French Classics Part 28

His family meantime were suffering in France. Some of them had actually been guillotined, and some were imprisoned, among them his wife, his sister, and his mother. The mother died praying for her son's conversion from infidel error. The sister wrote to her brother the pathetic story, but she too had died before her letter reached that brother's hand.

"These two voices," Chateaubriand says, "coming up from the grave, ...

struck me with peculiar force.... I wept and believed." The "Genius of Christianity" was written in the spirit of this sentimental conversion of the author.

We pa.s.s over, with mere mention of some princ.i.p.al t.i.tles, his other books, not previously named, as his "Itinerary," a volume of travels; his "Moses," his "Martyrs," his "Essay on English Literature," his "Translation of the Paradise Lost," to make the brief extracts for which we have room from the "Genius of Christianity."

This work is designed as a manual of Christian evidence, an argument for the truth of the Christian religion. It is written, of course, from a Roman Catholic point of view, but it may be described as liberal and literary, rather than strict and ecclesiastical. It is far from being closely reasoned. There is, in fact, a great deal of digression and discussion in it. The aim of the author was evidently more to make a readable book suited to the times than to produce an apologetic work that would stand four-square against all hostile attack. The author's question with himself as he wrote seemed to have been, not, Is this valid, and necessary to the demonstration? but, Will this be interesting? The consequence is that the "Genius of Christianity" is now worthy of note rather as a book that has had a history than as a book that possesses permanent value. It contains, however, writing that will satisfactorily exhibit the style of Chateaubriand--a clear, pure, brilliant, harmonious poetic prose.

Chateaubriand raises and answers the question why the ancients failed in feeling for the beauties and sublimities of nature, thus:

It can scarcely be supposed that men endued with such sensibility as the ancients could have wanted eyes to perceive the charms of nature and talents for depicting them, had they not been blinded by some powerful cause. Now, this cause was their established mythology, which, peopling the universe with elegant phantoms, banished from the creation its solemnity, its grandeur, and its solitude. It was necessary that Christianity should expel the whole hosts of fauns, of satyrs, and of nymphs, to restore to the grottoes their silence, and to the woods their scope for uninterrupted contemplation. Under our religion the deserts have a.s.sumed a character more pensive, more vague, and more sublime; the forests have attained a loftier pitch; the rivers have broken their petty urns, that in future they may only pour the waters of the abyss from the summit of the mountains; and the true G.o.d, in returning to his work, has imparted his immensity to nature.

The foregoing, paradoxical perhaps, is certainly a sharp turning of the tables upon modern paganizers who mourn the dead Greek and Roman divinities of grove and stream.

Here is a pa.s.sage in description of nature that every reader must acknowledge to be charming. It is throughout thoroughly characteristic of the author. The closing sentence is certainly French rather than Hebrew in spirit--Chateaubriand rather than David:

Penetrate into those forests of America coeval with the world. What profound silence pervades these retreats when the winds are hushed!

What unknown voices when they begin to rise! Stand still, and everything is mute; take but a step, and all nature sighs. Night approaches; the shades thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts pa.s.sing in the dark; the ground murmurs under your feet; the pealing thunder roars in the deserts; the forest bows; the trees fall; an unknown river rolls before you. The moon at length bursts forth in the east; as you proceed at the foot of the trees she seems to move before you at their tops and solemnly to accompany your steps. The wanderer seats himself on the trunk of an oak to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the nocturnal luminary, the darkness, and the river: he feels restless, agitated, and in expectation of something extraordinary. A pleasure never felt before, an unusual fear, cause his heart to throb as if he were about to be admitted to some secret of the Divinity; he is alone in the depths of the forest, but the mind of man is equal to the expanse of nature, and all the solitudes of the earth are less vast than one single thought of his heart. Even did he reject the idea of a deity, the intellectual being, alone and unbeheld, would be more august in the midst of a solitary world than if surrounded by the ridiculous divinities of fabulous times. The barren desert itself would have some congeniality with his discursive thoughts, his melancholy feelings, and even his disgust for a life equally devoid of illusion and of hope.

There is in man an instinctive melancholy which makes him harmonize with the scenery of nature. Who has not spent whole hours seated on the bank of a river contemplating its pa.s.sing waves? Who has not found pleasure on the sea-sh.o.r.e in viewing the distant rock whitened by the billows? How much are the ancients to be pitied, who discovered in the ocean naught but the palace of Neptune and the cavern of Proteus! It was hard that they should perceive only the adventures of the Tritons and the Nereids in the immensity of the seas, which seems to give an indistinct measure of the greatness of our souls, and which excites a vague desire to quit this life, that we may embrace all nature and taste the fullness of joy in the presence of its author.

