsedalus' demesne, That wisheth evil to the realm of France ! Four months may he sit singing in a mire. As bittern doth his head i' the marish hold ; Or led in harness, like a beast of hire, Be to the Grand Turk eke for silver sold ; Or thrice ten years, like Magdalen naked quite, In cloth of wool ne linen cloth be dight ; Be, like Narcissus, drenched in waters cold, Like Absalom hung by the hair the boughs between, Fordone as Judas was for malfeasance. Or in worse case than Simon Magus seen, That wisheth evil to the realm of France ! xiii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE His wealth, so might Octavian's time be nigher, Should molten flow in 's body as a mould ; Or like Saint- Victor's were his penance dire, To be between the moving millstones rolled ; Or by the waves engulfed in sorer plight Than Jonah lodged in whale's maw day and night ; Banished be he, nor Phœbus' sheen behold, Nor Juno's boon, nor solace of Love's queen ; And by great God be doomed to foui mischance, As King Sardanapalus was, I ween ; That wisheth evil to the realm of France ! ENVOY. Prince, may the troop of Eolus swoop him clean Where Glaucus reigneth in his forest green, Forlorn of peace and hopeful countenance ; For he deserves no goodly thing to glean That wisheth evil to the realm of France ! Ballade contre les inesdisans de la France. FRANÇOIS VILLON. XIV Introduction. When Ralph Waldo Emerson disposed, in one summary and emphatic line, of ' France, where poet never grew ' he was apparently convinced that she could claim no représentative singer whose name might be fitly placed along with the five starry names of Homer, Dante, Shake- speare, Swedenborg and Goethe. It is not unlikely that the American sage, with his puritanical préjudice against ' amorous poetry ' and his instinctive dislike to * sad poetry ', had preconceived the existence of certain uncon- genial éléments in French verse, for even in Goethe's Faust he found something that was 'too Parisian'. And it is probable, also, that he was better acquainted with French writers of the so-called classical period than with the lyrical voices of the présent century. His déniai of a poet to France, regarded as the utterance of Per- sonal feeling, might therefore be dismissed as unworthy of serions considération were it not likewise the laconic expression of a widely-diffused opinion. Nevertheless there must be many lovers of verse who think that the name of Victor Hugo would hâve completed the circle of suprême poets more appropriately than that of the Swedish visionary. Tennyson denoted a truer apprécia- tion of Victor Hugo's place in literature when he apostro- phised the ' Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance, ' Darkening the wreaths of ail that would advance, * Beyond our strait, their claim to be his peer '. XV A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE And Swinburne may be forgiven some excess of enthu- siasm, if any excess there be, in that splendid Birthday Ode which proclaims how ' The mightiest soûl put mortal raiment on ' That came forth singing ever in man's ears 'Of ail soûls with us', . . , But, even if Victor Hugo had never existed, it would surely be a rash thing to assert that ' poet never grew ' in the country which produced Villon and Ronsard in her archaic âge, Malherbe and Régnier during the period of formai development, André Chénier in the blackest days of her intellectual éclipse, and Lamartine, Musset, Banville, Baudelaire and Leconte de Lîsle as représentatives of the modem movement which has been made illustrious by 30 many men of genius, Unless, indeed, an appeal from blind prepossession to blazing évidence is lost upon those who willingly believe that no good thing can corne out of Nazareth ! The oracular judgments of great men are by no means least among the curiosities of literature. Within half a century of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's confident prédiction that such a thing as French music could never be, France gave birth to Hector Berlioz, the suprême master of modem orchestration and perhaps the most poetical of ail composers ; in less than another half-century she had conquered Europe with her brilliant opéras. . . . ' Equally * a want of books and men ' was the reproach of Words- worth to a révolution which produced Lazare Carnot and Lazare Hoche, and from which has since proceeded the most ample and splendid literary movement ever known. . . . According to Voltaire the dramatic art was in its infancy in England in the days of Shakespeare. And yet xvi INTRODUCTION out of the mouths of thèse Elizabethan babes and suck- lings human speech was perfected. ****** Although French poetry in the nineteenth century has exercised a large influence on the lyrical literature of Italy and Russia, it must be confessed that it has generally met with grudging récognition abroad. The familiarity of educated Englishmen with the French language, and even with French literature as represented by the novel and the drama, has not promoted to much purpose the culture of French poetry. And while the appréciative criticism of certain journals is ready to bear witness that there are English writers who possess a consummate knowledge of French verse, its beauties hâve hitherto been more or less neglected. It is true that of late years a change has corne over the indiffèrent feeling with which this notable branch of literature was so long regarded in England. Evidences of a growing interest in French poets and poetry hâve been afforded by occasional trans- lations from Musset or Gautier and occasional essays on Baudelaire or Verlaine. The anthology edited by George Saintsbury has helped to give a gênerai notion of the character and scope of French verse to fluent readers of the language. If such unambitious spécimens as Dean Carrington's Translations from the Poems of Victor Hugo may hâve failed to perform a similar service for the un- initiated, it cannot be said that the characteristics of French lyrical form and melody hâve been neglected in the excellent fugitive translations of Austin Dobson, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Lang, Cosmo Monk- house and other English writers. The purpose of the expérimental translations which are published in this volume is simply to convey to those readers who are not in touch with the original language some perception of b xvii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE the peculiar qualities of French poetry, in so far as thèse may hâve been reflected in a diversely constituted tongue. ****** • Speaking generallys it is not in respect of form, but * in respect of matter, that our poets are inferior to the * English poets ' * says Gabriel Sarrazin in his admirable séries of studies entitled la Renaissance de la Poésie anglaise: 1798-1889. In this distinction between spiritual substance and artistic shape the French writer has seized at least one characteristic which gives English poetry the suprême place in modem literature. Other French critics hâve observed it, for example, Taine, who confesses in his Noies sur l'Angleterre: — 'To my mind there is no poetry * equal to English poetry, and none which speaks so * strongly and so clearly to the soûl '. Théophile Gautier vvas likewise able to appreciate, if not to emulate, those inhérent qualities which give to English verse its enviable supremacy, for he has somewhere vaguely defined them as ' the Scottish élément ' in song. It would, of course, be false to assume that the higher faculties of imagination and moral force hâve exercised no influence on French poetry. Yet it is certain that the peculiar pathos of the Elegy written in a Country Church- yard, the wild fantastic charm of The Ancient Mariner, and the subtle émotion that breathes through The Solitary Reaper or the Ode to a Nightingale hâve found no such perfect expression in the French language, rich as it is in poetical ideas and images, and possessed of such artistic resources. And if, in a gênerai sensé, refraining from futile individual comparisons, we take Keats for André Chénier ; Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge and Landor for * ' Ce n'est point en général par la forme, mais par le fond, que nos poètes * sont inférieurs aux poètes anglais.' xviii INTRODUCTION Lamartine, Barbier, Sainte-Beuve and Gérard de Nerval (forgetting Victor Hugo) ; Byron for Alfred de Musset ; and Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, William Morris and George Meredith for Théo- phile Gautier, Théodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Charles Baudelaire and the Avhole school of contemporary French singers, such a parallel is on the whole unfavour- able to France, especially when those things which seem to be the essence and soûl of poetry are divested of their outward limbs and flourishes. But, in making this comparison, it must be remembered that although the combination of moral force with idéal vision which is conspicuous in Wordsworth, Browning and Tennyson is not so manifest in Keats, Shelley and Swinburne, thèse poets hâve nevertheless achieved great things and taken a place with ail but the highest names in English song. Perhaps it is unfortunate for French verse that so much of it has been inspired by Parisian expérience, and that it often reflects the artificial émotions of a highly-corrupted civilisation, instead of seeking fresh colour and life from the healthy influences of natural beauty and spiritual solitude. For this is the secret of the power which lies in the best English poetry. Its spell has been woven from the deepest and widest expériences of human life. Those éléments of reflection and force, kindled by imagination and feeling, with which it is so largely sulTused are drawn from the remote and complex characteristics of a race in which the robust Saxon, the calculating Norman, the audacious Dane and the dreamy Celt hâve for âges blended their activities, their thoughts and their ideals. * * * * * Ht The poetry of any people necessarily dérives its external characteristics from the pecuHar attributes of the national tongue, for the mould in which the poet's thought xix A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE îs cast must be determined by the nature of the rhyme and the limitations of the rhythm vvhich are indigenous to his own language. Let the émotion be ever so fervid and the imagination ever so lofty, their rough-cast créations will hâve to be chiselled, when they cool down, in the material which the craftsman's native speech has placed at his service. Hence the ' mechanic exercise ' to which Tennyson alludes in one of the most spontaneous and at the same time one of the most highly elaborated of his Works. The critic of poetry, in his pursuit of 'con- ceptions ' and ' atmosphères ' and ' periods of évolution ', is perhaps prone to overlook the importance of this purely artistic élément in verse. And yet the accidents of rhyme, the facilities of allitération and the felicities of assonance are inséparable aids to song. They hâve often given birth to a beautiful thought, suggested a brilliant image and contributed to the force of an antithesis, They help the poet to express himself in a more melodious and captivating fashion. French poets hâve naturally dis- played a no less ingenious art than their English brethren in availing themselves of the ready-made ideas involved in rhyme and in diversifying thèse ideas a thousand-fold. But there is one almost vital différence in their method, arising chiefly from those limitations which the more précise character of the French language has imposed on poetical expression. An example taken from two writers of English verse will serve as a simple illustration. Long- fellow, who, vvith ail his learning and lyrical capability, often failed to achieve that perfect harmony between word and idea which is the glory of Imaginative poetry, has the following couplet in Flowers : — * Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, * Stand, like Ruth, amid the golden corn '. XX INTRODUCTION Keats, the greatest master of his art since Shakespeare and Milton, sings in his Ode to a Nightingale of * . . . the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, ' She stood in tears amid the alien corn '. The conception in each case is highly poetical and the illustration is almost the same, but how the poetry seems to evaporate when an ordinary descriptive adjective is substituted for the spiritual one in which Keats, with his unerring instinct, has summed up the true pathos of Ruth's loneliness ! It is precisely in the lack of this power to transfigure common words by the light of imagination that French poets hâve often failed to reach the height to which English poetry has so easily attained, owing to the vague and fluctuant largeness of our English speech. Hence, also, the abuse of such adjectives as sombre, sacré, divin and suprême by French poets to whom Milton's 'blind mouths' or Shakespeare's daring metaphor ' to take arms against a sea ' of troubles ' would seem monstrous, because of the exact- ness into which the logical French mind has fashioned the national idiom. ****** There are some essential characteristics of the French language which contribute to give to French poetry an artificial form. Its dérivation and structure, which are scholastic rather than vernacular,* hâve endowed it with a * Since so much is made of the Celtic éléments in the French nation (and properly so as regards its ethnological origin) it is significant that modem French has about 2000 Latin and 1000 Greek radicals and only 700 from the Germanie and Celtic languages ; indeed the purely Celtic contribution is rcpresented by less than 100 roots, and many of the words derived from thèse are of purely local application. (See Henri Stappers : Dictionnaire synoptique d'étypiologie française: Bruxelles: 1885.) xxi A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE limited capacity for the expression of homely sentiment, such as is congenial to the rich root-soil of German speech. For this reason the French chanson and lyric hâve so often a cold and conventional air, when compared with the lied. In Hke manner, the deliberateness of French poetical diction, contrasting as it does with the quick incisiveness of the coUoquial language,* tends to deprive it of that force and fervour which the fine frenzy of the singer would otherwise infuse into it. To thèse natural limitations of the French language must be added the academical restrictions to rhyme, the lack of rhythmical accents, and the use of the symmetrical caesura which custom has imposed on poetical speech. Heine likened the French metrical System to 'a strait- ' waistcoat ' and Zola describes it as ' a steel corselet'. Such impediments to rhythmical movement and emotional expression hâve forced French poets to seek relief from monotony in richly-coloured imagery, in variety of rhyme and in devices of melody ; often to such a degree that the reader is tempted to exclaim, like Gertrude, ' More ' matter, with less art ! ' ' French poetry ', says Gabriel Sarrazin, 'has been striving for a century to reach by ' powerful effects of music and colour that which the ' Anglo-Saxon instinct has unconsciously achieved '. {Poètes modernes de V Angleterre.) Moreover, their in- heritance of artistic traditions and their culture of the sensuous arts f has exaggerated in many of the best French poets a natural dévotion to form. Hence the cunning conveyance of subtleties embeUished by fancy * ' La lenteur de notre chant, qui fait un étrange contraste avec la vivacité de notre nation.' (Voltaire : Stipplément au Siècle de Louis XIV.) t Victor Hugo, Barbier, Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Baudelaire, Villiers, Dierx, Mendès and many other French poets hâve either been draughtsmen, painters and musicians themselves or accomplished connoisseurs and critics of the fine arts. xxii INTRODUCTION and sentiment ; and hence a striving after unfamiliar rhymes and images which has usurped in many of them the place of strong émotion seeking utterance in song. Often the French poet seems to choose a landscape scène or a phase of human expérience for the express purpose of painting a picture, instead of weaving external nature into the mood and émotion of the moment, as in The Excursion or In Memoriam. But in their own sphère of art the French poets are suprême. They may claim a place by themselves as masters of purely intellectual ex- pression. ^In no other literature hâve there been such ; expert artificers in verse as Gautier, Baudelaire, Mendès, Mallarmé and Verlaine, men whose verbal work at its best is unrivalled in visible beauty. By diligently cultivating and developing their poetical language on its own lines, î^'such artists hâve carried to perfection in verse ail those qualities which distinguish French art in gênerai from English or German or Italian art, and which hâve given to French music, French sculpture and French painting a peculiar grâce and individuality. Delicacy of outline, beauty of form, freshness and brilliancy of colour ; every- thing that betokens dexterity of touch and absolute lucidity of vision ; declamatory force, harmonious modu- lation and dramatic movement — ail are there ! And if in French verse there is more of the superficial play of fancy than the transfiguring glow of imagination ; a sensuous worship of palpable loveliness rather than a révélation of the inner pathos of natural things ; let it not be supposed that French poetry is by any means ,* devoid of the higher