French Classics Part 29

If e'er he went into excess, 'Twas from a somewhat lively thirst, But he who would his subjects bless, Odd's fish!--must wet his whistle first, And so from every cask they got, Our king did to himself allot At least a pot.

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

That's the kind of king for me.

To all the ladies of the land A courteous king, and kind, was he; The reason why you'll understand, They named him _Pater Patriae._ Each year he called his fighting-men, And marched a league from home, and then, Marched back again.

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

That's the kind of king for me.

The portrait of this best of kings Is extant still, upon a sign That on a village tavern swings, Famed in the country for good wine.

The people in their Sunday trim, Filling their gla.s.ses to the brim, Look up to him.

Singing, ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he!

That's the sort of king for me.

In his autobiography, an interesting book, Beranger says that hardly any other writer equally with himself could have dispensed with the help of the printer. His songs traveled of themselves from mouth to mouth without the intervention of printed copies. In fact, Beranger was already famous before his works went into print. It was this oral currency of his songs that made them such engines of power. That brilliant Bohemian wit among Frenchmen, Chamfort, defined, it is said, before Beranger's time, the government of France to be absolute monarchy tempered by songs. This celebrated saying does not overstate the degree, though it may misstate the kind, of influence that Beranger exercised with his lyre. He was, by conviction and in sympathy, a determined and ardent republican, and yet, in fact, he founded, or played the chief part in founding, the imperial usurpation of Louis Napoleon. This he did by getting the glories of the great emperor sung by Frenchmen throughout France, until the very name of Napoleon became an irresistible spell to conjure by. We now give the most celebrated of these Bonaparte songs.

Mr. William Young, an American, has a volume of translations from Beranger. Of this particular song, Mr. Young's version is so felicitous that we unhesitatingly choose it for our readers. The t.i.tle of the song is, "The Recollections of the People." It was, we believe, founded on an incident of Beranger's own observation; we shorten again by a stanza:

Aye, many a day the straw-thatched cot Shall echo with his glory!

The humblest shed, these fifty years, Shall know no other story.

There shall the idle villagers To some old dame resort, And beg her with those good old tales To make their evenings short.

"What though they say he did us harm Our love this cannot dim; Come, Granny, talk of him to us; Come, Granny, talk of him."

"Well, children--with a train of kings Once he pa.s.sed by this spot; 'Twas long ago; I had but just Begun to boil the pot.

On foot he climbed the hill, whereon I watched him on his way; He wore a small three-cornered hat; His overcoat was gray.

I was half frightened till he spoke; 'My dear,' says he, 'how do?'"

"O, Granny, Granny, did he speak?

What, Granny! speak to you?"

"But when at length our poor Champagne By foes was overrun, He seemed alone to hold his ground; Nor dangers would he shun.

One night--as might be now--I heard A knock--the door unbarred-- And saw--good G.o.d! 'twas he, himself, With but a scanty guard.

'O what a war is this!' he cried, Taking this very chair."

"What! Granny, Granny, there he sat?

What! Granny, he sat there?"

"'I'm hungry,' said he: quick I served Thin wine and hard brown bread; He dried his clothes, and by the fire In sleep drooped down his head.

Waking, he saw my tears--'Cheer up, Good dame!' says he, 'I go 'Neath Paris' walls to strike for France One last avenging blow.'

He went; but on the cup he used Such value did I set-- It has been treasured." "What! till now?

You have it, Granny, yet?"

"Here 'tis; but 'twas the hero's fate To ruin to be led; He, whom a pope had crowned, alas!

In a lone isle lies dead.

'Twas long denied: 'No, no,' said they, 'Soon shall he re-appear; O'er ocean comes he, and the foe Shall find his master here.'

Ah, what a bitter pang I felt, When forced to own 'twas true!"

"Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look, Will kindly look on you."

There was not in Beranger's genius much innate and irrepressible buoyancy toward poetry, as we English-speakers conceive poetry. But he practiced a severely self-tasking art of verse, which at last yielded a product sufficiently consummate in form to command the admiration of qualified critics. He became unquestionably first among the song-writers of France; he even elevated song-writing, popular song-writing, to the rank of acknowledged literature. His fashion, and, with his fashion, his currency, are rapidly becoming things of the past; but the real merit of his achievement, and, more than that, the fact of his extraordinary influence make his name securely immortal in the literary history, and in the literature, of France.

