""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!
De milliers d"autres pet.i.ts pretres, Lui portent de pet.i.ts bons dieux."
"But wit, poet, man of honor, tailor"s grandson and fairy"s favorite, he must speak for himself, and the best that can be felt or thought of him cannot be said in the way of criticism.
I will copy and keep a few of his songs. I should like to keep the whole collection by me, and take it up when my faith in human nature required the gentlest of fortifying draughts.
"How fine his answer to those who asked about the "de" before his name!--
""Je suis vilain, Vilain, vilain," &c.
J"honore une race commune, Car, sensible, quoique malin, Je n"ai flatte que l"infortune."
"In a note to "Couplets on M. Laisney, _imprimeur a Peronne_,"
he says: "It was in his printing-house that I was put to prentice; not having been able to learn orthography, he imparted to me the taste for poetry, gave me lessons in versification, and corrected my first essays."
"Of Bonaparte,--
""Un conquerant, dans sa fortune altiere, Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois, Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussiere Empreinte encore sur le bandeau des rois."
"I admire, also, "Le Violon brise," for its grace and sweetness. How fine Beranger on Waterloo!--
""Its name shall never sadden verse of mine.""
TO R.W.E.
"_Niagara, 1st June, 1843_.--I send you a token, made by the hands of some Seneca Indian lady. If you use it for a watch-pocket, hang it, when you travel, at the head of your bed, and you may dream of Niagara. If you use it for a purse, you can put in it alms for poets and artists, and the subscription-money you receive for Mr. Carlyle"s book. His book, as it happened, you gave me as a birthday gift, and you may take this as one to you; for, on yours, was W."s birthday, J."s wedding-day, and the day of ----"s death, and we set out on this journey. Perhaps there is something about it on the purse. The "number five which nature loves," is repeated on it.
"Carlyle"s book I have, in some sense, read. It is witty, full of pictures, as usual. I would have gone through with it, if only for the sketch of Samson, and two or three bits of fun which happen to please me. No doubt it may be of use to rouse the unthinking to a sense of those great dangers and sorrows.
But how open is he to his own a.s.sault. He rails himself out of breath at the short-sighted, and yet sees scarce a step before him. There is no valuable doctrine in his book, except the Goethean, _Do to-day the nearest duty_. Many are ready for that, could they but find the way. This he does not show. His proposed measures say nothing. Educate the people. That cannot be done by books, or voluntary effort, under these paralyzing circ.u.mstances. Emigration! According to his own estimate of the increase of population, relief that way can have very slight effect. He ends as he began; as he did in Chartism.
Everything is very bad. You are fools and hypocrites, or you would make it better. I cannot but sympathize with him about hero-worship; for I, too, have had my fits of rage at the stupid irreverence of little minds, which also is made a parade of by the pedantic and the worldly. Yet it is a good sign. Democracy is the way to the new aristocracy, as irreligion to religion. By and by, if there are great men, they will not be brilliant exceptions, redeemers, but favorable samples of their kind.
"Mr. C."s tone is no better than before. He is not loving, nor large; but he seems more healthy and gay.
"We have had bad weather here, bitterly cold. The place is what I expected: it is too great and beautiful to agitate or surprise: it satisfies: it does not excite thought, but fully occupies. All is calm; even the rapids do not hurry, as we see them in smaller streams. The sound, the sight, fill the senses and the mind.
"At Buffalo, some ladies called on us, who extremely regretted they could not witness our emotions, on first seeing Niagara.
"Many," they said, "burst into tears; but with those of most sensibility, the hands become cold as ice, and they would not mind if buckets of cold water were thrown over them!""
NATURE.
Margaret"s love of beauty made her, of course, a votary of nature, but rather for pleasurable excitement than with a deep poetic feeling.
Her imperfect vision and her bad health were serious impediments to intimacy with woods and rivers. She had never paid,--and it is a little remarkable,--any attention to natural sciences. She neither botanized, nor geologized, nor dissected. Still she delighted in short country rambles, in the varieties of landscape, in pastoral country, in mountain outlines, and, above all, in the sea-sh.o.r.e. At Nantasket Beach, and at Newport, she spent a month or two of many successive summers. She paid homage to rocks, woods, flowers, rivers, and the moon. She spent a good deal of time out of doors, sitting, perhaps, with a book in some sheltered recess commanding a landscape. She watched, by day and by night, the skies and the earth, and believed she knew all their expressions. She wrote in her journal, or in her correspondence, a series of "moonlights," in which she seriously attempts to describe the light and scenery of successive nights of the summer moon. Of course, her raptures must appear sickly and superficial to an observer, who, with equal feeling, had better powers of observation.
Nothing is more rare than a talent to describe landscape, and, especially, skyscape, or cloudscape, although a vast number of letters, from correspondents between the ages of twenty and thirty, are filled with experiments in this kind. Margaret, in her turn, made many vain attempts, and, to a lover of nature, who knows that every day has new and inimitable lights and shades, one of these descriptions is as vapid as the raptures of a citizen arrived at his first meadow. Of course, he is charmed, but, of course, he cannot tell what he sees, or what pleases him. Yet Margaret often speaks with a certain tenderness and beauty of the impressions made upon her.