attributes of impassioned speech. The fiery particle has never been extinguished in a poet because he had to contend with the difficulties of an ex- tremely complex metrical System. Who will venture to assert that the observance of the dramatic unities in Greek xxiii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE tragedy fettered the passion of Euripides, the pathos of Sophocles and the sublimity of iEschylus ? Not one of thèse essential qualities of pure poetry is wholly lacking in the French verse of the nineteenth century, and, if in certain schools the artistic attributes are paramount, many of the higher imaginative and emotional éléments are to be found abundantly in Lamartine and Musset, while there is ample measure of every one of them in Victor Hugo, c *♦*#** The melody of the French language has been loudly denied by English writers and especially by those whose knowledge of French verse was limited to the alexan- drines of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire. The nasal ' n ' is naturally the head and front of offence. It is difficult fora foreigner to judgeimpartially of thèse things, for he almost inevitably ignores similar cacophonies with which custom has made him familiar in his native speech. The English hissing plural and many of our harsh con- sonantal combinations (rnt : rbd : sht) must seem unmusical to an Italian, particularly when they occur as verse termi- nais. Take for example a stanza from In Memoriam : — ' I held it truth, with him who s\ngs ' To one clear harp in diveri- Zones, * That men may rise on steppiw^-i'/ones ' Of their dead selves to higher i^cimgs '. Not only has the poet ended ail his rhymes with the sibilant, but he has placed them ail on the same con- sonant, and some of them in uneuphonious combinations. And yet Tennyson's supremacy among the modem masters of verbal harmony is indisputable. It would be worse than hypercritical to insist on the point. The Germans hâve their rfft and à)'\t and the Russians their m; (shtch) xxiv INTRODUCTION and TIHHK (tchneek), but the employaient of thèse harsh sounds in poetical language does not rob it of harmony and melody. The modem masters of French versification hâve handled their nasal consonant with wonderful discrétion, and, however discordant it may be on the lips of a café-chantant singer, its pronunciation in poetry by a true artist need not offend the most sensitive ear. Perfect euphony is not the highest charm of a language, for almost in proportion as speech becomes merely mellifluous it loses in virility and vigour, owing to the absence of concussive sounds. There is as much real melody in Baudelaire's or Verlaine's French and in Tenny- son's or Swinburne's English as in the finest Italian. Let not the persuasive éloquence of silver-tongued De Quincey nor the loud-mouthed déclamation of Walter Savage Landor préjudice any one against the melody of French verse. Their examples of dissonance are generally chosen from the worst verses of eighteenth-century writers, who had not the cultured sensé of verbal beauty which is now common among French writers, whether of verse or prose. The later French poets hâve discovered marvellous har- monies in their native tongue, as the following examples will shew : — ' Car je ne puis trouver parmi ces pâles roses ' Une fleur qui ressemble à mon rouge idéal ' — {Charles Baudelaire^ ' Plus vides, plus profonds, que vous-mêmes ô Cieux !' — {Charles Baudelaire.^ ' Et ce vague frisson de rose d'Orient ' Où la lumière passe et joue en souriant' — {Théodore de Banville.) And this magnificent quatrain which, notwithstanding the XXV A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE consécutive nasal sounds in the second line, is one of the most majestic in the whole range of French verse : — * Et toi, divine Mort, où tout rentre et s'efface, * Accueille tes enfants dans ton sein étoile, 'Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre et de l'espace, * Et rends-nous le repos que la vie a troublé ! ' {Leconte de Lisle.) No nobler and deeper music has ever been moulded by the lips of man. * * * * * * Those who wish to study the structure of French verse and the rules which govern its rhyme and measure will find an exhaustive historical analysis in Adolf Tobler's Vom franzôsischen Versbaii alter und neuer Zeit (Berlin : 1880). This author is more thoroughly scientific than any French writer on the subject, and his work is admittedly superior in respect of lingual and archaic learning to those of Louis Quicherat * and Becq de Fouquières.f An excellent if in no sensé profound discourse on French versification is Théodore de Banville's Petit Traité de Poésie française. Two other poets — Sully Prudhomme in Réflexions sur T Art des Vers and Stéphane Mallarmé in Relativement au Vers — hâve vouchsafed on the same sub- ject some purely philosophical observations, but thèse do not cope with the problems of metrical construction, although they give évidence of the prédilection for form which is so characteristic of French versifiers. Any attempt to apply a theory of accent or quantity to the mètre of French verse would be lost labour. Théodore de Banville's dictum is at once simple and conclusive : — * French verse has no rhythm, like that of other languages, * Traité de. Versification. (Paris: 1850.) t Traité giniral de Versification française. (Paris: 1879.) xxvi INTRODUCTION ' formed by a certain interlacement of long and short * syllables. It is simply the grouping of a certain regular * number of syllables, divided in certain kinds of verse by * a pause or rest which is called the caesura, and always ' terminated by a sound which cannot exist at the end of * one line without being repeated at the end of another, or ' of several other lines, and the return of which is called * Rhyme'. ^ If this définition be accepted (and there is no doubt of its accuracy) it follows that French verse has not a woven harmony of accents, with a regular beat and rhythm — tempora certa viodosque — but is rather an even flow of vocal utterance, saved from endless monotony by the hiatus, and endowed with melody by the devices of assonance, allitération, elision and rhyme. The following example of nonosyllabic verse from the Art poétique of Paul Verlaine will serve as an illustration to Banville's thesis : — 'Car nous voulons | la Nuance encor, ' Pas la Couleur, | rien que la nuance ! *0h! la nuan- | ce seul . . e fiance ' Le rêve au rêve | et la flûte au cor ! ' On no other metrical System can thèse lines be scanned. The almost exaggerated importance attached by French poets in gênerai and by Théodore de Banville in par- ticular to the function of rhyme may be measured by his bold assertion that *the imagination of Rhyme is, ' above ail, the faculty which constitutes the poet'; and further that * the only word which you hear in a verse is ' the word which is in the rhyme, and this word is the * only one which opérâtes in producing the effect aimed * at by the poet '. The proper significance of Banville's paradox is only observed when he goes on to explain that it is necessary to think in verse because a poet xxvii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE cannot hâve the right rhyme until he has the vision in his brain which gives birth to the rhyme. It follows from the French metrical method, with its compulsory hemistich in lines of nine or more syllables, that, unless the language is handled with consummate art, there is a tendency to tameness and uniformity in the movement of the verse, a disadvantage of which certain critics, and among them Jules Janin, hâve been expressly conscious. But the great masters of French verse hâve contrived by various devices to give to it a wonderful richness and diversity. If in a line of equal syllables we miss the anapaestic trip of Shelley or Swinburne, we hâve at ail events a release from monotony in the alternation of masculine and féminine rhymes, in the harmony of sonorous consonants and assimilated vowels, and in the verbal resources which distinguish the diction of poetry from that of prose in every language. Much of Victor Hugo's verse is so flexible and so forcible that it is almost impossible to read it without such emphasis as almost endows it with a rhythmical accent. He revolutionised the alexandrine by his masterly art in phrasing so as to shift the caesura from syllable to syllable according to the demands of his imperious poetical instinct. In vigour and grandeur, in résonance and splendour, he is immeasurably superior to every other French poet. None, save now and then Baudelaire, has such sonorous lines as ' Fleur de bronze éclatée en pétales de flamme ' — {L'Année terrible.) 'Toi, derrière Lagide, ô reine au cou de cygne' — {Les Châtiments.') ' Tourbillonnaient dans l'ombre au vent de leurs épées ' — {La Légende des Siècles.) xxviii INTRODUCTION lines in which the suprême resources of French poetical diction hâve been demonstrated. The elasticity of his vovvel elision is admirably illustrated by the following couplet, in which the rough force of the first h"ne contrasts with the exquisite tenderness of the second : — ' Je te proclame, toi que ronge le vautour, ' Ma patrie et ma gloire et mon unique amour ! ' {L'Année terrible^ Some of the rigid rules of French versification are obviously intelligible. Thus a singular (such as lieîî) must not be rhymed with a plural (such as cietix), although there is no différence in the terminal pronuncia- tion. Nor should two similar sounds, one ending with a consonant and the other ending with a vowel, to wit, a masculine and a féminine word like noir and gloire^ be rhymed. Both thèse prohibitions hâve been boldly con- travened by one or two poets of the advanced school, notably by the late Jules Laforgue and by Jean Moréas, but a définitive adoption of such hérésies would discrédit the System on which the whole volume of French verse from Villon to Verlaine is composed. The alternation of masculine and féminine rhymes, which custom had rendered almost obligatory in French verse, has been disregarded by one or two living poets who are by no means revolutionary in their rhythmical methods, especially by Paul Verlaine in the Sapphic célébrations of Parallèle- ment and by Jean Richepin in his Chanson dti Sang. The former poet has aimed at the expression of a volup- tuous languor in the sole employment of féminine rhymes, and the latter at a virile and barbarie robustness in his exclusive use of masculine rhymes. In both cases the success of the abnormal experiment is vindicated by its spécifie purpose. xxix A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE The so-called ' mute e ' seems to hâve derived its value in French verse from the Italian and Provençal models of the early French poets. English poetry had a narrow escape from the same influence, for Chaucer invariably gave the féminine termination its full rhythmical effect, both in the singular and in the plural, and if it be dis- regarded the melody and rhythm of his verse is entirely spoiled. The précise value of the féminine ' e ' in the déclamation of French verse is a controversial point, and, as the poetical language ovves much of its plasticity and most of its melody to the proper employment of this vowel, the vocal significance thereof is worthy of some attention. There is, indeed, little or no différence of opinion as to its syllabic value in versification, but the currency which should be given to it in the recitation of verse has been a fertile subject of discussion among authors, critics, actors and musicians. When the vowel occurs at the end of a line its utterance seems by common consent to hâve become so attenuated as to be almost inaudible. Théodore de Banville deliberately avers that the final 'e' of the féminine line is not pronounced, and does not count in the enumeration of the syllables of which a verse is composed. Sully Prudhomme says that ' in words which are terminated by the vowel e {e muté) ' the latter has gradually grown weaker to such a degree ' that it is scarcely pronounced at ail , . . and is no longer ' reckoned a sound at the conclusion of a line '. Against such authorities there is nothing to be urged, but it is évident that the terminal ' e ' had a distinct declamatory value when the French language was in process of forma- tion, and when a fuller and larger fashion of pronunciation prevailed. This value has always been recognised by musical composers, so that in a song of Victor Hugo's set to music by Gounod the terminal ' e ' at once résumes its XXX INTRODUCTION full syllabic significance* But even hère the instinct of the consummate artist is exhibited in his treatment of the vowel. Songs Hke the Marseillaise and Une dame noble et sage (in Meyerbeer's opéra of les Hugue7iots) offer repeated examples of a coarse and clumsy manipulation of the final ' e '. On the other hand, in the Nîiits d'été of Berlioz, in such an air as Plus grand dans son obscurité (Gounod's Reine de Saba) and in any melody composed by Massenet or Saint-Saëns the discreet and délicate treatment of this terminal vowel gives a charm to the music which is peculiar to the French lyrical language. In a witty letter written by the last-named composer to Francisque Sarcey on this subject, he déclares that ' the * prolonged e mute, that is to say eu, eu, eu, , . . is due to ' our singers, vvho love to dwell on ail finales, whether ' masculine or féminine '. The function of the féminine 'e' in the body of the verse is a much more important problem. Some German savants hâve enunciated a heterodox theory to the effect that this 'e mute' has no rhythmical value in poetry, that it plays only a trivial part in dramatic diction, and that it tends to disappear altogether from French verse. A fierce controversy recently arose in Paris owing to the adoption of their opinion by Jean Psichari, a Franco- Greek contributor to the Revue bleue, who boldly declared that 'the e mute is not pronounced in French verse, un- ' less in the single case where its disappearance would ' bring about the encounter of three consonants '. The practical acceptance of such a theory would, of course, eliminate from French verse every élément of melody and rhythm, and necessitate the entire reconstruction of its * 'Thistf, which is not pronounced in ordinary déclamation, is pronounced * in noted déclamation, and that in a uniform manner.' (Voltaire : SuppU- ment att Siècle de Louis XI V. ) xxxi A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE metrical System. No better réfutation of this fallacy can be adduced than the invariable récognition which the féminine ' e ' has obtained in the verse of every notable poet of purely French nationality. Omitting this vowel in the déclamation of their lines, the cadence would be destroyed, the harmony emasculated and the measure falsified. French verse, as we know it, would become a chaotic assemblage of harsh sounds, and the vaunted alexandrine would be converted into irregularly alternated lines of eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve syllables, ' Foreign critics hâve too readily believed ' — says an actor and teacher who speaks with some authority — ' that our ' verse, devoid of the quantities which form the basis of ' other prosodies, lives only by its rhyme. Failing to find * in it the cadences due to long and short syllables, they ' hâve accused it of dragging itself along in the uniformity * of restricted rhythms, of stretching itself out to a fatal ' monotony by the répétition of an unvarying number of ' equal syllables, and, in fine, of achieving only an artificial ' existence and a conventional harmony in the puérile ' play of rhymes. They hâve been unable to feel that ' . . . thèse long and short syllables which they deny to ' us are often created delicately and deliciously by this * so much misunderstood e mute '. (L. Brémont : le Théâtre et la Poésie : 1 894.) Any one who is familiar with French verse, and who cannot enunciate the 'mute e' with that 'délicate and ' delicious ' ease which is the privilège of tongues to the manner born, will prefer to give it a fuller rather than a fainter emphasis if he wishes to realise its value in the euphony of French verse. The précise significance of the vowel is determined more by instinct, taste and sensé of melody than by any recognised standard. Some French actors carelessly slur it over and others ignore it in a most xxxii I N T R O D U C 1' I O N reprehensible fashion. 