How Roman Catholic, rather than catholic, in tone, is the "Genius of Christianity," the following deliciously written sentiment about the Virgin Mary will sufficiently show:

They who see nothing in the chaste queen of angels but an obscure mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts are suggested by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-G.o.d! What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, the two most glorious characters of woman!--of that youthful daughter of ancient Israel, who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compa.s.sion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a G.o.d by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty.

The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a pure-white throne more dazzling than the snow. We there behold her arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning star, harbinger of the Sun of grace; the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her.

In that daughter of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the comforter of the afflicted, who, all good, all compa.s.sionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger of the Lord.

Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young women whose bitter griefs she has a.s.suaged. The mother carries her babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the G.o.d of heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds an infant in her arms.

Finally, to ill.u.s.trate the amusing real lack of logic, masking in logical form, of which Chateaubriand was capable, we give the syllogistic-looking conclusion that sums up the book:

Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect.

Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle.

Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men.

If Christianity is not the work of men, it can have come from none but G.o.d.

If it came from G.o.d, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it but by revelation.

Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.

Chateaubriand was long a venerated figure, central in the pure and brilliant _salon_ of Madame Recamier, that later Marchioness Rambouillet at Paris. His easy airs of patriarchal condescension toward the younger generation of authors who drew around him there naturally engaged them to prolong the long days of his triumphs. But his triumphs may be said to have come to an end when Sainte-Beuve was ready to p.r.o.nounce, as he did, that this defender of Christianity was a skeptic at heart, this preacher and praiser of purity was a libertine in life. We will not say that we accept this destructive view of Chateaubriand's character. But we are bound to confess that we wish there were more internal evidence contained in his writings to throw doubt on the justice of a sentence so severe.

DE MAISTRE (Joseph Marie, 1753-1821), is another author who, like Chateaubriand, a little earlier than he, took up a polemic for Christianity as represented in Roman Catholicism. A truly high and n.o.bly earnest spirit was De Maistre, as such contrasting with Chateaubriand, a far deeper and far more philosophical thinker than his brilliant compeer, but wanting in that grace and seductiveness of style which gave to Chateaubriand his life-long wide supremacy in the empire of French letters. It would be not incongruous, if there were room for it in our volume, to prolong this chapter with some brief notice and exemplification of De Maistre's literary work. We must content ourselves with this respectful bare mention of his name.

The proportionately small s.p.a.ce in these pages that, in here ending our notice of him, we allot to Chateaubriand, fails indeed to represent by symbol to the eye the proportionate s.p.a.ce that he occupies in the literature of his country. But it has afforded us fairly adequate opportunity to exhibit in description and specimen the characteristic quality of his literary production.

XXI.

BeRANGER.

1780-1857.

Beranger was a song-writer, the whole of him. He was a song-writer and nothing else. It is his own word, "My songs, they are myself."

Beranger was not the rose-crowned lyrist of love and wine; he was not Anacreon. Beranger was not the hymner of heroes and kings, a maker of odes; he was not Pindar. Beranger was not the poet of the world, the gay world and the wise; he was not Horace. Beranger was not by chance the lowly melodist, who might by chance as well have been a lofty bard; he was not Robert Burns. Beranger was the song-singer of the people; he himself elected to be such, and he was by the people elected to be such; he said himself, "My muse is the people." In one word, Beranger was--Beranger. There was none like him before, there has been none like him since; Beranger is alone. We do not thus praise him, we simply describe him.

But it is possible to describe him better. We do so by borrowing from Victor Hugo through Sainte-Beuve.

Sainte-Beuve, not in his essay on Beranger (which, in appreciating, somewhat depreciates the poet), but among the interesting things that, under the t.i.tle "Chateaubriana," he prints at the close of his monograph in two volumes on Chateaubriand, has the following personal recollection of his own, which, given here, will serve a threefold purpose; that of hinting incidentally the relation of four celebrated French authors to one another, that of ill.u.s.trating the ready fecundity and plasticity of Victor Hugo's genius, and that of setting forth in concrete example Beranger's master method in his songs, which master method is essentially Beranger, the song-writer, himself. Sainte-Beuve says--of course we translate:

Victor Hugo, returning one morning from the garden of the Luxembourg (1828 or 1829) said to me: "If I should see Beranger, I would give him the subject of a pretty song. I just now met M. de Chateaubriand in the Luxembourg; he did not see me; he was wrapt in thought, intently observing some children who, seated on the ground, were playing and tracing figures in the sand. If I were Beranger I would make a song on the subject: 'I have been minister, I have been amba.s.sador, etc., I wear the decoration of the Order of the Holy Ghost, that of the Order of the Golden Fleece, that of the order of St. Andrew, etc.; and one sole thing at last amuses me: it is to watch children playing in the sand. I wrote "Rene," I wrote the "Genius of Christianity," I stood up against Napoleon, I opened the poetic era of the century, etc.; and I know only one thing that amuses me: to watch children at play upon the sand. I have seen America, I have seen Greece and Rome, I have seen Jerusalem, etc.' And after each enumeration of various experiences, forms of greatness or of honor, all kept returning still to this: to watch children playing and tracing circles in the sand." The plan sketched by Victor Hugo was perfect, far better than I have given it here; but the motive is plain, the idea of the refrain. Never have I had better defined to me the difference that separates the song, even the most elevated in character, from the ode properly so-called.

