Volume I Part 22 (1/2)
'”J'aime le son du cor le soir, au fond des bois, Soit qu'il chante,” &c.
And
'”Qu'il est doux, qu'il est doux d'ecouter les histoires Des histoires du temps pa.s.se Quand les branches des arbres sont noires, Quand la neige est essaisse, et charge un sol glace, Quand seul dans un ciel pale un peuplier s'elance, Quand sous le manteau blanc qui vient de le cacher L'immobile corbeau sur l'arbre se balance Comme la girouette au bout du long clocher.”
'These poems generally are only interesting as the leisure hours of an interesting man.
'De Vigny writes in an excellent style; soft, fresh, deliberately graceful. Such a style is like fine manners; you think of the words select, appropriate, rather than distinguished, or beautiful. De Vigny is a perfect gentleman; and his refinement is rather that of the gentleman than that of the poets whom he is so full of. In character, he looks naturally at those things which interest the man of honor and the man of taste. But for literature, he would have known nothing about the poets. He should be the elegant and instructive companion of social, not the priest or the minstrel of solitary hours.
'Neither has he logic or grasp with his reasoning powers, though of this, also, he is ambitious. Observation is his forte. To see, and to tell with grace, often with dignity and pathos, what he sees, is his proper vocation. Yet, where he fails, he has too much tact and modesty to be despised; and we cannot enough admire the absence of faults in a man whose ambition soared so much beyond his powers, and in an age and a country so full of false taste. He is never seduced into sentimentality, paradox, violent contrast, and, above all, never makes the mistake of confounding the horrible with the sublime. Above all, he never falls into the error, common to merely elegant minds, of painting leading minds ”_en gigantesque_.” His Richelieu and his Bonaparte are treated with great calmness, and with dignified ease, almost as beautiful as majestic superiority.
'In this volume is contained all that is on record of the inner life of a man of forty years. How many suns, how many rains and dews, to produce a few buds and flowers, some sweet, but not rich fruit! We cannot help demanding of the man of talent that he should be like ”the orange tree, that busy plant.” But, as Landor says, ”He who has any thoughts of any worth can, and probably will, afford to let the greater part lie fallow.”
'I have not made a note upon De Vigny's notions of abnegation, which he repeats as often as Dr. Channing the same watch-word of self-sacrifice. It is that my views are not yet matured, and I can have no judgment on the point.'
BeRANGER.
'_Sept._, 1839.--I have lately been reading some of Beranger's _chansons_. The hour was not propitious. I was in a mood the very reverse of Roger Bontemps, and beset with circ.u.mstances the most unsuited to make me sympathize with the prayer--
'”Pardonnez la gaiete De ma philosophie;”
yet I am not quite insensible to their wit, high sentiment, and spontaneous grace. A wit that sparkles all over the ocean of life, a sentiment that never puts the best foot forward, but prefers the tone of delicate humor, to the mouthings of tragedy; a grace so aerial, that it nowhere requires the aid of a thought, for in the light refrains of these productions, the meaning is felt as much as in the most pointed lines.
Thus, in ”Les Mirmidons,” the refrain--
'”Mirmidons, race feconde, Mirmidons Enfin nous commandons, Jupiter livre le monde, Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons, (bis.)”
'The swarming of the insects about the dead lion is expressed as forcibly as in the most sarcastic pa.s.sage of the chanson.
In ”La Faridondaine” every sound is a witticism, and levels to the ground a bevy of what Byron calls ”garrison people.”
”Halte la! ou la systeme des interpretations” is equally witty, though there the form seems to be as much in the saying, as in the comic melody of sound.
'In ”Adieux a la Campagne,” ”Souvenirs du Peuple,” ”La Deesse de la Liberte,” ”La Convoi de David,” a melancholy pathos breathes, which touches the heart the more that it is so unpretending. ”Ce n'est plus Lisette,” ”Mon Habit,”
”L'Independant,” ”Vous vieillirez, O ma belle Maitresse,” a gentle graceful sadness wins us. In ”Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens,”
”Les Etoiles qui filent,” ”Les Conseils de Lise,” ”Treize a Table,” a n.o.ble dignity is admired, while such as ”La Fortune”
and ”La Metempsycose” are inimitable in their childlike playfulness. ”Ma Vocation” I have had and admired for many years. He is of the pure ore, a darling fairy changling of great mother Nature; the poet of the people, and, therefore, of all in the upper cla.s.ses sufficiently intelligent and refined to appreciate the wit and sentiment of the people.
But his wit is so truly French in its lightness and sparkling, feathering vivacity, that one like me, accustomed to the bitterness of English tonics, suicidal November melancholy, and Byronic wrath of satire, cannot appreciate him at once.
But when used to the gentler stimuli, we like them best, and we also would live awhile in the atmosphere of music and mirth, content if we have ”bread for to-day, and hope for to-morrow.”
'There are fine lines in his ”Cinq Mai;” the sentiment is as grand as Manzoni's, though not sustained by the same majestic sweep of diction, as,--
'”Ce rocher repousse l'esperance, L'Aigle n'est plus dans le secret des dieux, Il fatiguait la victoire a le suivre, Elle etait la.s.se: il ne l'attendit pas.”
'And from ”La Gerontocratie, ou les infiniment pet.i.ts:”
'”Combien d'imperceptibles etres, De pet.i.ts jesuites bilieux!