'In poetry' — says Francisque Sarcey — ' its employment admits of a marvellous variety ; ' for it may be simply recalled to the ear by an almost ' insensible suspension of the utterance, or indicated by a ' breath, or more heavily accentuated, or even sounded ' outright'. And it must be remembered, in reading Racine and Lamartine or Corneille and Victor Hugo, that the melody of their verse can only be appreciated by those who hâve mastered the musical effect of the féminine ' e ' and learned to enjoy the cadence, the suppleness and the harmony which this peculiar vovvel gives to the un- dulating alexandrine. It may be noted in passing that one or two con- temporary poets hâve so far broken with tradition as to try experiments with the occasional suppression of the * mute e ' as a syllabic factor in verse. This practice must, however, be regarded as a bold imitation of the vernacular elision which is customary in popular songs, and particularly in Parisian doggerel, for no French poet of importance has attempted to dispense altogether with the rhythmical employment of the vowel, nor would it be possible to do so unless strongly-marked accents or some other metrical device were substituted. * * * * -;lc- * No individual value can be given to the féminine 'e' in an English translation of French verse. But as it often confers a greater number of syllables on the French poetical line than the prose pronunciation of the same words would warrant, it may be accepted as a gênerai rule that the double alexandrine is adequately represented in English by the décimal or so-called heroic couplet, and this équivalence has been assumed in the following trans- lations. It would hâve been rash to attempt an English twelve-syllable verse in the face of Fifine at the Fair, c xxxiii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE since a master in the art of moulding difficult measures has often failed to give the desired flexibility to that long and heavy line with its monotonous caesura. Since the metrical regularity of French verse is re- deemed by the elision of vowels and the employment of the féminine terminal, it becomes necessary, in an English translation, to relieve the comparative monotony of the trochaic and iambic measures with dactylic and anapaestic rhythms, or by some variety of rhyme. Having regard to the fact that simple mètres in English are more congenial to the French rhythmical method, those hâve been generally employed in the translations which follow, but diversity has been sought in the occasional use of mixed masculine and féminine rhymes, as giving at least an approximate idea of the différence which once appealed to the ear and still appeals to the eye in the alternating rhymes of French verse. The difîficulty might hâve been met by an alternate employment of long-vowel and short- vowel monosyllabic rhymes, but this device would hardly hâve been acceptable. The mechanical labour of trans- lation has been considerably increased by the adoption of trochaic rhymes. It may be observed that Rossetti employed this method of rhyme in his beautiful version of Villon's Ballade des Dames des temps Jadis, and the practice will probably commend itself to those who hâve an intimate acquaintance with French versification. In doing this, some rhymes hâve been used which would not pass muster in the original, for in French verse ' there are ' no licences ', as Théodore de Banville says in his decided fashion. No apology, however, should be necessary for the juxtaposition in rhyme of ' blossom ' and ' bosom ' or ' meadow ' and ' shadow,' which are sanctioned by the génial freedom of English verse and the custom of the masters. Had such vocables as 'blossom', 'meadow', xxxiv INTRODUCTION 'murmur' and 'splendeur' had a hundred metrical sisters, instead of existing in single blessedness, there would hâve been no excuse for imperfect rhymes. But surely the limits allowed by Keats and Shelley and Swinburne may be regarded as permissible to any writer of verse who refuses to follow Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her wanton freedom with dissyllabic rhymes or to repeat the présent participle ad naiiseam after the fashion of Felicia Dorothea Hemans. The variety of rhymes at the disposai of French poets renders it difficult to translate into English with any approach to accuracy some of their highly artificial and elaborate forms of verse, such as the Ballade and the Rondel ; indeed, if féminine rhymes are considered essential, the task of giving an English version of French poems in réverbérant verse is an impossible one. Many of thèse poems seem to hâve been written chiefly as exercises in rhyme or to display the composer's crafts- manship and resource. It is an indisputable fact that the French language has a greater abundance of rhymes than any of the European languages which are cognate to it. The number of rhymes is increased by the rule which permits words having the same sound and spelling to be used as rhymes, and, indeed, regards the rhymes as richer in proportion to their identity. Rich rhyme is composed of such consonances as rose : morose ; dix -.jadis ; avide : livide ; and poor rhyme of such consonances as brume : plume ; cœurs : douleurs ; fière -.poussière ; whilst a léonine rhyme is one in which the consonance is carried through two or more syllables, such as écumante : fumante ; saillir : jaillir ; violet : triolet. There are also numerous varieties of récurrent and mimicking rhyme which pro- perly belong to the muséum of poetical curiosities. In English poetry there are only a few examples of the French form of ' rich rhyme ', which is not congenial XXXV \ A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE to our prosody. The poet, in such cases, appears to hâve pçrmitted a solecism rather than disturb the mould into which he had already cast his thought, as in Tennyson's Literary Squabbles : — * And strive to make an inch of room ' For their sweet salves, and cannot hear ' The sullen Lethe rolling doom ' On them and theirs and ail things here\ Some illustrations of French rhyme may also be found in Swinburne, who has thoroughly and lovingly studied the French poets. The rule laid down by Robert Browning in his superb préface to The Agamemno7i of ^schylus, that a translation should be 'literal at every cost save that of ' absolute violence to our language ', is too sound to be disputed. This rule, however, can be observed in its strictest sensé only in a prose or a blank-verse rendering ;* some latitude must be allowed to a transcription in rhyme. Now rhyme plays such an important part in French verse that translation into English prose or even into unrhymed verse would be eminently inappropriate. Absolute fidelity alike to word and thought is the idéal, but it is évident that in interchanging the rhymes of tvvo * The glaring unfitness of blank-verse for the transcription of rhyme is witnessed in the English translations of the Divina Coin média. The fine Miltonic verse of Cary gives neither the rhyme and the rhythm nor the cadence and the accent of the terza ritna, and Longfellow's unrhymed triplets approach so closely to prose that they seldom suggest either the supple movement or the subtle harmony of the original. In brilliant contrast to thèse is Rossetti's version of Villon's ballade before mentioned. In form and matter it is as perfect a transcription of the charming original as handicraft and artistic cunning could achieve ; and a single glance at the prosaic versions signed by Walt'er Thornbury and John Payne is sufficient to demonstrate its absolute supremacy as a poetical translation. But only a poet can transcribe with such success, and poets naturally prefer indigenous cultivation to the transplanting of exotics. xxxvi INTRODUCTION languages which are so diverse in structure and syntax the Sound must now and then be sacrificed to sensé and the sensé occasionally subordinated to sound. And although the substance, the shape and the harmony ought to be ail preserved as far as is attainable, the verbal efifect rather than the literal signification has sometimes to be sought. Especially is this the case with transla- tions from the French, a language in which the cheville, or interpolated turn to comply with the demands of rhyme, is a recognised poetical device. But the true principles of translation, though easy to enunciate, are hard to carry into exécution. In the following experi- ments an attempt has been made to convey the sensé of the original, whilst imitating the harmony, the cadence and the characteristics thereof, with some attention to the alternations of masculine and féminine rhyme which are in- separably associated with French verse. They will give at best but a faint reflection of those rich efifects of colour and melody which hâve been achieved by the French singers of this spacious century, and must therefore be regarded rather as an unworthy tribute to the poetical literature on which Catulle Mendès bestows so magnificent an encomium : — ' Our admirable French verse, glimpsed by Ronsard, desired ' by Corneille and dreamed by Chénier ; that verse which ' is perhaps so little understood by alien ears and has been ' inconsiderately decried, but which, diverse and supple, ' endowed with harmonious numbers, and as well fitted to ' be fiUed with things as the metrical verse of Homer and * Lucan, bears like a flapping banner on the summit its * resounding rhyme, multiform and inexhaustible, the effect ' of which, peculiar to our language, is lacking in ail poesy ' save our own'. {La Légende du Far?iasse contemporain.) ****** xxxvii A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE Thy name, impérial poet, I invoke ! Hugo, whose genius first on fiery wings Plunged into measureless space sublime and broke The speechless bounds. With trumpet thunderings, Tempest and pale éclipse of mortal things Thy clamorous lips the empyreal echoes woke ; Anon in cloudless blue thy spirit sings, Lulls the world's cry, lightens the human yoke, And with sweet pity thrills love's tremulous strings. And thine, O hapless Chénier ! with the fair White blossom blighted when the chill frost fell ; Lamartine, Musset, whose melodious air Played whispering prélude to the wilder swell Of Hugo's clan, Gautier, thy puissant spell ! Gérard and Murger, soûls of beauty rare. Flamboyant Barbier, fugitive Borel, Pale Glatigny and sombre Baudelaire Whose song-fire glows with sullen fiâmes of Hell ! Yours, too, sweet acolytes in the courts of song, Prudhomme and Coppée that with hymns adore In faultless rhyme no gods of shame and wrong : Subtile Verlaine, quaint Mallarmé whose lore, Sphinx-like, with symbols dim is sculptured o'er, And yours, last of the proud Hugonian throng, Leconte and Banville, bards that evermore With pseans loud triumphantly prolong The timbrel-clash and clarion-calls of yore ! xxxvni A CENTURY OF FRENCH VERSE André Chénier. Born in Constantinople, 1762 . . . Died in Paris, 1794. It was well said of the French Révolution that, like Saturn, she devoured her own children. The times were not propitious to idealists and singers, and the only poet of uncommon promise produced during that stormy period was sent to the guillotine at the âge of thirty-two and * died without emptying his quiver '.* Louis Chénier, the poet's father, was an attaché of the French Embassy to the Sublime Porte, and not Consul- General of France at Constantinople, as he is often erroneously designated. He married a Greek girl of great beauty, high character and exceptional intelligence. Her name was Elisabeth Santi-Lomaca, and she belonged to Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite. There is a tradition that she was descended from the illustrious crusading family of Lusignan. She died at Paris in 1844. Her open letters on Greek dances, Greek burials and Greek tombs were collected and published by Robert de Bonnières in 1879. André Chénier was brought to Paris in 1765, when his father returned home with a wife and four children, as well as a dilapidated fortune. Louis Chénier soon afterwards left his family for fifteen years, on receiving the appoint- ment of Consul-General in Morocco, and when he came back to France he obtained for André a nomination as gentleman-cadet in the Angoûmois régiment of infantry. * ' Mourir sans vider mon carquois ! ' (ïambe III. André Chénier.) ANDRE CHENIER A few years later André became attaché to the French Embassy in London, and he complained bitterly of isola- tion and weariness during his sojourn in England. Like Camille Desmoulins, and along with his own brother Marie- Joseph, André Chénier began early to dabble in literature. He had been nourished on Greek poetry, and is credited with a translation of Sappho's fragments and Anacreon's odes, executed at the âge of fourteen. Until the popular movement became pronounced, ail the Chénier family were ' aristocrats '. André signed himself Chénier de Saint- André ; Marie-Joseph posed as the Chevalier de Chénier. Their discontent with the slow progress of their fortunes under the monarchy led them to throw in their lot with the leaders of the démocratie agitation. Marie-Joseph became an advanced démagogue. André published in 1791 an Avis aux Français, in which he counselled modération and respect for the laws, in opposition to the furious spirits of the révolution. Marie -Joseph voted for the death of Louis XVI. André not only disapproved this act of injustice, but expressed his opinion so openly that he became a 'suspect' to the extrême party. He was arrested during the Terror, and guillotined at the barrière de Vincen7ies on 7 iher?Jiidor, only two days before the fall of Robespierre. Save the divine and heroic Charlotte Corday, no more interesting figure than that of the young poet was eclipsed with ail the beauty and bravery which perished in that pitiless Révolution. It is an almost accepted legend that André Chénier was the protagonist of French poetry in the nineteenth century. * AU the poets of the nineteenth century, save Lamartine ' . . . , says Arsène Houssaye, ' set out in the ' golden argosy of André Chénier, to sail across the lonian ' sea, and listen to the sirens of Homer and Sappho '. His verse was *a fresh breath from Greece', says Théophile ANDRÉ CHÉNIER Gautier, with less exaggeration. Sainte-Beuve, in his Pensées de JosepJi Delorme, seems to hâve been largely responsible for the promulgation of this legend. Baudelaire believed that André Chénier had no influence whatever on the poetical development of the nineteenth century ; and indeed it was Lamartine who gave the first fresh impulse to the lyrical movement of his âge. Chénier's poetry was entirely neglected by his ovvn contemporaries, and it was only in 1819 that a very imperfect collection of his verses, with an inaccurate memoir by Henri de Latouche, was given to the world. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic epochs had not been favourable to lyric art, but there can be no doubt that when Chénier's poems were published they did contribute a little to the efflorescence of 1830, which was chiefly the work of Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Musset, Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve and Victor Hugo. Chénier's poetical style and metrical treatment do not differ fundamentally from those of the French versifiers of the eighteenth century, to which era he belonged by birth and tradition. But he gave a fresher and freer play and a fuller harmony and rhythm to the classical mytho- logy which underlies ail the writings of that period. He restored suppleness to the stiff old alexandrine, and his ideas and images had a much more vivid individuality than those of his predecessors. He had vigour and grâce, along with which he achieved at times the true lyrical swing and gait. On this ground, if on no other, he claims a place among the poets of the présent century, to whom he is akin also in the dignity and forthright earnestness of his utterance. His political poems hâve an accent of sincerity which makes them models of their kind. Perhaps he felt, when face to face with death, that he had not done ail he might hâve done with better opportunities and a more encouraging public. But it does not appear that he ANDRÉ CHÉNIER would hâve become the leader of a new movement in letters, if his measure may be taken from the plan of Hermès^ which was discovered among his posthumous papers. Spécimens of this work were first published by Sainte-Beuve, along with other reliques of Chénier's poetry. Hermès was to hâve been a descriptive and philosophical poem in three books, containing imitations of Vergil's Georgics, and of Lucretius, Lucilius, Ovid and other Latin writers, with whom Chénier had a large acquaintance. The formation of the earth, the création of animais and man, the development of the human mind, the growth of religions, the organisation of society and the évolution of customs, morals, polity and science were comprised in the scheme of Hermès. From the fragments which hâve corne down to posterity, this poem would seem to hâve been admirably fitted to close the work of Lebrun and Delille in the eighteenth century, instead of preluding the melodious bursts of 1830. But the famé of Chénier must naturally rest on what he did, rather than what he might hâve donc. His virile, sonorous and often beautiful verse, his tragic career, and the prématuré extinction of his ambitious genius, will give him an ever- lasting place in French literature, and leave not unfulfilled, in a wider sensé than he conceived it, the fate fore- shadowed in the last lines which he wrote whilst awaiting his turn in the prison of Saint-Lazare : — ' Le messager de mort ' Remplira de mon nom ces longs corridors sombres ! ' {ïambe IV : unfinished.) ANDRÉ CHÉNIER Bacchus, Corne Bacchus, corne Thyoneus ever young, As Dionysus or as Leneus sung ! O corne, as when in Naxos lone and vvild Thy voice did soothe the fears of Minos' child ! The towered éléphant, slain in glorious war, Had fashioned with his spoils thine ivory car ; Vine-leaves and tendrils linked in flowing chains The broad-flanked tiger, furrowed with dark stains, And dusky pard, fierce panther and starred lynx That led thee with thy courtiers to thèse brinks. On wheels and axles gold shone everywhere ; The Maenads ran with loose and streaming hair, And lo Bacche ! Evohe Bacche ! sung, Leneus, Evan, Thyoneus ever young, And ail thy splendid names in Greece renowned, Till rock and vale echoed the jovial sound. Lo, now with wreathëd horns and flûtes they corne, Crotals and clamorous cymbals and hoarse drum Waved on thy noisy path with song and dance ! Satyr and Faun and sylvan gods advance Trooping at random round Silenus hoar, Who, cup in hand, from the far Indian shore, Drunken and drivelling as of old, will pass With slow pace tottering on his lazy ass. Bacchus. {Idylles: IX.) ANDRE CHENIER The Young Captive. The green ear ripens while the sickle stays, The ungathered grape, clustering in summer^days, Drinks the dawn's dewy boon ; Like theirs my beauty is, my youth Hke theirs, And though the présent hour has griefs and cares I would not die so soon. Let tearless Stoics seek the arms of Death ! I weep and hope ; before the black wind's breath I bend, then raise my head. Among my bitter days some sweet I find ! What honey leaves no satiate taste behind ? What seas no tempest dread ? Life's fresh illusion dwells within my breast. My limbs in vain thèse prison-walls invest ; Hope ever gives me wings. As when, escaped the cruel fowler's snare, More light, more joyful in the fields of air Philomel soars and sings.