Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 14

FOOTNOTES:

[128] One is reminded of the expression of the great Conde: "Where then has Corneille learned politics and war?"

[129] It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all the pa.s.sages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus; in them Racine would almost always be found below his model. I will give a single example. In the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses the different effects of the crime on the spectators:

Juez combien ce coup frappe tous les esprits; La moitie s'epouvante et sort avec des cris; Mais ceux qui de la cour ont un plus long usage Sur les yeux de Cesar composent leur visage.

Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more than a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes of the great Roman painter: "Trepidatur a circ.u.msedentibus, diffugiunt imprudentes; at, quibus altior intellectus, resistunt defixi et Neronem intuentes."

[130] See the letter to Perrault.

[131]

En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue, Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrique, etc.

Apres qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par priere, Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferme Moliere, etc.

[132]

Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossiere, Git sans pompe, enferme dans une vile biere, Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait ecrit; Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Jesus-Christ, Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise meme, Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anatheme, etc.

Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute; Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal eteinte N'aurait jamais laisse ses cendres en repos, Si Dieu lui-meme ici de son ouaille sainte A ces loups devorants n'avait cache les os.

[133] These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and they are not well known. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, in a letter to Brossette, rightly said that these are "the most beautiful verses that M. Despreaux ever made."

[134] 4th Series of our works, LITERATURE, book i., _Preface_, p. 3: "It is in prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain.... What modern nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation?

The country of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a single prose writer of the first order [?]; that of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Ta.s.so, is in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly diction, like the thought that it expresses, is dest.i.tute of grandeur.

Spain, it is true, has produced Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he is alone.... France can easily show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius: Froissard, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Moliere, Retz, La Bruyere, Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, Ma.s.sillon, Mme. de Sevigne, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Rousseau; without speaking of so many more that would be in the first rank everywhere else,--Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigne, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pelisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Prevost, Beaumarchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French prose is without a rival in modern Europe; and, even in antiquity, superior to the Latin prose, at least in the quant.i.ty and variety of models, it has no equal but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in the days of Herodotus and Demosthenes. I do not prefer Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult for me to put Plato himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my opinion, are the two greatest masters of human language, with manifest differences, as well as more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily speak like the people, with the last degree of simplicity, and at moments ascending without effort to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingenious and polished to the most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic and sublime. Plato, without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme serenity, and, as it were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on his side, has the pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. When such writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the honor that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?"

[135] See the APPENDIX, at the end of the volume.

[136] See the APPENDIX.

[137] This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St.

Gervais. It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the admirable Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum.

[138] Such a law was the first act of the first a.s.sembly of affranchised Greece, and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of civilized Europe.

[139] See the APPENDIX.

[140] The _Seven Sacraments_ of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater Gallery. See the APPENDIX.

[141] See the APPENDIX.

[142] In the midst of this scene of brutal violence, everybody has remarked this delicate trait--a Roman quite young, almost juvenile, while possessing himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the arms of her mother, asks her from her mother with an air at once pa.s.sionate and restrained. In order to appreciate this picture, compare it with that of David in the _ensemble_ and in the details.

[143] In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He governs the whole scene; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy.

[144] The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which we have just spoken, are in the Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of Madrid alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more than fifty, and those the most admirable. See the APPENDIX.

[145] The last _Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the National Museum of the Louvre_, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is surely a man of incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne in the Flemish school. _En revanche_, a learned foreigner, M.

Waagen, claims him for the French school. _Kunstwerke and Kunstler in Paris_, Berlin, 1839, p. 651.

[146] Well appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits. One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne responded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more skilful painter than he was, it was the only thing that he asked of his Eminence; but that being impossible, he only desired the honor of his good graces. Felibien, _Entretiens_, 1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171; and de Piles, _Abrege de la Vie des Peintres_, 2d edition, p. 500.--"As he had much love for justice and truth, provided he satisfied what they both demanded, he easily pa.s.sed over all the rest."--_Necrologe de Port-Royal_, p. 336.

[147] See the APPENDIX.

[148] The original is in the Museum of Gren.o.ble; but see the engraving of Morin; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of Demonstier.

[149] In the Museum of the Louvre; see also the engraving of Morin.

[150] The original is now in the Chateau of Sable, belonging to the Marquis of Rouge; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful engraving of Edelinck was made after a different original, attributed to a nephew of Champagne.

[151] The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Rouge; the admirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place.

[152] In the Museum.

[153] In the Museum, and engraved by Gerard Edelinck.

[154] _La Gloire du Val-de-Grace_, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vignettes. Moliere there enters into infinite details on all the parts of the art of painting and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy perhaps to the extent of hyperbole; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to the most shameful indifference. The fresco of the dome of Val-de-grace is composed of four rows of figures, which rise in a circle from the base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper part is the Trinity, above which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the Trinity are the celestial powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin and the holy personages of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the lower extremity is Anne of Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne and St. Louis, and these three figures are accompanied by a mult.i.tude of personages pertaining to the history of France, among whom are distinguished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc.

[155] Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the _Plague of David_ (_la Peste de David_). What has become of the original?

[156] See his _Landscape at Sunset_, and the _Bathers_ (_les Baigneuses_), an agreeable scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing.

[157] It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his _Holy Family_ the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses meditation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most important work of S. Bourdon, the _Sept Oeuvres de Misericorde_. See the APPENDIX.

[158] See especially his _Extreme Unction_.

[159] The picture that is called _le Silence_, which represents the sleep of the infant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of superhuman power. The _Battles of Alexander_, with their defects, are pages of history of the highest order; and in the _Alexander visiting with Ephestion the Mother and the Wife of Darius_, one knows not which to admire most, the n.o.ble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures.

[160] It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It is indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his _chef-d'oeuvre_, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in his earliest youth, and in an abbe, sustained and surrounded by angels of different size, forming a charming composition.

The drawing is completely pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings.

The little angels that sport with the emblems of the future cardinal are full of spirit, and, at the same time, sweetness.

[161] Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to engrave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the regency, and in the latter part of their life; Mazarin, in his last five or six years; Conde, growing old; Turenne, old; Fouquet and Matthieu Mole, some years before the fall of the one and the death of the other; and he was too often obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, and obscure financiers.

[162] If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most neglected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost wholly omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin.