French Classics Part 17

FIRST VOICE.

Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight.

SECOND VOICE.

Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light.

FIRST VOICE.

What dire despair!

SECOND VOICE.

What praise from every tongue!

FIRST VOICE.

What cries of grief!

SECOND VOICE.

What songs of triumph sung!

A THIRD VOICE.

Cease we to vex ourselves; our G.o.d, one day, Will this great mystery make clear.

ALL THREE VOICES.

Let us his wrath revere, While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay.

The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash as king, and in the destruction of usurping and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by the way, with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself for the moment a certain fact.i.tious interest, from the resemblance, meant by the poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the little Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson, then of about the same age with the Hebrew boy, and of high reputation for mental vivacity.

The scene in which the high-priest, Jehoiada, for the first time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from David, and his true heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture interpreted without violence would make him. The lad has had his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in tears:

What pity touches you? Is it that, in a holocaust to be this day offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by my death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does not belong to his father!

The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high-priest, exclaiming, "My father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What preparations, then, are these?" asks Joash. The high-priest bids him prepare himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him to pay his debt to G.o.d:

_Joash._ I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my life.

_Jehoiada._ You have often heard read the history of our kings. Do you remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the crown ought to impose upon himself?

_Joash._ A wise and good king, so hath G.o.d himself declared, puts not his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his G.o.d, has ever before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and does not with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren.

Fenelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil, the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fenelon.

How could the selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid recognizing his own portrait suggested by contrast in that description of the good king from the lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way under him, to let him down into the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his king. This not, however, in the present play.

The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final speech in which Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for young King Joash, a future of apostasy from G.o.d. With this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from Satan in "Paradise Lost," so far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our representation of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of things that a.s.sure her of the overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes--"O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" as follows:

G.o.d of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!

Ay, it is Joash; all without avail Seek I to cheat myself with other thought: I know the wound my weapon on him wrought; I see his father Ahaziah's face; Naught but brings back to me that hated race.

David doth triumph, Ahab only fall-- Unpitying G.o.d, thou only hast done all!

'Tis thou that, flattering me to hope in vain For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again Hast with myself myself embroiled anew, Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few, Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare, Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.

Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil, And, so to signalize his new-got spoil, Let him into my bosom plunge the knife, And take with filial hand his mother's life.

Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes-- Wish? nay, what hope, a.s.sured hope, bequeaths-- That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he, Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me, To his grandfather, to his father, like, Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!

With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.

The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no means equal to its fame. One reproaches one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously perusing it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be irreproachably, nay, consummately, good. But fashions in taste change; and we cannot hold ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for enjoying, according to the judgment of other races and of former generations. It is--so, with grave concurrence, we say--It is a great cla.s.sic, worthy of the praise that it receives. We are glad that we have read it; and, let us be candid, equally glad that we have not to read it again.

As has already been intimated, Racine, after "Athaliah," wrote tragedy no more. He ceased to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His son "Louis," in his Life of his father, testifies that he never heard his father speak in the family of the dramas that he had written. His theatrical triumphs seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of them rather than gloried in them.

While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine's for the devotion of his powers to the production of tragedy was a sincere regret of his conscience, one may properly wish that the regret had been more heroic.

The fact is, Racine was somewhat feminine in character as well as in genius. He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against an adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to Racine, from the princ.i.p.al quarter, the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite with his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of an exile from the royal presence. The immediate occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise to the poet.

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had expressed views on the state of France, and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which so impressed her mind that she desired him to reduce his observations to writing and confide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the ma.n.u.script in her hand. Taking it from her, he read in it, and demanded to know the author. Madame de Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. "Does M.

Racine, because he is a great poet, think that he knows every thing?"

the despot angrily asked. Louis never spoke to Racine again. The distressed and infatuated poet still made some paltry request of the king--to experience the humiliation that he invoked. His request was not granted. Racine wilted, like a tender plant, under the sultry frown of his monarch. He could not rally. He soon after died, literally killed by the mere displeasure of one man. Such was the measureless power wielded by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff in Racine. A spirit partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop Fenelon, will presently be shown to have had at about the same time a partly similar experience.

XII.

BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-1704; Ma.s.sILLON: 1663-1742; SAURIN: 1677-1730.

We group four names in one t.i.tle, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Ma.s.sillon, Saurin, to represent the pulpit orators of France. There are other great names--as Flechier and Claude--but the names we choose are the greatest.

Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as a great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply; Ma.s.sillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces of style, became at once, and permanently became, a part of French literature; Saurin's, that he was the pulpit theologian of Protestantism.

The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it.

Protestant agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in this. Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as Milton is to the Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, seems a thing too near the common human level to answer fully the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory, while in English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature its satisfaction to the sentiment of the sublime, very well represents the difference in genius between the two races. The French idea of poetry is eloquence; and it is eloquence carried to its height, whether in verse or in prose, that const.i.tutes for the Frenchman sublimity. The difference is a difference of blood. English blood is Teutonic in base, and the imagination of the Teuton is poetic. French blood, in base, is Celtic; and the imagination of the Celt is oratoric.

Jacques Benigne Bossuet was of good _bourgeois_, or middle-cla.s.s, stock.

He pa.s.sed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic consistency with what was to be his subsequent career. He was brought forward while a young man in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where, on a certain occasion, he preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices of his admiring patron. In due time he attracted wide public attention, not merely as an eloquent orator, but as a profound student and as a powerful controversialist. His character and influence became in their maturity such that La Bruyere aptly called him a "Father of the Church."

"The Corneille of the pulpit," was Henri Martin's characterization and praise. A third phrase, "the eagle of Meaux," has pa.s.sed into almost an alternative name for Bossuet. He soared like an eagle in his eloquence, and he was bishop of Meaux.

Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to each other, in the mutual relation of subject and sovereign. Bossuet preached sincerely--as every body knows Louis sincerely practiced--the doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule absolutely. But the proud prelate compromised neither his own dignity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence of the absolute monarch.

Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to prodigious effect, into the controversy against Protestantism. His "History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches," in two good volumes, was one of the mightiest pamphlets ever written. As tutor to the Dauphin (the king's eldest son), he produced, with other works, his celebrated "Discourse on Universal History."

In proceeding now to give, from the four great preachers named in our t.i.tle, a few specimen pa.s.sages of the most famous pulpit oratory in the world, we need to prepare our readers against a natural disappointment.

That which they are about to see has nothing in it of what will at first strike them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age of France was distinctly "cla.s.sic," and not at all "romantic," in style.

Its character is not ornate, but severe. There is little rhetorical figure in it, little of that "ill.u.s.tration" which our own different national taste is accustomed to demand from the pulpit. There is plenty of white light, "dry light" and white, for the reason; but there is almost no bright color for the fancy, and, it must be added, not a great deal of melting warmth for the heart.

The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally esteemed the masterpieces of this orator's eloquence. He had great occasions, and he was great to match them. Still, readers might easily be disappointed in perusing a funeral oration of Bossuet's. The discourse will generally be found to deal in commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment.

Those commonplaces, however, are often made very impressive by the lofty, the magisterial, the imperial manner of the preacher in treating them. We exhibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a brief one, in the majestic exordium to the funeral oration on the Princess Henrietta of England.