* Why should I wish to die ? From peaceful sleep Peaceful I wake ; not with remorse I weep, Nor crimes my rest destroy. My welcome to the dawn in ail things smiles ; On sombre brows my look almost beguiles A reawakening joy. * The young captive says Philomèle, but perhaps she is thinking of the lark. 6 ANDRÉ CHÉNIER I seem so far from the bright journey's end ! Thèse elms that fringe the path on which I wend Stretch forth in endless rows. Fresh at the feast of life, like a new guest, One moment only my fond hps hâve pressed The cup that overflows. 'Tis spring ; the harvest is not yet begun ; From season to new season, hke the sun, I vvould fulfil my year. Flower of hfe's garden, shining on the bright Spray, scarce hâve I beheld the morning Hght, And noon is not yet near, Death, come not nigh me now . . . départ, départ \ Console the sons of fear and shame whose heart Sinks in despair's pale svvoon : To me green Pales with her flock belongs, The Loves give kisses, and the Muses songs ; I would not die so soon. La jeune Captive. {Ode XL) Alphonse de Lamartine. Born in Mâcon, 1790 . . . Died in Paris, 1869. AIphonse-Marie-Louis de Lamartine* is the master of French reflective verse, and his influence on modem poetry has been real and lasting. His early youth was passed in the country-house of Saint-Point, under the wing of a fond mother and with refined sisters ; his éducation was superintended by a romantic priest and completed at the Jesuit seminary of Belley. His youthful faculties were fed on the Bible, on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, on Rousseau and on Chateaubriand, with some of the older English and Italian poets, and he began early to express his émotions in verse. After a visit to Italy he entered the military household of Louis XVHI in 18 14, and soon became a familiar figure in the best royalist salons in Paris. His health had always been somewhat fragile, and his sentimental melancholy led him into many strange expériences of the tender passion in his youth. The publication of the first volume of Méditations in 1820 caused an unwonted commotion in literary circles. It was the most brilliant success, said Sainte-Beuve, since Chateaubriand's Génie du Christianisme. Lamartine leaped into famé with one bound, and yet, if the circum- stances be considered, it is easy to understand the sudden * The repeated assertion that Lamartine's real name was Prat is inaccurate. The family name was Lamartine, but the poet's father, a younger son, bore the courtesy-title of Chevalier de Prat. The family was an old but obscure territorial one. ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE celebrity of his early poems. Thèse glimpses of pure affection, nursed in dévotion and faith, and this return to the love of nature refreshed an âge which was suffering from weariness after the bloody terrors of the Révolution and the brutal splendeurs of the Empire. Not only did Lamartine's verses reveal a fine vein of contemplation, which expressed simple thoughts and émotions in a simple way,without recourse to classical allusions and conventional imagery ; they came at a time when there were few singers in France and certainly no great one. Casimir Delavigne had been the Triton among such minnows as Millevoye and Chênedollé and Désaugiers. Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset and Auguste Barbier had not yet begun to publish their poems ; ail thèse men of the future were then under twenty years of âge. Louis XVIII gave his patronage to Lamartine and granted him a pension. * A poet is born to us this night', exclaimed Talleyrand, after reading through the Méditations in a single sitting. So generally was this judgment approved that Lamartine was encouraged in 1823 to issue a new volume of Méditations y for which he received 14,000 francs. He seemed to be on the high road to fortune. He had been appointed secretary to the French Embassy at Naples, and was married to a young Englishwoman who brought him a considérable dowry, or at least an assured income. The French Academy elected him in 1830, the year of his Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Lamartine's royalist opinions had been undergoing a change as he grew older, and he thereupon renounced the diplomatie career, chartered a vessel, and made a voyage to the East with his wife and daughter, travelling like a grand seigneur. In 1835 he published a volume recording his impressions of Eastern travel ; in 1836 came Jocelyn, in 1838 la Chute d'un Ange, in 1839 the Recueille- ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE ments poétiques, and in 1 847 the Histoire des Girondins. But his famé had already been overshadowed by that of Victor Hugo and the brilliant men of 1830- 1840, and he himself had lost the touch which made his eadier poems so fascinating. Moreover, he could not be compared as an artist with the vvriters of that period. His facihty of improvisation was fatal to the severe discipline which forms a poet of the highest order. He had always been a loose and careless writer, and so disliked the labour of revision that when Hachettes were about to publish a new édition oï Jocelyn he could not make up his mind to correct the faulty verses, and finally proposed that a literary hack should finish them. And yet this was the poem in which Béranger, so debonair in his judgments, found flaws, négligences and longueurs which, even to his indulgent eyes, were only redeemed by its numberless beauties. Lamartine's active intervention in politics, his participa- tion in the overthrow of Louis-Philippe in 1848, and his courageous and successful résistance, as a member of the Provisional Government, to an armed multitude in the streets of Paris, are familiar to readers of French history. He was almost the absolute master of France for three months. His décline was rapid and irretrievable. A year later he could not find a department in France willing to elect him as its parliamentary représentative. He soon retired into private life, disappointed and impoverished. His resources had been badly administered in the day of his prosperity. Princely expenditure and unhappy spécu- lations, travelling, élections, charities, and a hundred other things, had exhausted his fortune. In 1860 he had to leave Milly, the family domain in the Maçonnais, after selling his furniture and heirlooms. Thenceforth he lived in an obscure lodging in Paris with his devoted wife, while Victor Hugo, exiled, was writing les Misérables in his 10 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE island solitude. Lamartine's efforts to free himself from debt, says Ernest Legouvé, a friend of his later days, were superhuman. The author whose Histoiy of the Girondins had been sold to a publisher for 250,000 francs before he had written a single line, now slaved for journals and magazines, furnishing political and historical criticism, confidences, memoirs and occasional verse for the where- withal to face dishonoured bills, accumulated interest, and the demands of urgent creditors. This proud man had to sacrifice his pride, his ambition, his health and his happiness in the desperate struggle. The French Chambers voted him a substantial allowance in 1867, but this welcome relief came too late. And so Lamartine, who might easily hâve had ail that should accompany old âge, died in poverty and loneliness, a shadow of his former self, in the midst of new political and literary movements to which he was a stranger. More than once he had failed to take at the flood that tide in the affairs of men which leads on to fortune. Lamartine's character was in many respects a great one. He was tolérant in his opinions, libéral in his ideas and just in his actions. When the events of 1848 placed power in his hands he not only governed with modération and dignity but he showed himself absolutely disinter- ested. He had the gift of seizing quickly the superficial significance of things, yet he lacked persévérance, and rarely followed up his first enthusiasm with energy and goodwill. Had he disciplined his literary faculties and turned aside from political popularity he might hâve been one of the first poets of the century. As it is, he has exercised a larger influence on French poetry than either André Chénier or Alfred de Musset, and no lover of verse can be insensible to the melodious charm, the contem- plative beauty and the tender melancholy of his Muse, so II ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE free from every disposition to revolt and violence. His ideals of the poetic vocation dififered widely from those of his chief contemporaries in France, and were rather akin to Wordsworth's. ' You ask me ', he says in the beautiful préface to his Recueilkvients poétiques, ' how, in the midst ' of my agricultural labours, my philosophical studies, my ' travels, and the political movement which carries me ' occasionally into its tumultuous and impassioned sphère, ' I can keep some freedom of mind and some hours of * audience for that poesy of the soûl which speaks only in ' a low voice, in silence and in solitude. It is as if you ' should ask the soldier or the sailor if he has a moment to * think on those he loves, and to pray to God, in the noise * of the camp or amidst the agitations of the sea '. Although the fitful reaction from time to time in favour of Lamartine has not restored his popularity, there is little doubt that he vvill occupy in French literature that place which the rapidity of historical évolution and the bewildering changes in literary taste hâve so long denied to him. ' Lamartine ', says Théodore de Banville, * was to ' Victor Hugo what the dawn is to the sun'. With his generosity, his humanity, his noble ideals, and his pure poetical talent, so simple and so emotional, the famé of Lamartine has deserved a better fate. ' There is ', wrote Jules Claretie in 1881, 'and I say it to the shame of the ' new générations, a want of taste, and also a want of feel- ' ing, in the discrédit into which Lamartine has fallen. * In him the poet was a great poet and the man a good * citizen '. Since this was written other povverful voices — those of Jules Lemaître and Gaston Deschamps not the least — hâve pleaded for the rehabilitation of Lamartine, and it will be passîng strange if they hâve always to plead in vain. 12 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE The Lake. Thus ever driven, as one that aimless steers, And borne tovvards night eternal drifts away, Shall vve not once, on the swift tide of years, Cast anchor for a day ? O lake ! one fleeting year hath scarcely flovvn ; Yet, by the cherished waves she loved to greet, See, where she watched thee, seated on this stone, Alone I take my seat ! Thus wert thou moaning on those rocks profound ; Thus broke thy billovvs on their riven flanks : Thus at her worshipped feet the wild wind crowned With foam thy wave-kissed banks. One night — hast thou forgotten ? — we did float In silence ; hushed were sky and stream and cave ; Only the sound of oars in cadence smote On thy harmonious wave ; When, suddenly, strange speech, as from above, Woke the charmed echoes of thy listening shore ; The waves grew still, and, from the lips I love, Thèse words the breezes bore : — ' O Time, suspend thy wing ! And you, blest hours, ' Suspend your rapid flight ! ' Leave us awhile to taste the bliss that dowers ' Our days with brief delight ! 13 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE ' Too many wretches groan in yon sad world : ' O speed for them the suns ; ' Let their slow sorrows on your wings be whirled ; ' Forget the happier ones. * Yet vainly I implore a brief delay ; ' Time Aies, swift as a dream ; * I pray for night to linger, and the day ' Even now begins to gleam. * Haste, then, to love ! Seize happiness before ' The fleeting moments fly ! ' Man has no haven hère, and Time no shore : ' Life flows, and we glide by ! ' O envious Time, must the hour when raptures spring, When love pours out long draughts of happiness, Sweep far beyond us, borne on swifter wing Than days of sore distress ? What ! wilt thou leave us not at least a trace ? What ! wholly flown ? what ! lost for evermore ? The bliss that Time bestowed shall Time efface, Nor once its boon restore ? Space and oblivion, sombre gulfs of time, Where are the days ye swallow and destroy? Speak ! shall ye not bring back those hours sublime Ye ravished from our joy ? O lake ! O voiceless caves ! Woods dark and deep ! You that Time spares, or freshens in his flight ; Keep thou at least, belovëd Nature, keep Remembrance of that night ! Let it be in thy storms and in thy rest, O lake, and in the shores thy ripple laves, H ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE And in those gloomy pines, and rocks whose crest Frowns on thy laughing waves ! Let it be in the breeze that shivers past, And in the murmur of thy tribute stream, And in the whiteness of thy surface, glassed From the Star's silvery beam ! And may the wind that wails, the reed that sighs, The hght-winged fragrance of thy breath divine, And ail that soothes the soûl and charms the eyes Whisper : Their love was mine ! Le Lac. {^Premières Méditations poétiques.) The Valley. My heart, in which even hope has ceased to live, Shall weary fate no more with idle breath ; Give me, O valley of my childhood, give Me shelter for a day to wait on death ! Hère the strait pathway leaves the open glade : Along its devious slopes hang the dense boughs That, bending over me their mingled shade, With blissful calm and silence crown my brows, Two rivulets there through verdant arches gleam, Thence down the valley wind with serpent course ; A moment blend their murmur and their stream, And, lost in one, forget their nameless source. Like theirs the current of my youth did roll Beyond recall, noiseless and nameless passed : Their wave is clear, but in my troubled soûl The morning beam no bright reflection cast. IS ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE The freshness of thèse beds, vvith shadow crowned, Chains me ail day on banks the streamlet laves ; Like a child soothed by song's monotonous sound, My soûl grows drowsy with the murmuring waves. Ah ! hère, girdled by ramparts ever green Whose narrow bound my vision satisfies I love to linger, and alone, unseen, Hear the stream only, only see the skies. Too much my soûl has lived and loved and striven ; Living I corne to seek Lethean calm ; May blest oblivion by thèse shades be given, For save oblivion naught can bring me balm. My soûl finds silence hère, my heart repose ; The turmoil of the world comes muffled hère, Even as a distant sound that feebler grows. Borne on the wind to the uncertain ear. Hence over life a cloudy veil is thrown, The past through shadow casts a fading gleam ; Love alone dwells, as some vast shape alone Survives the awakening from a vanished dream. Linger, my soûl, in this last resting-place, Even as a traveller, in the dwindling light, Before the gâtes of refuge rests a space. And breathes refreshed the balmy air of night. Let us, like him, shake from our feet the dust ; The path of life once trod our journeyings cease : Let us, like him, o'erwearied, breathe in trust This calm, precursor of the eternal peace. Thy days, sombre and brief like autumn days. Décline, as on those slopes the night-shades gloom ; i6 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE When love forsakes thee, and thy friend betrays, Alone thou treadst the pathway to the tomb. But Nature's welcome hère thy love shall claim ; Plunge in her breast, that ever open lies ; Ail else may change, but Nature is the same, And ail thy days behold the same sun rise. Her breast with light and shadow still is stored. Turn from false loves and dreams that fade erelong ; Adore the voice Pythagoras adored, Give ear, like him, to the celestial song. Fly with the north vvind on her aëry car ; Follow the noonday glow, the twilight pale : Beneath the beam of eve's mysterious star Steal through the woods when shadow swathes the vale. In Nature seek the soûl ; blind though thou art, God gave thee light to know him and rejoice ; A voice speaks in his silence to the heart. Who has not heard the écho of that voice ? Le Vallon. {Premières Méditations poétiques.) The West. Then the sea dwindled, as a boiling urn Wanes when the furnace burns less fiercely red, And waves, blown foaming on the sandy bourne, Fell back, as if to sleep, in her vast bed. And lo ! the sun, sinking from cloud to cloud, Poised on the blood-red wave his rayless star, Then plunged, half-swathed, as in its fiery shroud A burning vessel sinks on seas