There is Beranger, his whole secret, summed up in small by a masterhand.

What Beranger, then, did was to choose wisely, with long heed, some single, simple, obvious sentiment, appealing to every body's experience, shut that sentiment up into a short, neat, striking, rememberable form of words suited to be sung, make of that form of words a refrain to recur at intervals, and finally on that refrain build up, one after another to the end, the stanzas of his song. He worked slowly and painfully. His genius was never very prolific. The time of his chief fruitfulness was short, covering only fifteen years, the fifteen years between Waterloo (1815) and the elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne of France (1830). During this time his largest product hardly exceeded a dozen songs a year.

Beranger's first discipline to his art may be considered to have been a certain favorite diversion of his childhood, the carving of cherry-stones. This exercise of skill he practiced sedulously with delight when a boy, and in it learned the long, minute patience of art.

The man's songs were cut gems laboriously finished, like the boy's carvings in cherry-stones.

Beranger became immensely popular. He remained so to the end. When he died, and it was after prolonged silence on his part--if one can call silence a period marked, indeed, by non-production, but filled with the singing, from land's end to land's end, of his songs in every mouth--when he died the empire buried him and the nation attended his funeral. He had been born poor, and he was reared in poverty. Rich he would not be, when a man. He took infinite pains to be of the people, and he succeeded. The people were loving and honoring themselves in loving and honoring Beranger. Sainte-Beuve, with that critical incredulity of his, thought that Beranger carried his demonstrative cultivation of the "people" to the point of something like affectation.

Perhaps; but the affectation, if it was such, had a sound basis in it of real instinctive popular sympathy. Still, Beranger's emphasized identification of himself with the people was not all a matter of instinct with him. It was in part a matter of deliberately adopted policy. He said:

The people wanted a man to speak to them the language they love and understand, and to create imitators to vary and multiply versions of the same text. _I have been that man._

Beranger was quite willing to make any moral descent that might seem to him necessary in order to reach his audience. He may have been instinctively, but he was also deliberately, low and lewd in some of his songs.

Without their help [said he, that is without the help of such immoral songs] I am disposed to think that the others would not have been able to go so far, or so low, or even so high; no offense in this last word to the virtues of good society.

Even the best of Beranger's songs lack any thing like lift and aspiration. They are conceived in a comparatively low tone. The n.o.blest leaven in them is love of France and of liberty. Beranger hated the Bourbons; they persecuted him, but that only helped him sing them off the throne of France. Beranger's songs did more than any other one individual influence, perhaps they did more than all other individual influences combined, first to overturn the restored Bourbon dynasty after Waterloo, and, second, to bring about the elevation of Louis Napoleon to power.

For Beranger was a pa.s.sionate admirer of the great Napoleon. True, he deprecated the exhaustions visited on France by the wars of glory which Napoleon waged. But that famous piece of his, "The King of Yvetot," in which this deprecation found voice, was a protest so lightly conceived and at bottom so genial, that the jealousy of Napoleon himself could afford to laugh at it. The pieces in which, on the contrary, he celebrated the praises of the emperor were written with an emotion contagiously vivid. Let us now have before us "The King of Yvetot," with an appropriate contrast to it afterward supplied in one of these encomiastic pieces.

"Yvetot" is the name of an ancient French town, situated in a seignory the lord of which once enjoyed the nominal rank of king. The effect of Beranger's t.i.tle to his song is of course humorous. The song-writer's purpose was to draw, in the king whom he describes, a whimsical contrast to the restless Napoleon. Thackeray furnishes us with a happily sympathetic rendering of Beranger's "King of Yvetot," as follows; for brevity's sake we omit one stanza:

There was a king of Yvetot, Of whom renown hath little said, Who let all thoughts of glory go, And dawdled half his days a-bed; And every night, as night came round, By Jenny with a night-cap crowned, Slept very sound.

Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!

That's the kind of king for me.

And every day it came to pa.s.s That four l.u.s.ty meals made he, And step by step, upon an a.s.s, Rode abroad his realms to see; And wherever he did stir, What think you was his escort, sir?

Why, an old cur.

Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he!

That's the kind of king for me.