XXII.

LAMARTINE.

1791-1869.

Lamartine, the man, was an image incongruously molded of gold and of clay. Take him at his best, and what is there better? Take him at his worst, and you would not wish worse.

The same contrast holds, but not in the same degree, in Lamartine the author. He is at once one of the most admirable, and one of the least admirable, of writers.

There are few figures in history worthier to command the homage of generous hearts than the figure of Lamartine in 1848, calming and quelling the mob of Paris by the simple ascendant of genius and of bravery. There are few figures in history more abject than the figure of Lamartine, toward the close of his life, in the garb of a beggar holding out his hat to mankind for the pence and half-pence of wonder, of sympathy, and of sympathetic shame.

Perhaps we instinctively fall into some contagious conformity to Lamartine's own exaggerating rhetoric in expressing ourselves as we do.

The chief facts of the life of Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine are briefly these. Well-born, having for mother a woman of more than Cornelian, of Christian, virtue, who herself mainly educated her son, he traveled, loved, lost, wept "melodious tears"--mixed much in Parisian society, until, at thirty, he published under the t.i.tle "Meditations," a volume of verse which made him instantly, brilliantly, triumphantly, famous. Every thing desirable was easy to him now. He married an Englishwoman of wealth, he wrote and published more poetry, amusing himself meantime with various diplomatic service, was made member of the French Academy, and in 1832 went traveling in the East, like an Eastern prince for lavish splendor of equipage and outlay. His book, "Memories of the Orient," published three years after, was the fruit of what he saw and felt and dreamed during this luxurious experience of travel.

Dreamed, we say, for Lamartine drew freely on his imagination to expand and embellish his memories of the East. Other volumes of verse, his "Jocelyn," his "Fall of an Angel," and his "Recollections" followed speedily.

The Revolution of 1830 had seated Louis Philippe on the throne.

Lamartine under him had been elected to the legislature of France and had been making reputation as an orator. The poet and orator would now be historian. Lamartine wrote his celebrated "History of the Girondists," which, after first appearing in numbers, was issued in volume in 1847. This book had in it the fermenting principle of a fresh revolution. In 1848 that revolution came, and Louis Philippe fled from Paris and from France, in precipitate abdication of his throne.

Now was the moment of glory and of opportunity for Lamartine. During the three months following, he may be said to have ruled France.

Eloquence and bravery together never won triumphs more resplendent than were Lamartine's during this swift interval of his dizzy elevation to power. He was in t.i.tle simply minister for foreign affairs, in a provisional government which he had had himself the decision and the intrepidity among the first to propose. But his personal popularity, his serene courage, his magical eloquence, gave him much the authority of dictator. It cannot be a.s.serted that Lamartine, in this crisis, proved himself a statesman able to cope with the stern exactions of the hour.

The candidate for such distinction success only can crown, and Lamartine did not succeed. He fell, as suddenly and as swiftly as he had risen.

Yesterday omnipotent, he was absolutely impotent to-day.

But nothing can deprive Lamartine of the pacific glory his due from several extraordinary feats of eloquence achieved by him, at imminent risk to himself, on behalf of mankind. A mob of forty thousand Parisian fanatics roared into the street before the Hotel de Ville to compel the Provisional Government sitting there to adopt the red flag as the ensign of the republic. This meant nothing less than a new reign of terror for France. Lamartine, single-handed, met the wild beast to its teeth, and with one stroke of the sword that went forth from his mouth laid it tamed at his feet. "The red flag you bring us," cried the orator to the mob, he shining the while resplendent in a personal beauty touched with the gleam of genius and glorified with the consecration of courage--like a descended Apollo, the rattling quiver borne on his shoulder--"The red flag you bring us," said he, "has only gone round the Champ de Mars, trailed in the blood of the people--in 1791 and in 1793; while the tricolor has gone round the world, with the name, the glory, and the liberty of our country." This eloquent condensation of history, untremblingly shot, at close quarters, full in the face of those wild-eyed insurgents, felled them, as if it had been a ball from a cannon. But ranks from behind still pressed forward with menacing cries. "Down with Lamartine!" "Down with the time-server!" "Off with his head! His head! His head! Lamartine's head!"