afar. B 17 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE And half the world was darkened, and the breeze Breathless and voiceless shrank within the veil ; And shadows gathered round, and skies and seas Beneath their dusky wing grew sudden pale. And in my soûl, that likewise waned and dreamed, Ail sounds, ail splendours dwindled with the day, And, as in Nature, something in me seemed By turns to grieve and bless, to weep and pray. And towards the West alone, with splendour rent, The wavering flame blazed as a golden pyre, And, wrapt in purple clouds, was like a tent That veils, but quenches not, a burning fire. And clouds and winds and waves with hurrying wings Rushed towards that flaming vault in rapid flight. As though wide Nature and ail living things Were doomed to death if they should lose the light. The dust of twilight floated from the ground, Upwards the white foam from the black waves flew, And in mine eyes, that wandered sadly round To watch their flight, tears gathered like the dew. Then the light vanished, and my soûl oppressed Grew void, swathed like the sky with cloudy bands ; And one sole thought rose in my troubled breast, Sole as the pyramid on désert sands O light ! where goest thou ? Orb forlorn of flame, And clouds and winds and waves, and thou my soûl, Foam, dust and darkness, if we know, proclaim What course is yours, and where your final goal ! i8 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE In thee, vast Ail, vvhose star is the pale light Where night and day, and soûl and substance blend ! Life's universal tide in flux and flight ; Wide sea of Being in whom ail things end ! . . . L' Occident. {Harmonies poétiques et religieuses^ Epistle to Adolphe Dumas. i8 September, 1838. Musa pedestris. Still the true poet's soûl soars high and higher ! So, friend, for thee the sum of my désire Is freedom, and oblivion of the world, And prose and verse into the black gulf hurled ; But in thy heart of hearts a plenteous spring, Where inspiration daily dips her wing, And whose sweet murmur, while it soothes the mind Flows in that silent verse no hand hath signed ; A soûl that still with quenchless rapture glows, Whence admiration brims and overflows ; Those sacred transports in the work of God That make a temple spring on every sod ; That commune of the soul's mysterious deeps Held with the wave that sings, the wind that weeps, And bird, and bush, and starry firmament, And ail that thrills, with thought and feeling blent : A sunny nook o' the trellised wall where comes The bee, afloat in the bright beam, and hums ; Beneath green sunshade of the noonday pines, A meadow on whose slope the warm sky shines, 19 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE While through the haze, far as thine eye can reach, The blue sea flings its white foam on the beach, And the white sail, remote on billowy seas, Bends like a wave-borne tree beneath the breeze, And whence the thunderous sound of floods distraught, Breaking amain upon thine aëry thought, Reveals in dreams that mirror vast and clear, Reflex of the infinité, that brings God near ! . . . A heaven that sheds its beams above thy soûl ; Thy heart in tune with life's harmonious whole ! A peaceful conscience slumbering in thy breast, As in its bed the untroubled pool doth rest ; On the hill slope, outstretching many a mile, Thy realm ; a roof of thatch, or slate, or tile, Whose shadow is thy world, whose threshold saves Its lord a hundred years from the cold grave's ; There, slumbers light, that waken with the lark, The cheerful furrow, ploughed from dawn to dark ; A frugal board, where, between leaf and flower, Smile fruits to which thy graft gave double dower ; On walnut, shining with thy woven flax, A wine whose fragrance of thy vineyard smacks ; A summer shade ; a winter hearth aglow, Where oft thy hand the olive-stone shall throw ; Candies of bees-wax perfumed in thy hives, Whose flame on many a vvell-read book revives Consoling lamps that, for our soûls' relief, The storms of time hâve left on the bare reef, And, though our fickle winds fan not their flame, High in the spirit-sphere shine still the same ! . . . Then, lest the dregs of âge no sweetness leave, A mother's, sister's love to cheer life's eve, A friend of old, whose solitude lies near, True as the needle and to custom dear, 20 ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE Who cornes each night, with his familiar smile, The hearth with friendly converse to beguile. With thèse, dear friend, let the keen critic's claw Mark on our tuneful page each fatal flaw, Let Paris hiss us, vvhile our suns entice; I long for famé . . . to sell it at this price ! Épître à M. Adolphe Dumas. {Recueillements poétiques?) To a Young Girl who begged a lock of my hair. My hair ! that Time turns white, and withering mocks ! My hair ! that falls before the winter's frown ! Why should your fingers pleach thèse fading locks ? Green boughs are best if you would weave a crown, Think you the brows of manhood, fair young girl, That forty seasons load with joys and fears, Wear the blond ringlets in their silken curl Wherewith Hope plays, as with your seventeen years? Think you the lyre, attuned to the soul's rhyme, Sings from our heart of hearts in the full throat, With never a string that snaps from time to time, And leaves beneath the touch a silent note ? Poor simple child ! W^hat would the swallow sing, When winter winds beat round her ruined tower, If thou shouldst crave those feathers from her wing The ruthless vulture strips and tempests shower ? A une jeune fille qui me demandait de mes cheveux. {Recueillements poétiques^ 21 Victor Hugo. Born in Besançon, 1802 . . . Died in Paris, 1885. lie above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent. It is needless to recapitulate the chief incidents of a life which has filled so large and luminous a space in the literature of the nineteenth century as that of Victor Hugo.* No poet ever lived so much in the full h'ght of day. Every reader is more or less familiar with the legend of his glory as the chief of the Romantic Movement of 1830 ; his wonderful fertility from 1830 to 1840 in poetry, drama and romance ; his exile of nearly twenty years after the Napoleonic coup d'état in 1852, and the subHme visions which he gave to the world from his island refuge ; his return to Paris after the fall of the second Empire ; his popular triumph in 1881, when Paris was covered with flags and flowers, whilst a procession of two hundred thousand persons passed before his dwelling; and, four * His father was General Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo, afterwards Count de Cifuentes and de Siguenza, in the Spanish peerage of King Joseph Bona- parte. The Hugo family was of very humble origin. Victor Hugo's grand- father was a carpenter, and three of his aunts supported themselves by dress- making. In spite of his démocratie professions the poet took no end of pains to graft his ancestry upon that of the Franco-German seigneurial family of Hugo von Spitzemberg, and even assumed their armoriai bearings, but there is not a particle of évidence to substantiate this pedigree. The authentic genealogy of Victor Hugo is established beyond a doubt by the documents cited in Edmond Biré's Victor Hugo avant 1830 (Perrin : Paris) of which a new édition was published in 1894. 22 VICTOR HUGO years later, his public funeral, which callcd forth a démon- stration of sorrovv and enthusiasm such as had never accompanied the remains of a mortal man to their last resting-place. A study of the vast work of Victor Hugo would also be futile unless a whole volume could be devoted to the purpose. The mère enumeration of a list of literary achievements which includes Hernani, Marion de Lonne, le Roi s^aniuse, Ruy Blas, and les Biirgraves in tragedy, Notre-Dame de Paris, les Misérables, les Travailleurs de la Mer, l'Homme qui rit, and Quatrevingt-treize in romance, and that marvellous séries of lyrical créations in which well nigh every note of human émotion is sounded and every phase of human contemplation represented, would be enough to recall to those who are in touch with French literature the incomparable power and versatility of Victor Hugo's genius. Those who are not at home in French literature may refer to Algernon Charles Swinburne's Study of Victor Hugo (London : Chatto and Windus : 1886) in which the only blemish is perhaps a too enrap- tured strain of exubérant eulogy. The glory of Victor Hugo has not lacked disparage- ment, and an impartial admiration will hardly be blind to the faults which are inséparable from such a pheno- menon of genius. When the flux of images and metaphors at the poet's command pours in almost ludicrous dispro- portion to the magnitude of the thought ; when grotesque antithesis and superfluous analogy are piled up to disguise the occasional lack of intense passion or sustained imagi- nation ; when an apparently egregious conceit finds ex- pression in familiar colloquy with the majestic forces of Nature until it verges on the burlesque ; — what can the judicious do but grieve ? And yet ail the trivialities, and ail the platitudes, and ail the tumid disfigurements 23 VICTOR HUGO that may be discovered in a critical analysis of Victor Hugo's work, are small in comparison with the grandeur and vastness of the whole. The historical anachronisms and verbal blunders of which so much has been made may be individually absurd, but they count for little in the splendid sum, and such inaccuracies are not to be found in anything of Hugo's which is the record of direct per- sonal observation. The beauty of a wide landscape is none the less refreshing to the sensés and inspiring to the soûl because the beholder knows that if he dissects the material of which it is composed he may discover many things on which he would fain close his eyes and stop his nostrils, Milton leads us sometimes into the arid wilderness where insipid personages discourse, not always with the tongues of angels ; nor are Dante's dry dissertations invariably radiant with the triple influence of the stars ; even Shakespeare has occasional lapses into persiflage not unworthy of a farce at the fair. And Victor Hugo, sublime as thèse in his suprême moments, must be judged by the gênerai sweep and power of his genius, regardless of spots that appear and disappear in the solar radiance. It was inévitable, also, that the acts and opinions of a man whose évolution led him from Roman Catholicism to absolute independence of creed, from the worship of imperialism and faith in royalty to the glorification of the idéal republic, and from literary tradition to the indi- vidual expression of his own genius, should hâve aroused animosity in many religious, conservative and conventional minds. This poet who at nineteen adored Delille and at twenty-one revealed himself as the creator of a new form of French lyrical art ; this leader of a revolutionary movement in letters and politics who became a member of the Academy and accepted a seat in the Senate ; this 24 VICTOR HUGO peer of the realm who preached humility to the poor and patience to the oppressed ; this evangelist of equality who loved the literary throne and breathed with delight the incense of popular praise ; this courtier of famé who never wrote a line of congratulation or condolence * without the pomp and circumstance of an epistle addressed to pos- terity ; this author who accumulated a vast fortune from his literary labours f and was carried to the grave (by his own désire) in a pauper's coffin : ofifered himself readily enough to the sarcasm of detractors in an âge of publicity when every contradiction and foible could not fail to be bitterly discussed. The glory which illumined Victor Hugo's later days was not gained without dust and heat, nor, it must be confessed, without some judicious sounding of trumpets and beating of drums. For many years he was the pet aversion of the professors and officiais of literature, Each one of his titles to famé was fiercely contested, and those writers who championed his cause, as for example Théodore de Banville and Auguste Vacquerie, were dis- missed from the service of the journals to which they contributed. It is difficult in thèse days to understand the furies which were let loose on that innovator who dared to introduce such an ignoble word as ^ chevar into serious verse and smuggle a lovv epithet like 'gamiti ' into respectable prose. Victor Hugo had a singularly robust physical frame, with uncommonly keen eyesight, and a memory so clear and so précise as to be almost phénoménal. The exceed- * See his letter of l6 March, 1869, addressed to Lamartine's widow, and ending with the phrase : * Henceforth he beams with a double radiance : in ' our literature, where he is a soûl, and in the great unknown life, where he is • a star '. + The rights of publication in les Misérables were sold to Lacroix and Verboeckhoven for half-a-million francs. 25 VICTOR HUGO ing vividness with which he could depict and présent natural objects was due to his naturally quick and care- fully cultivated faculty of observation. While he walked he dreamed and created ; hence the appropriateness of Baudelaire's characterisation of him as ^Méditation qui ' marche '. Indeed one of the secrets of Victor Hugo's inexhaustible energy and lifelong capacity for indefatig- able labour — equal to that of Balzac or Littré — was his healthy love of exercise. Although he was fond of social pleasures he eschewed those voluptuous indulgences which hâve been the moral and material ruin of so many French poets, He kept his vigour fresh and unimpaired long after the time when the average man is worn out : in old âge his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated. And there was always in his nature that real simplicity which finds its sustenance in the love of flowers and children and in the sweetness of household affections. Thèse feelings, expressed in his poetry, hâve left a trail of exquisite tenderness even on the fierce invective of les Châtiments and over the blood and désolation of V Année terrible. Looked at in large, the character of Victor Hugo, like that of every truly great man, was good and noble. His voice, no less than Voltaire's, was continually lifted up against cruelty, ignorance and oppression. He pleaded for clemency ; and although his personal likes anddislikes were equally pronounced, and sometimes indulged to excess,* he was a faithful believer in tolérance and liberty. His charities were as ample as they were unostentatious. To political refugees and literary aspirants he was often a prudent counsellor and always a gênerons friend. It is a * A notable instance is the savage animosity of his poem on the death of Marshal Saint-Arnaud, published by Paul Maurice and Auguste Vacquerie in the last volume of Toute la Lyre [Poésies inédites). 26 VICTOR HUGO notable fact that ail thc younger men of letters who enjoyed the intimacy of Victor Hugo retained through every change, and to the last, their affection and admira- tion for the master. For many years he reserved in his Parisian résidence a chamber which poor authors, fed at his table and cheered by his discourse, could occupy for a fevv months at a time, and so work in freedom on some cherished volume. Gérard de Nerval, Edouard Ourliac and Albert Glatigny were among the temporary récipients of this bounty. It is not literally true, as some admirer has asserted, that in the nineteenth century ail French poetry vvorthy of the name is derived from Victor Hugo. Lamartine and Musset must claim a share in the impulse given to lyric art. But the supremacy of Victor Hugo has been recognised by every poet of importance since 1830, and, like Voltaire in the eighteenth century, Victor Hugo is by gênerai consent the great représentative genius of France in the nineteenth century. No writer has excelled him in weaving the éléments either of human passion or of natural force into a vast ' tragic landscape '. His colossal architec- ture has a beauty of outline and a majestic unity of structure which justifies the epithet of ' Magister de lapidi- ^ bus vivis\ His verse, which has been the envy and admiration of three générations of French singers, is distinguished by its extraordinary vigour and véhémence ; the rhythmical sweep is superb and the inwoven melody inimitable ; the fertility and felicity of illustration are boundless. Even a superficial comparison of his work with that of the older French poets must manifest his immense superiority, both as singer and artist. Their cold déclamation is charged with passion ; the note of tender- ness is truer and deeper ; the harmony is rich and sonor- ous ; the imagery glowing and original ; the dramatic 27 VICTOR HUGO intensity at times almost overpowering. His finer verse is most délicate and fanciful, and in the manipulation of narrow rhythms and difficult rhymes he displays the absolute ease of a master.* No poet vvas ever more profoundly and diversely human than Victor Hugo, and none, with the single exception of Shakespeare, has so divinely interpreted ' the prophétie soûl ' Of the wide world, dreaming on things to corne'. * The short rhythms which Victor Hugo handled with such consummate art cannot be adequately translated into English. Some wonderful achieve- ments in similar compass hâve been performed by Shelley and Swinburne and Beddoes, but in translating it is impossible to turn the necessary rhymes round in so limited a space without excessive violence to the thought. Victor Hugo's ample alexandrines also lose much of their effect in the English rhymed heroic verse, because the latter runs naturally into couplets, whereas the long French line résolves itself into two hémistiches, and thus lends itself to the completion of a comparison or antithesis in the space of a single line. The decasyllabic verse is too abrupt when treated in this fashion, and if the two alexandrines are fused into one heroic couplet there is often a mixture of metaphors and a redundancy of images which becomes confusing. It must not be imagined that the ensuing translations are intended otherwise than as mère spécimens of Victor Hugo's verse. They will give but a glimmering of the splendour and scope of his genius as a lyrical and declamatory poet. A copious sélection from each of his twenty volumes of verse would be needed to represent the manifold and multiform incarnations of his poetical spirit. The only living Englishman capable of doing justice to the rush and splendour of the rhythm and the beauty and variety of the rhyme is Algernon Charles Swinburne. 28 VICTOR HUGO Her Name. Nomen mit Nuiiien. A lily's fragrance rare, an aureole's pale splendeur, The whisper of the waning day ; Love's passionate pure kiss of virginal surrender ; The hour that breathes farewell, mysterious and tender ; The grief by comfort charmed away ; The sevenfold scarf by storm emblazed and braiden, A trophy to the victor sun ; The sudden cadence of a voice with memories laden ; The soft and simple vow won from a shamefast maiden ; The dream of a new life begun ; The murmur that with orient Dawn, rising to greet her, From lips of fabled Memnon came ; The undulant hum remote of some melodious mètre : — Ail the soûl dreams most sweet, if aught than thèse be sweeter, O Lyre, is less sweet than her name ! Even as a muttered prayer pronounce it, breathing lowly, But let it Sound through ail our songs ! Be in the darkened shrine the one light dim and holy ! Be as the word divine the same voice, chaunting slowly From the deep altar-place prolongs ! 29 VICTOR HUGO O world ! ère yet my Muse, upborne in ample azuré, Her wings for wandering flight unfolds, And with those clamorous names, profaned of pride or pleasure, Dares blend that chaster one that, like a sacred treasure, Love hidden in my heart still holds, Needs must my song, while yet of silence unforsaken, Be like those hymns we kneel to hear, And with its solemn strains the tremulous air awaken, As though, with viewless plumes and unseen censers shaken, A flight of angels hovered near ! Son Nom. {Odes et Ballades?) 1823. To a Woman. Child ! if I were a king, my throne I would surrender, My sceptre, and my car, and kneeling vavassours, My golden crown, and porphyry baths, and consorts tender, And fleets that fill the seas, and régal pomp and splendeur, Ail for one look of yours ! If I were God, the earth and luminous deeps that span it, Angels and démons bowed beneath my word divine, Chaos profound, with flanks of flaming gold and granité, Eternity, and space, and sky and sun and planet, AU for one kiss of thine ! 8 May, 1829. 30 A une Femme. {Les Feuilles d'automne?) VICTOR HUGO New Song to an Old Air.* If there be a fair demesne, Fresher than the rose is, Where each season's shower and sheen Some new bloom uncloses ; Where one gathers, hour by hour, Jasmine, lily, honey-flower, Would that such might be the bower Where thy foot reposes ! If there be a loving breast, Honour so disposes, That of ail her gifts the best Love therein encloses ; If this noble bosom yield High desires to love revealed, Would that such might be the shield Where thy head reposes ! If there be a dream of love, Odorous with roses, Whence each day that dawns above Some sweet thing discloses ; Dream that God himself hath blessed, Wherein soûl with soûl may rest, Would that such might be the nest Where thy heart reposes ! Nouvelle Chanson sur un vieil Air. {Les Chants du Crépuscule. XXII.) 18 February, 1834. * See Note on page 50. 31 VICTOR HUGO In a Church. * * * Hi * * O woman ! why thèse tears that dim your sight. Thèse brows with sorrow drawn ? You, whose pure heart is sombre as the night, And tender as the dawn ? What though the unequal lot, to some made sweet, To some deals bitter dole ; Though life gives way and sinks beneath your feet, Should that dismay the soûl ? The soûl, that seeks ère long a purer realm, Where beyond storm is peace, Where, beyond griefs that surge and overwhelm, This world's low murmurings cease ! Be like the bird that, on the branch at rest For a brief moment, sings ; For though the frail bough bends beneath her breast She knows that she has wings ! Dans r Eglise de . . . {Les Chants du Crépîtscule.) 25 October, 1834. This Age is great and strong. This âge is great and strong. Her chains are riven. Thought on the march of man her mission sends ; Toil's clamour mounts on human speech to heaven, And with the sound divine of Nature blends. In cities and in solitary stations Man loves the milk wherewith we nourish him ; 32 VICTOR HUGO And, in the shapeless block of sombre nations, Thought moulds in dreams nevv peoples grand and dim. New days dravv nigh. Hushed is the riot's clangour. The Grève is cleansed, the old scaffbld crumbling lies. Volcano torrents, like the people's anger, First devastate and after fertih'se. Now mighty poets, touched by God's own finger, Shed from inspirëd brows their radiant beams. Art has fresh valleys, where our soûls may linger. And drink deep draughts of song from sacred streams. Stone upon stone, remembering antique manners. In times that shake with every storm-wind wild, The thinker rears thèse columns, crowned with banners — Respect for grey old âge, love for the child. Beneath our roof-tree Duty and Right his father Dwell once again, august and honoured guests, The outcasts that around our thresholds gather Corne with less flaming eyes, less hateful breasts. No longer Truth closes her austère portais. Deciphered is each word, each scroll unfurled. Learning the book of life, enfranchised mortals Find a new sensé and secret in the world. G poets ! Iron and steam, with fiery forces. Lift from the earth, while yet your dreams float round, Time's ancient load, that clogged the chariot's courses, Crushing with heavy wheels the hard rough ground. Man by his puissant will subdues blind matter, Thinks, seeks, créâtes ! With living breath fulfilled, The seeds that Nature's hands store up and scatter Thrill as the forest leaves by winds are thrilled. c S3 VICTOR HUGO Yea, ail things move and grow. The fleet hours flying Leave each their track. The âge has risen up great. And now between its luminous banks, far-lying, Man like a broadened river sees his fate. But in this boasted march from wrong and error, Mid the vast splendeur of an âge that glows, One thing, O Jésus, fills my soûl with terror : The écho of thy voice still feebler grows ! Ce Siècle est grand et fort. 15 April, 1837. {Les Voix intérieures^ Mixed Commissions. They sît in the shadow while 'Justice prevails !' They people with heroes their dungeons and gaols, And the hulks, a détestable cloister That floats like the blackness of night on the tides While the sun on the sea gilds its glittering sides Like scales on the shell of an oyster. For harbouring an outlaw beneath his poor roof An old man is crushed by the law's iron hoof, His cries with their curses they stifle : To the galleys for branding thèse rogues of our Vote, Thèse thieves that seized Popular Rights by the throat, His pockets the better to rifle ! They sentence the son that defended his sire, The wife that took bread to her husband through fire, The friendship by Freedom begotten ; Honour ? . . . they banish : and Truth ? . . . they exile : From judges like thèse issues Justice as vile As a graveworm from flesh that is rotten. Les Commissions mixtes. Brussels : Juiy, 1852. (j^es Châtiments) 34 VICTOR HUGO Jéricho. Sound ! trumpets of the soûl, for ever sound ! When Joshua, vexed at heart, went marching round The walls, with high head, dreaming ; when the clang Louder and louder of shrill trumpets rang, At the first blast the king laughed in his sleeve ; The next he laughed to scorn : — ' Dost thou believe * With wind my city-walls to overthrow ? ' — The third time, as the ark, solemn and slow, With clarions went before the marching ranks, A troop of children mimicked in their pranks The trumpet-blare, and spat upon the ark. At the fourth blast, by Levi's sons blown stark, Dusk women, seated at the distafif, spun Between the crennelled towers, moss-grown and dun, And flinging stones on the pale Hebrews, jeered. The fifth time, on those gloomy walls appeared, With cries, the hait and maimed and blind in crowds, And mocked the clarion blown beneath the clouds. The sixth, beneath that rampire's granité crest, So high that there the eagle builds his nest, So hard that there the lightning bursts in vain, The king, with full-gorged laughter, came again Crying : ' Thèse Hebrews make rare minstrelsy ! ' — Round their gay king the elders laughed with glee, Though wont to ponder grave in judgment-halls. But with the seventh blast crumbled the proud walls ! {Les Châtiments.) Jersey: i^ March, 1853. 35 VICTOR HUGO Stella. One night I slumbered on the sait sea shore. A fresh wind woke me, and I dreamed no more, But watched with rapturous eyes the morning-star Suprême, that rose in skies profound and far, Swathed in white splendeur, wonderful and soft. The north wind, flying, whirled the storm aloft. The bright star smote the clouds in vapours wreathed, It was a light that thought, and lived, and breathed ; It calmed the rock whereon the waves unfurl ; And shone even as the soûl shines through a pearl. Though night was there, in vain the shadow gloomed r the welkin, by a heavenly smile illumed. The top of the slant mast caught silvery light ; Black was the vessel, but the sail was white : The seamews, poised upon the ragged scar, With brooding looks gazed gravely on the star, Seen like some heavenly fowl with plumes of flame. The sea, whose swell is like the people, came And with hoarse murmurings low looked on the light Trembling, lest backward it should turn in flight. Ail space with love ineffable was filled. The green grass at my feet shivered and thrilled ; Birds in their nests held converse ; the new birth Of flowers sang sweetly : We are stars of earth ! And, as the darkness her long veils unwove, I heard a voice fall from the star, that clove The heavens and said : ' I am the star of doom, ' She that seemed dead and rises from the tomb. * On Sinaï, on the Spartan rock I shone ; ' A golden pebble winged with fire and thrown, 36 VICTOR HUGO ' As from God's sling, at the black brows of night. ' From ruined worlds I rise reborn and bright, ' O Nations, as the burning sun of song! ' The fire on Moses' brow and Dante's tongue ' Was mine. With love of me the océan sighs. ' I come Faith, Virtue, Courage, rise ! ' Mount to the towers, ye soûls that watch below ! ' Blind eyelids open, darkened eyeballs glow ; ' Earth, thrill thy furrows ; speech, inspire the dumb ; * Up, ye that slumber, for behold I come, ' Vaunt-courier of their march that sunders night, ' The giant Liberty, the angel Light 1 ' Stella. {Les Châtiments.) Jersey : 31 Augîtst, 1853. Dusk. The pool glimmers white, like a mystical shroud ; In the depths of the woodland are glimpses of glades; The boles are a shadow, the branches a cloud ; Is it Venus that shimmers through leafy arcades ? Is it Venus that silvers the slopes with her light ? And you, are you lovers that pass in the gloom ? With a sheen of soft lawn the dusk pathways are white ; The meadow awakens and calls to the tomb. What song from the grass and what voice from the grave ? Night cornes : they are cold that sleep under the yews. Let lip cling to lip ! Seek love, hearts that crave ! Let the living be glad while we slumber and muse. 37 VICTOR HUGO God smiles on the lovers. Live, envied and blest, O couples that pass on your leaf-covered way ! The love we bore with us to earth's chilly breast, From the land of the Hving, is left us to pray. The thatch looming black hides a hearth that is bright ; The tread of the reaper is heard in the field ; A star from the blue, Hke a blossom of light, Bursts forth in the freshness of splendour revealed. 'Tis the month of ripe berries, the month of sweet things. Night's angel floats dreaming on vvinds overhead, And blends, borne aloft on his shadowy wings, The kiss of the Hving, the prayer of the dead. Crépuscule, {Les Contemplations^ Ch ELLES : Aîigusf, i8 . . A Hymn of the Earth. Her throne is the meadovv, the field and the plain, She is dear to the sovvers and reapers of grain, To the shepherds that sleep on the heather ; She warms her chill breast in the fires of the suns And laughs, when with stars in their circle she runs, As with sisters rejoicing together. She loves the bright beam that caresses the wheat, And the cleansing of winds in her aether is sweet, And the lyre of the tempest that thunders ; And the lightning whose brow, when it shines and takes flight In a flash that appals and appeases the night, Is a smile from the welkin it sunders. VICTOR HUGO Glory to Earth ! To the dawn of God's gaze ! To the swarming of eyes in the woodland ablaze, To nests by the sunrise made splendid ! Hail to the whitening of moon-smitten heights ! Hail to the azuré that squanders her lights From treasuries never expended ! Earth loves the blue heaven that shines equal on ail, Whose radiance sheds calm on the throne and the thrall, Who blends with our wrongs and remorses, With our sorrows, that burst into laughter too bold, With our sins, with our fevers of glory and gold, The song of the stars in their courses. Earth is calm when the sea groans beneath her and grieves. Earth is beautiful ; see how she hides under leaves The maidenly shame of her blushes ! Spring cornes, like a lover, to kiss her in May ; She sends up the smoke of the village to stay The wrath of the thunder that rushes. Smite not, O thunder ! the humble lie hère : Earth is bountiful ; yet is she grave and severe ; And pure as her roses in blossom : Man pleases her best when he labours and thinks ; And her Love is the well-spring that ail the world drinks, And Truth is the milk of her bosom. Earth hoards up her gold, but her harvest she wears ; In the flank of dead seasons that sleep in her lairs, The germs of new seasons assemble ; She has birds in the azuré that whisper of love, Springs that gush in the vales, and on mountains above Vast forests of pine-trees that tremble. 39 VICTOR HUGO Wide weaver of harmonies under the skies, She bids the salute of the slender reed rise With joy to the height of the cedar ; For her law is the lowly that loves the sublime, And she bases the right of the cedar to climb On the will of the grasses that feed her. She levels mankind in the grave ; at the end Alexander's and Cassar's proud ashes descend With the dust of the covvherd to crumble ; The soûl she sends heavenward, the carcase she keeps, And disdains, in the doom of oblivious deeps, To distinguish the high from the humble. Each debt she discharges ; the branch to the root, The night to the day, and the flower to the fruit ; She nourishes ail she engenders ; The plant that has faith when the man is in doubt ; O blasphemy, shame against Nature to flout With his shadow the soûl of her splendours ! Her breast was the cradle, her breast is the tomb, Of Adam and Japheth ; she wrought out the doom Of the cities of Isis and Horus ; Where Sparta lies mourning, where Memphis lies crushed, Wheresoever the voice of man spake and is hushed, The grasshopper's song is sonorous. For why ? That her joy may give comfort to graves. For why ? That the ravin and wreck of Time's waves May be guerdoned with glorification, The voice that says No with the voice that says Aye, And the passing of peoples that vanish and die With the mystical chaunt of création. 40 VICTOR HUGO Earth's friends are the rcapers ; at twilight her face On the broad black horizon would gladly give chase To the swarm of the hungering ravens ; At the hour when the oxen in weariness lovv, When homeward vvith joy the brown husbandmen go, Like ships that return to their havens. She gives birth without end to the flowers of the sod ; The flowers never raise their reproaches to God ; From HHes, still chaste in their splendour, From myrties that thrill to the vvind not a cry, Not a murmur from vineyards ascends to the sky, On their innocence smiling and tender. Earth spreads a dark scroll beneath the dense boughs ; She does what she can, and with peace she endows The rocks and the shrubs and the rivers, To enlighten us, children of Hermès and Shem, Whose pages the porings of Reason condemn To a lamp-light that flickers and shivers. The end of her being is birth and not death ; Not javvs to devour, but a Hfe-giving breath ; When with havoc of battle is riven Man's furrow and blood-bathed the track that war cleaves, Earth turns her wild look, that is angry and grieves, From the ploughshare by wickedness driven. Blasted, she asks him : Why kill the green plain ? What fruit will the wilderness give, and whose gain Shall be garnered from ruin and ravage ? No boon to her bounty the evil one yields. And she weeps on the virginal beauty of fields Deflowered by the lust of the savage. 