The brandished weapons were in Lamartine's very face. But that gentle blood never blenched. "My head, citizens? You want my head? Indeed, but I wish you had it, every one of you. If Lamartine's head were now on each pair of shoulders among you, you would be wiser than you are, and the revolution would go on more prosperously." The mob was in Lamartine's hand again, taken captive with a jest.

It is generally granted that Lamartine saved the nation from a new reign of terror. But eloquence is not statesmanship; and Lamartine, weighed in the balance, was found wanting. He served at last only to hand over the state to Louis Napoleon, first president, and then emperor.

Under Napoleon, Lamartine, now and henceforward simply a private citizen, found his affairs embarra.s.sed. He had been a prodigal spender of money. He toiled at letters to mend his broken fortunes. But his sun was past its meridian, and it settled hopelessly in cloud toward its west. He wrote a pseudo-biography of himself and published it as a serial in one of the Paris daily newspapers. He almost literally with his own hands performed the profaneness execrated by the poet, and "tare his heart before the crowd"--or would have done so, if his production, the "Confidences," so called, had really been what it purported to be, the actual story of his life. It was in fact as much imagination as revelation. But the once overwhelmingly popular author now cheapened himself before the public in almost every practicable way. He brought his own personal dignity to market in his works--and did this over and over again. The public bought their former idol at his own cheapened price, and he still remained poor. In 1850 a public subscription was opened for his relief. As a last humiliation, the proud patrician submitted to accept a pension from the empire of Louis Napoleon. This he enjoyed but two years, for in two years after he died. A further s.p.a.ce of two years, and the empire itself that granted Lamartine his pension had met its Sedan and ceased to be.

Fresh from admiring the radiant pages of Lamartine's rhetoric in prose, from admiring the iridescent play in color, the deliquescent melody in sound, of his verse, we feel it painful to admit to ourselves that so much indisputably fine effect goes for little or nothing, now that the fashion of that world of taste and feeling for which this writer wrote has pa.s.sed returnlessly away. But so it is. Lamartine, like Chateaubriand, and for substantially the same reason, namely, lack of fundamental genuineness, has already reached that last pathetic phase, well-nigh worse than total eclipse, of literary fame, the condition of an author important in the history of literature, rather than in literature.

Poet, orator, historian, statesman, this munificently gifted nature was most profoundly, most controllingly, poet. But he was French poet, which is to say that his poetry is removed, if not quite from access to the English mind, at least from access to the English mind through translation. He, however, enjoyed at first high English reputation as poet, and the publication of "Jocelyn," his masterpiece in verse, may be said to have been even a European event in literary history.

The story of "Jocelyn" is avouched by the author to be almost a series of actual occurrences. This a.s.sertion, to those familiar with Lamartine's style in a.s.serting, will not be quite so conclusive as on its face it appears. At any rate, if "Jocelyn" be truth, Lamartine has made truth read like fiction, and fiction of a highly improbable sort.

The story, true or fict.i.tious--and which it is, as n.o.body now knows, so n.o.body now cares--we need not detain our readers to report.

The poet staggered his public by printing on the t.i.tle-page to his "Jocelyn" the words, "An Episode," as much as to say that a certain "Epic of Humanity," which he might finally (but which, as a matter of fact, he never did) produce, would be large enough to make shrink into the dimensions of a mere episode this poem of ten thousand lines more or less!

Now for an extract or two. In the "Edinburgh Review," of a date not far from fifty years past now, we find our translation. A day of festival, followed by a long evening of out-door dancing to music, has just closed. The breaking-up is described, with the sequel of young Jocelyn's pensive and yearning emotions:

Then later, when the fife and hautboy's voice Began to languish like a failing voice, And moistened ringlets, by the dance unstrung, Close to the cheek in drooping tresses clung, And wearied groups along the darkening green Gliding, in converse soft and low, were seen, What sounds enchanting to the ear are muttered!