41 VICTOR HUGO Aima Ceres was Earth, and Earth's goddess of old, She beamed with blue eyes over meadow and wold, And still the world rings with her paean ; ' Sons, I am Demeter, divine of divine, ' Ye shall build me a temple of splendeur to shine * On the slopes of the Callichorean '. La Terre : Hymne. {La Légende des Siècles. /.) Frondage. Orpheus heard, as star rose after Star and touched the woods with light, The obscure and ominous laughter Of the worshippers of night Phtah, the Theban priestess holy, Gazing from her dusky shrine, Saw the ebon shadows slowly Dance along the starred sky-line. vEschylus, after sunset, lingered In the dun Sicilian shades, Charmed by flûtes that deftly fingered Flung svveet echoes through the glades. Pliny, couched among the myrtles, Deemed the nymphs of Melita fair, When the wind neath whirling kirtles Kissed their rosy limbs blown bare. Plautus wandered through the glowing Orchards, sometimes turning o'er Tasted fruits i' the herbage, showing Where some god had gone before. 42 VICTOR HUGO In Versailles, with beauty haunted, Cornes the faun, where fountains flow, Proffering to Molière the enchanted Rhymes that so amazed Boileau. Dante, when his glass grevv dimmer, Blurred with dark-souled images, Watched athwart the twilight-glimmer Women glide between the trees. Chénier, peering through the slender Willow-boughs, bewildered hung On those flying breasts whose splendeur Vergil, like a lover, sung. Shakespeare, ambushed in the shadows Of the drowsy-branchëd oak, Caught faint trippings from the meadows When the light-foot fairies woke. Thus, O foliage, are my fancies Lured within the bosky bourne ! Pan dwells there, and there in dances Still the dizzy Satyrs turn. Floréal: IL {Les Chaîtsons des Rues et des Bois.) Reality. Nature is everywhere the same, At Timbuctoo as on the Tagus ; Chlamys is petticoat, save in name : And Douglas Home is Simon Magus. 43 VICTOR HUGO Lavallière in her coach, aquest Of Louis or Mars to quench her passion, Was just as fiercely love-possessed As in her shell the bright Thalassian. O sons, O brothers in poesy, If the thing is, let the word be spoken ! Nothing is low when the soûl soars high ; Be pure in spirit and pass the token ! You hear in Paestum's rose-demesne The hiccuping of old Silenus ! Is Bottom amiss on Shakespeare's scène When Horace stales the son of Venus ? Truth laughs at limits, the veil she scorns, And, thanks to beast-god Pan, earth's Real Sprouts unashamed, and shows his horns On the blue brows of the Idéal ! Réalité: Les Complications de V Idéal. {Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois.) The Streets and the Woods. Beware, my friend, of pretty girls ; Shun the bower of the fallen goddess : Fear the charm of the skirt that whirls, The shapely bust and the well-laced bodice. Look to your wings, bird, when you fly ! Look to your threads, O doll that dances ! Turn from the light of Calypso's eye, And flee from the fire of Jenny's glances ! 44 VICTOR HUGO When they grow tender, thcn be sure That slavery lurks within their rapture ; Love's A B C is Art to allure, Beauty that blinds and a Charm to capture ! The sun-light gilds a prison-cell ; A fragrant rose the gaol refreshes : And just like thèse, you see, is the spell Of a girl that lures you into her meshes. Once caught, your soûl is a sombre lyre, And in your thought are storms that thunder ! And weeping foUovvs dead désire Ere you hâve time to smile and vvonder ! Corne to the fields ! Spring's gladsome voice Thrills the vast oaks and wakes the mountains, The meadows smile, the woods rejoice, Sing O the charm of crystal fountains ! Pour d'autres : IX. {Les Chanso7is des Rues et des Bois.) To the Imperious Beauty. L'amour, panique Love, like a panic De la raison, Seizing the will, Se communique Leaps to tyrannie Par le frisson. Sway with a thrill. Laissez-moi dire, Let me beseech you. N'accordez rien. Turn and refuse ; Si je soupire, When my sighs reach you, Chantez, c'est bien. Sing, if you choose. 45 VICTOR HUGO Si je demeure, If I come kneeling, Triste, à vos pieds, Near you to dwell, Et si je pleure, See my tears stealing. C'est bien, riez. Laugh, it is well. Un homme semble Man may dissemble Souvent trompeur. So to ensnare : Mais si je tremble. But if I tremble, Belle, ayez peur. Beauty, beware ! A la belle impérieuse : V éternel petit roman. {Chansons des Rîies et des Bois.) Forerunners. On Being and the Thing that is Man in ail âges broods forlorn. And ever asks of the abyss ' G Nature ! Wherefore was I born ? ' Believers now, atheists betimes, We, to the height Prometheus climbs, The Euclids and the Keplers send ; Dur doubts like clouds funereal rise. And, fîlled with darkness, seek the skies, Whence, fîlled with lightnings, they descend. G brows whereon the Idéal beams ! From the gulf's edge, in depths of space, What faces peer with luminous gleams ! What looks are on each mystic face ! See where the starry eyeballs glow Gf Milton and Galileo ! Dim-visaged Dantes, sombre-hued, Your heels are worthy of the stars ! 46 VICTOR HUGO Your spirits, on their fiery cars, Are coursers of Infinitude ! Rise and descend, for ail is there ; Be bold to seek and seize, for still Jason proclaims himself ' To dare ! ' And Gama's blazon is * I will ! ' And vvhen the searcher, shrinking yet, With eyes on davvn and darkness set, Backward before the mystery springs, Trembling to read the hieroglyph ; Lo ! Will, a rearing hippogriff, Above the sunrise spreads his wings ! This terrible steed was his to urge When human Genius durst aspire To pass beyond the inviolate verge, Armed only with his torch and lyre. Then on his springing soûl from far, Reason the sun and Love the star Rose radiant in the yawning blue, Where darkness spins lier sombre snares ; And thèse tvvo planets were God's phares Shining to guide the giant through. The hearts wherein God kindles fire, Though ail around them fleet like fume, Keep sacred still their wild désire To explore the gulf and pierce the gloom Deep in the gulf ail knowledge lies. They look, they plunge, they agonise : Life lags too long in aimless ease. Madness is sire to the sublime ; And dovvn the same abyss in time Columbus seeks Empedocles ! 47 VICTOR HUGO O seas to sound ! O skies to scale ! Each dauntless seeker of the True Unfurls to the infinité his sail, Fulton the green, Herschell the blue. Magellan launches, Fourier Aies ; The frivolous crowd, with scornful eyes, Too ignorant their dreams to sound, Watches them vanish from the coast And cries * Behold ! a soûl is lost ' : — Nay, scoffing crowd, a world is found ! Les Précurseurs. {L Année terrible.") Change of Horizon. The bard of the old days was Homer ; war Was law ; âge grew beneath a vulgar star. The living flew, with strenuous blood and breath, To meet the sinister embrace of death. A glorious shroud for liberated Rome, For Sparta and her laws some holy tomb, Were the best gifts the Gods could give to man : The haggard youth rushed frantic in the van ; He that leaped first into the open grave. And ran his proud career, was counted brave. Seek death with glory, O sublime behest ! Achilles' wrath the sage Ulysses guessed ; A strumpet tore her robe from top to toe. And ail exclaimed : ' Behold our lord lies low ! ' And the fierce virgin of the Scyrian isle Masked heroes with august and fatal wile. Man was the faithful bridegroom of the sword. Above the Muse hovered a vulture horde ; 48 VICTOR HUGO Savage, she lured her ghouls to the grim field ; Vast singer, she, of clashing spear and shield ; Ogress of Evil, tigress tearing Peace, Black cloud that lowered on the blue hills of Greece ; Her clameurs shook the heavens with desperate cry ; She bade the victor ' Kill ! ', the vanquished ' Die ! ' — She gashed the flanks of monstrous steeds and rose, With wind-blown tresses, glaring on the throes Of demigods in Titan's clenched embrace : With fires of hell she lit the hero's face, From Ajax' sheath showered lightnings and with thongs Trailed Hector's corse before the Trojan throngs, When warriors blenched, stung by the whizzing steel, And with red-streaming flanks did faint and réel, When skulls, yawning like sombre urns, were cloven, When lances pierced her veil of darkness woven, When snakes along her white arm writhed and curled, When through the Olympian realm loud war was whirled, Dreadful and calm she sang, and her wild lips Foamed blood in the fierce clarion ; dim éclipse Of towers and tents and helms and wounded hosts, Black swarms of dead, heaped on the grisly coasts, Whirlwinds of banners, chariots overthrown, And swords and shields on the epic blast were blown ! But now the Muse is Peace ; she binds no greaves On her white limbs ; her head is crowned with'sheaves : To Death the bard says : ' Die, war, shadow, strife ! ' — And gently leads the march of man towards life : Her songs, like tears, fall softly in slow showers On children, and on women, and on flowers ; Stars burst in splendour on her wingëd brows ; Her music makes green buds break from the boughs ; D 49 VICTOR HUGO Her dreams are woven of dawn ; with lips of love She sîngs and laughs, clear as the heavens above. Vainly, with clenched fists, in thy sullen wrath Thou threatenest still, black past : there leads thy path ! Thy day is done. Henceforth the Hving know, If they but will, thy hideous towers of woe Shall crumble, that the light at last shines through ; That what they shall be springs from what they do : That men must succour men, that man's fate feeds On his own treacherous dreams and coward deeds. I, exiled, travail towards the sacred time When from man's fears shall issue hopes sublime To pluck, watching dawn out of darkness rise, Hell from his heart, with heaven before his eyes. Changement d'Horizon. {La Légende des Siècles. I V : XL. V.) Note on New Song to an Old Air. The 'old air' to which this song was written is La bonne aventure^ well known to générations of English chiidren as ' In my cottage by a wood' or ' Holy Bible, book divine'. The rhythm of the English version has been vulgarised by the substitution of two distinct syllables for the graceful féminine cadence of the French original. La boftne aventure is simply a nursery song, but the genius of two great poets has matched the melody with words which are worthy of its exquisite beauty. Molière touched it with tenderness in te Misanthrope, for there Alceste sings : — Si le roy m'avoit donné Paris, sa grand'ville, Et qu'il me fallût quitter L'amour de ma mie, 50 VICTOR HUGO Je dirois au roy Henry : Reprenez vostre Paris, J'aime mieux ma mie, au gué. J'aime mieux ma mie. And Victor Hugo gave a grander note to it in les Misérables, when Combeferre sang in the staircase : — Si César m'avait donné La gloire et la guerre, Et qu'il me fallût quitter L'amour de ma mère, Je dirais au grand César : Reprends ton sceptre et ton char, J'aime mieux ma mère, ô gué ! J'aime mieux ma mère. Béranger and other chansonniers hâve also paid their tribute to this charming melody, more beautiful in its simplicity than ail the cavatinas and arias of Mozart and Rossini. But it would be vain to seek in French verse, from Malherbe to Musset, for anything so light and délicate as Victor Hugo's setting. It will be observed that Dean Carrington's version of this A^ew Song to an Old Tune, which is given below, does not reproduce the féminine rhyme and is in some other respects unfaithfui to the lyrical symmetry of the original : — If some fragrant lawn be found, By dews of heaven blest, Where are seen, the whole year round, Flowers in beauty dressed ; Where rose, pink, and lilies rare. Ail in rich profusion are — I would make a pathway there For your foot to rest. If there be that well can love, Some devoted breast, Which ail virtue doth approve, Ail things base detest ; If that bosom always beat To perform heroic feat — There I find a pillow meet For thy brow to rest. 51 VICTOR HUGO If a dream of love there be, By ail sweets possest, Where each fleeting hour we see Whatsoe'er is best — Dream, God-hallowed, bright and kind, Where the soûl to soûl is joined — There a shelter would I find For your heart to rest. ( Translations fro7n the Poenis of Victor Hugo. ) 52 Joseph Delorme. Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, 1804 . . . Died in Paris, 1869. Charles -Augustin Sainte-Beuve began his literary life as a disciple of the Romantic school and assisted in the Renaissance of French poetry in 1830. If not so fervent in his later days as in the flush of youth, he always judged the movement and the men with critical impar- tiality ; and praise from him was praise indeed. Sainte-Beuve's father died before the boy was born. The child's éducation was supervised by his mother, a woman of good-sense and strong character. He completed his course at the collège Charlemagne in Paris and re- luctantly sacrificed his taste for letters to the study of anatomy and surgery. At twenty-two years of âge he left the hospital to which he was attached and published some literary criticisms in the Globe. In 1828 he issued his Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et dît théâtre français au seizième siècle, the first important essay in modem historical and philosophical analysis applied to letters. Sainte-Beuve's admiration for Victor Hugo gave birth to the imaginary young poet whose productions ( Vie, Poésies et Pensées de foseph Delorme^ appeared in 1829. The volume was generously appreciated. It was foUowed in 1830 by /(?j" Consolations and in 1837 by Pensées daoût. In ail thèse poems there is évidence of a healthy and well-nourished mind, refreshed in the contemplation of nature and expressing itself in noble and harmonious 53 JOSEPH DELORME numbers. The influence of English literature was acknow- ledged in translations and imitations of Byron, Words- worth, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Bowles and Kirke White; indeed the French poetry of the period immediately pre- ceding 1830 is more nearly akin to English poetry in simplicity and pathos than that of any other period. Joseph Delorme died on the threshold of manhood, and in answer to the remonstrances of a friend ail that Sainte- Beuve could say was that he had no longer any love in his heart or any song in his voice.* The disappearance of Joseph Delorme was a great loss to French poetry, for he combined something of Wordsworth's spiritual insight with the simple émotion of Lamartine, and brought a calm and méditative note into the transports of Victor Hugo and the complaints of Alfred de Musset. He was a poet of observation and sentiment rather than passion, and altogether lacked the lyrical buoyancy. It is unnecessary to say much of Sainte-Beuve's critical Works, which are a permanent portrait-gallery of French literature in his own and ail preceding epochs. His vision was wide in its sweep and keen in its scrutiny, When he took up the study of a man of letters he contrived not only to reconstitute the atmosphère of his time, but to ascertain ' the central point of his work and the dominant ' feature of his character '. Sainte-Beuve's sympathies were many-sided, and he never afifected that deliberate attitude of contradiction and superiority which vitiates so much contemporary criticism ; nor did he disdain to study small men. His kindly and appréciative notices of such minor poets as Hégésippe Moreau and Louis Bertrand are an * ' Mon cœur n'a plus rien de l'amour, ' Ma voix n'a rien de ce qui chante '. Réponse à AI. Edouard Ttirquety. {Poésies complètes de Sainte-Beuve. ) 54 JOSEPH DELORME everlasting mémorial of the greatness of his intellect and a perpétuai lesson to the literary Pharisee. Sainte-Beuve was a conscientious and unwearied worker, with an immense range of gênerai knowledge and a most précise memory. He assimilated everything — the bcauty of a landscape, the soûl of a book, the character of a visitor, the structure of an epoch — with the same unerring faculty. His prose, if not of the highest distinction, is never trivial : it is clear, sober, convincing, carefully fashioned, instinct with thought and finely analytical. A certain English austerity in relation to literary morals is visible in his critical judgments. His mother had English blood in her veins, and to her, more than to his father, Sainte-Beuve attributed the healthy robustness of his nature. That intelligent sympathy with which he divined the English character is admirably manifested in his articles on William Cowper in the Causeries du lundi. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that Sainte-Beuve's life was wholly dedicated to letters. He was a senator, but not a politician, in his later days ; and a member of the French Academy. After having passed through several phases of philosophical belief, he died unfurnished with the sacraments, and, by his own wish, was buried without religions ceremony. This excellent poet, philosopher and critic was an earnest seeker of the truth and a robust and independent thinker. 55 JOSEPH DELORME To Rhyme. Rhyme, to whom the sounds of song Sole belong, Rhyme, in whose harmonious numbers Verse, that rings with accents true Thrilling through, Wakes the soûl from voiceless slumbers ; Rhyme, now echoing as when flûte Sighs to lute, Now with burst of trumpet splendour ; Last farewell, in whispered word Faintly heard, Wafted back with cadence tender ; Rhyme, whose measured sweep and chime, Keeping time, Oar-like cleaves the foaming surges ; Golden bridle, spur of steel, When the heel Onward the swift courser urges ; Buckle that on naked breast, Closely pressed, Clasps the girdle of Love's charmer ; Baldrick by the warrior bound Firmly round, Girding on his linkëd armour ; 56 JOSEPH DELORME Narrow nipple whence the spring Issuing Shoots to heaven a crystal tower, Thence, with roseate tissue spun By the sun, Bursts in raînbow-coloured shower ; Adamant ring whose diamond shine Near the shrine Sparkles as the air grows denser, Where the paling lamp-lights swim Wreathed in dim Vapours from the smoking censer ; Key that keeps from mortal eyes Mysteries In the sacred ark enshrouded, While on Truth's embalmëd vase Angels gaze, Veiled in wings with glory clouded ; Rather sylph whose lissome feet Skim the fleet Winds and spurn the earth beneath her, When she guides the poet's car, Like a star Trailing light through fields of sether ; Rhyme ! O whatsoe'er thou be. On the knee Bending, 1 confess my treason ; Humble hence my rebel pride Shall abide Loyal to thy laws of reason. 57 JOSEPH DELORME Fly not when I court the Muse, Nor refuse Help to hîm whose song adores thee ; Turn, O turn thy kind regard On the bard, On the bard when he implores thee ! If a verse deflowered and bare, In chill air, Lies beneath thy stern look blighted, Let no solitary tone Sigh and moan, Like a lonely voice benighted. Erst, when on my trembling lyre Young désire Dallied with unskilful finger, In her flight a soft white dove, Poised above, Near the lute seemed fain to linger ; But ère yet my chords could ring, Vibrating, Plaîntively the bird did hover, Sad as one whose lonely fate Mourns her mate, Mourns her mate the exiled lover. Ah ! sweet songsters, two by two, Lovers true, Henceforth shall ye wed twin-voices, Let your kisses, let your wings, Thrill the strings, When my tremulous lyre rejoices ; 58 JOSEPH DELORME Else, with golden thread for rein, Let your wain On the light clouds, vvreathed in roses, Draw me, cherished steeds of love, To the grove Where the Cyprian queen reposes ! À la Rime. (Poésies.) To Victor Hugo. Great is your genius, Friend, your thoughts upborne As on Elijah's living car ascend ; Before your breath we are like reeds that bend ; Beneath the fiery blast men's soûls lie shorn. And yet how fearful lest you wound us, Friend ! Noble and tender, in your heart you scorn The thoughtless word that pierces like a thorn. And still with kind embrace your arms extend. As the iron warrior, he that laughs at fears, Lifts from the field a nursling bathed in tears, And bears him safely through the armëd band, Gauntletted, soothing him with fond caress : No nurse could shew more skill in tenderness, Nor could the mother hâve a softer hand. À V.H... {Les Consolations.) 59 JOSEPH DELORME To the Muse. Florem . . . âene olentis anethi. Poor Muse, driven homeward, crushed, abused, betrayed ; Innocent child that erst in pilgrim guise Fared forth for me, with songs to charm deaf skies, Thy drooping brow shall on this breast be laid. They heard thee not, O dear deluded maid, Now more than ever dear ; yet cease thèse cries ! Svveeter thy fragrance is when storm-winds rise ; The bee still loves thy blossoms disarrayed. A heavenly smile on earth strewed héliotrope, Lily and hyacinth, windflower and the rest That Homer rained on the Idalian slope. Even fields and hedges shîne in beauty drest, And the bold may-bloom laughs, but I love best The soft blue eye that humble violets ope. A la Muse. {Notes et Sonnets.) 60 JOSEPH DELORME Lausanne. Be it at nightfall when beneath a cloud, Stretched wide from dusk to dark, the skies lie furled, While beyond Chillon, higher and higher curled, Summit on summit sleeps in dense blue shroud. When ail those towering giants, in close crowd, Loom like the barriers of a far-off world, Gainst which in vain eternal storms are hurled, Or antique Thule's battlements steel-browed ! Enchantment vast and vague ! Scarce the wave throbs, Nor in the clouds nor on my brows one breath ; What foil divine to dreams of change and death ! O Byron, O Beethoven, hush your sobs ! — Sole in the silence, while my thought takes wing, From coverts nigh the shrill cicalas sing. Lausanne: IL {Notes et Sonnets.) 6i Auguste Barbier. Born in Paris, 1805 . . . Died in Paris, 1882. .... from the book of honour t^azëd guite, And ail the rest forgot for which he toiled. Henri-Auguste Barbier was bred for the law by the decree of his parents, and betook himself to letters of his own free will. He is one of the forgotten glories of the French Romantic Movement. A true republican, Hke Shelley and Landor, he threw a trumpet-note into the melley of 1830. Balzac adored him, and Berlioz, who had a keen sensé of poetical beauty, went to ' the terrible poet of the ïanibes\ as the nearest to Victor Hugo, for the libretto of Benvenuto Cellini. Thèse ïambes, collected in 1832 from the gazettes for which they had been written, are a satire on the worship of glory and the lust of political power, composed in the couplet form first employed by André Chénier in his latest poems. The same measure had been used in stanza form by other poets of the eighteenth century, but Auguste Barbier gave this verse a freedom, a vigour and a réson- ance which no previous poet had ever attained in it. The alternate twelve-and-eight-syllable lines, with crossed rhymes, give no idea of the classical lambic, but were intended to recall it by their * free and rapid gait'. Barbier's verse is bold and brilliant, and has much pomp and amplitude of movement. He is usually robust and seldoni délicate. The author of the ïambes had not that 62 AUGUSTE BARBIER passion for finely-chiselled handiwork which has distin- guished so many French poets of this century. But he had a wonderful way of throwing off a large line when he loved his subject. To him Italy was the ' Divine Juliette, au cercueil étendue'; and he celebrated Ireland as ' La verdoyante Érin et ses belles collines'. The poet had visited Italy in the company of Auguste Brizeux, the Breton bard, and in II Pianto (1832) he sung her departed glories and later dégradation in some superb sonnets and stanzas. In Lazare (1833) he recorded his impressions of a visit to England, satirising in powerful verse the mingled splendour and misery which he wit- nessed in her capital, and the doom of her labourers bound beneath the tyranny of wealth. Barbier's poetical triumph was brief, his fall sudden and décisive. He withdrew into lasting obscurity, and although he issued volumes of verse from time to time — such as Chants civils et religieux (1841) Rimes héroïques (1843) Silves et Rimes légères (1864) . . . thèse not wanting in freshness and grâce . . . and Satires et Chants (1865) — he seemed gradually to lose vigour as he left behind him the enthusiasm and fervour of 1830. He was a man of high culture and learning. Among his miscellaneous Works were a metrical translation of Shakespeare's Julius Ccesar in 1848 ; some Études dramatiques ; Chez les Poètes, a collection of translations and imitations of ancient and modem verse ; and Contes du Soir and Trois Passions^ prose taies. The later days of Auguste Barbier were passed in soli- tude and penury. A shabby little old man, who shrank in conscious self-effacement and to whose présence the 63 AUGUSTE BARBIER unwelcome visitor could obtain access only after much knocking and unlocking of doors, was ail that remained of the once ' terrible poet of the ïambes '. His time was spent in conjuring up ghosts of his old poems and in draw- ing sketches to illustrate historiés of travel and adventure which he compiled to earn his poor livelihood. Once or twice only he emerged from his obscurity — the last occasion was in 1870, when he delivered his réception speech at the Academy and amazed everybody by the artificial feebleness of his antiquated diction. The author of the brilliant Ïambes, so celebrated at twenty- seven years of âge, died almost unnoticed at seventy-seven ; ail his triumphs forgotten and ail his glory extinct . . . nominis umbra. 64 AUGUSTE BARBIER Popularity. The People's Love ! She is the shameless goddess With world-embracing arms, The antique nymph that flaunts, with open bodice, To ail her naked charms ! She is the Sea ! the Sea ! now calm and smiling When dawn first breaks above, Like a young queen that sings, man's souI beguiling, Blonde siren, full of love. The sea, kissing the sand, a perfumed blossom Borne on bewitching waves, And cradling in her undulant wanton bosom Her race of dusky slaves ; The sea, anon, that frenzied and défiant From her calm couch doth rise, Towers with enormous head and, like a giant, Threatens the sombre skies ; Thence to and fro, dishevelled, riven asunder, Bounds in her headlong flight Through the vext surges, fierce beneath the thunder As thousand bulls in fight ; Then, with flanks whitened as in foaming madness, Warped lips and wandering eyes, Rolls on the shore, deep moaning with the sadness Of one that writhes and dies ; E 65 AUGUSTE BARBIER And, like the Maenad, worn at last with anger, Crawls vvearied to her bed, Still tossing on the beach, in powerless languor, Torn limb and bleeding head ! La Popularité : V. (Les ïambes?) Michael-Angelo. How wan thy brow, hovv sad thy looks and wild, O Michael-Angelo, proud marble-bender ! No soft tear ever made those eyelids tender ; Nor once thy lips, like Dante's, may hâve smiled. The Muse with milk too strong suckled her child ; Art alone claimed thy love and life's surrender : Through sixty years, aureoled with threefold splendour, No heart with tenderness thy heart beguiled. Poor Buonarotti ! thine was one sole gladness, To carve in stone sublimity and sadness ; Puissant as God and girt like him with fears : So, when the dwindling sunset of thy glory Left thee a wearied lion grim and hoary, Death lingering took thee, full of famé and years. Michel- Ange. (Il Piaiîto) 66 AUGUSTE BARBIER Allegri. Though in my heart Christ's antique faith may perish, Art, towering like a marble tomb, shall shine, As when, from heaven's high vault, suns in décline Its gloom with glimpses of lone light reflourish. So thou, austère Allegri, wont to nourish The seed of sacred song in days divine, Leadst me where faith and love, in hallowed shrine, The dead limbs of the World's Redeemer cherish. Then my vain soûl, wherein no révérence dwells, My soûl, borne on the song thy rapture swells, Soars to the blest abode of bright archangels ; Whence,swathed in mystery from heaven's depths that glow, I hear the holy ones, in robes of snow, Chaunt on their golden lûtes divine evangels. Allegri. {Il Pianto) Shakespeare. Alas ! shall the pure brows that glory kindled Be blasted by the winter's icy breath, And must the gods of genius, sadly dwindled, Go, like the other gods, to dusty death ? 67 AUGUSTE BARBIER To thèse dull days great Shakespeare's tragic wonders Unfurl the enchantment of their scènes in vain ; Men hâve no ears for the proud Briton's thunders : Voiceless and lonely lies his echoing fane. Albion no longer loves his sacred symbols ; Outwearied with their truth the wandering throng Harks back to barbarism, while tinkling cymbals Speak louder to the heart than loftiest song. And yet what Titan, heavenly splendours bearing, Lightened like him the pools of human slime ? Plunged in the sait sea's breast, more greatly daring, And deeper dived into the gulfs of Time ? What wizard woke like him the sombre passions, Enormous reptiles swarming in man's heart ; Dragons obscure that in a thousand fashions Curl writhing in their nest ? What hand with art Like his could in their dark recesses take them And, with discovered face in the pure light, Like Hercules before the dazed world shake them, Shrieking in chorus their funereal fright ? Must we behold base Matter boldly planted With brutal feet firm on her heavy car ; Must England choose false lights for ever flaunted Before the beams of that impérial star ? On this dull earth shall Beauty cease to hover, Lost utterly in the wide realm of Night ? Nay ! Night with sombre clouds the sky may cover, She shall not quench the lamps of heavenly light ! 6S AUGUSTE BARBIER O thou, of Nature's womb the rarest blossom ! Nursling robust, child borne in her strong arms ; Thou that didst cling and, suckled at her bosom, With puissant b'ps drain Truth from ail her charms Ail that thy fancy touched with aëry pinion, AU things to which thy glance gave birth below, Ail the fresh shapes that .filled thy vast dominion, Woundless of death eternally shall glow ! Shakespeare ! In vain beneath thèse vaults supernal Inconstant mortals in vile cohorts pass ; In vain the abyss of Time sees sempiternal System on System piled in ruinons mass : Thy genius, like the sun that rises slowly And moveless shines at noon's empyreal height, Still calmly pours its light suprême and holy Above the wild waves in tumultuous flight ! Shakespeare. {Lazare) 69 Gérard de Nerval. Born in Paris, 1808 . . . Died in Paris, 1855. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of iviagmation ail co^npact. Gérard La Brunie or Labrunie (by anagram changed to Nerval) was the son of a Picardese surgeon-major in the army of Napoléon. He lost his mother in early child- hood ; she died of fever at Glogau during the disastrous Russian campaign. The boy had a curious éducation under his father's care. The éléments of Latin and Greek, Italian and German, and Arabie and Persian, with a course of Oriental calligraphy, were included in his curriculum. He was afterwards sent to the collège Charle- magne, and, while yet a schoolboy, his Elégies natmiales, composed under the influence of Casimir Delavigne's once famous Messéniennes, attracted the attention of literary observers. Before he was twenty years old he had trans- lated Faust,^ an achievement which drew from Goethe the precious compliment that he had never understood his own poetry better than in reading this French tran- scription. ' Hère everything lives and moves anew with ' freshness and vivacity', said Goethe to Eckermann ; ' and * this young man ', he added, * will become one of the ' purest writers of France '. Goethe's eulogium was well deserved, for although the Frenchman's knowledge of * Issued in 1828 : second édition 1835 : republished, with the second Faust and translations from several German poets, in 1840. 70 GERARD DE NERVAL Germai! must hâve been imperfect he had the indispensable poetic insight and sympathy, to which he joined the rare art of preserving the depth and fervour of the original whilst endovving it with the natural lucidity of his own languagc. This is abundantly demonstrated by his ex- periments in translating from Schiller, Klopstock, Biirger, Kôrner, Uhland, Hoffmann, Richter and Heine. Gérard de Nerval's native dreaminess led him into many other unfamiliar and fascinating paths of human idealism. If he had not the marvellous instinct of Oriental things which is attributed to Méry (who collabo- rated with him in several dramas) he was nevertheless conversant with the secular myths and religions of humanity, and 'even invented some himself if Gautier is to be believed. He had absorbed the mystical éléments of Bouddhism and Catholicism, and the spiritual essence of the legends of Greece and Israël, as well as the influ- ences of the modem visionaries down to Swedenborg. ' But you hâve no religion ' said some sceptical friend. ' No religion ? ' — answered Gérard — ' Why, I hâve seventeen * . . . at least ! ' This rare genius was a man of most sweet and gentle nature ; he was unassuming even to humility, and yet of a proud and sensitive disposition. His clear complexion, golden hair, grey eyes and finely-moulded features gave him in the freshness of youth that appearance of physical frailty allied to intellectual beauty which was the charm of Shelley. But as Gérard, short in stature and near- sighted, grew prematurely bald, he lost in early manhood the attractiveness of his youth. His characteristic condition of mind was a mixture of extrême simplicity and subtle mysticism. He firmly believed in the efficacy of talismans and exorcisms, drew horoscopes with touching faith, and had withal a cunning 71 GÉRARD DE NERVAL gift of observation, which is evinced in his writings by excessive delicacy and vividness of description. The first years of Gérard's literary life were spent in that misérable lodging in the impasse du Doye^me which he shared vvith nine other Bohemians, among whom were Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, Edouard Ourliac, Roger de Beauvoir and Alphonse Esquiros. Their lot was occasionally enlivened by the visit of girls from the Opéra, presided over by the Cydalise whose charms Gérard has so tenderly sung. Gérard's habits of life were ab- normal. He rarely slept in his bed-chamber, but wandered about the streets of Paris night after night, and dozed anywhere during the day. He was familiar with every nook and corner of the city, and a friend of his nocturnal wanderings tells how he took a childish pride in knowing where to find the best brandy or blanquette or tea-punch ; where a delicious cup of chocolaté could be had at two o'clock in the morning ; and where the only good béer in Paris was served by two red-haired damsels, on whom Gérard would gaze with 'calm and ecstatic admiration'. From time to time he had an access of insanity, and was taken to an asylum at Passy. More than once he passed a few months in this friendly retreat. Gérard's literary work was intermittent, and yet he had the essential virtue of an artist, for, although he never de- veloped and completed any long poem or romance, he turned and re-turned his thoughts until he had given them their fullest expression. His wavering reason could not face severe and solid work. He had planned a great drama on the Queen of Sheba, that sphinx-like Balkis or Belkiss whose fascinations seem to hâve fixed them- selves on the imagination of so many French men of letters during the Romantic era, and to whose inspira- tion we owe the most pathetic and most entrancing of 7