Part 27

Six years later, employing the same parable, he writes: "I feel myself bowed down, O Lord, by the weight of a punishment which causes me constant suffering; but as I neither know my crime nor the accusation brought against me, I reconcile myself to my prison. _I plait straw_ in order sometimes to forget it. For this is what human work amounts to. I am prepared for all possible evils, and I thank Thee, O Lord, for every day which has passed without any calamity!"

But two years after this he speaks out plainly: "The world revolts at the injustices entailed by its creation; dread of eternity prevents it from speaking openly; but its heart is full of hatred of the God who created evil and death. When a defier of the gods, like Ajax the son of Oileus, appears, the world approves him and loves him. Such another is Satan, such Orestes, such Don Juan. All who have combated the injustice of heaven have been admired and secretly loved by men."

De Vigny's diary shows that down to the very last days of the hereditary monarchy the connection between the literary, merely theoretical principle of authority and the practical, working principle was perfectly well understood. Germinating Romanticism was not less ardently opposed by the political opposition (who saw in the young school a support of ecclesiasticism) than by the men who from principle adhered to old tradition. De Vigny tells that he asked Benjamin Constant during the winter of 1819 what was the cause of the extreme disfavour shown by the Left to the poetry of the day. The answer was that the party _wished to avoid the appearance of breaking every chain_, and therefore retained the least irksome, the literary.

When the Revolution of July came, and put an end to the reign of the Bourbons, Vigny's attachment to the ideas of the restoration came to an end too. He writes: "I feel happy that I have left the army; after thirteen years of ill-rewarded service I may regard myself as quits with the Bourbons.... I have done for ever with burdensome political superstition."

Lamartine, too, at this time showed signs of an intellectual development of a suspicious nature. He continued to sing his pious hymns, but the orthodox Genevan pastor, Vinet, discovered that this piety was Christianity only in appearance, and that a most unorthodox pantheism lay concealed beneath the Christian phraseology.[6]

And Victor Hugo, whom one would have taken, judging by his début, to be more reliable, soon showed himself, not only by the style of his poems, but by their tone, to be a doubtful acquisition. In 1822, in the ode entitled _Buonaparte_, he had pronounced Napoleon to be a false god, an emissary of hell; and even as late as June 1825, in _Les Deux Îles_ (Corsica and St. Helena), he had caused the nations to shout in chorus to the fallen Emperor: "Honte! Opprobre! Malheur! Anathême! Vengeance!" and the curses of the dead, as the echo of his fatal glory, to roll like thunder from the Volga, the Tiber, and the Seine, from the walls of the Alhambra, from the grave at Vincennes (Enghien's), from Jaffa, from the Kremlin which he had tried to destroy, from all his bloody battle-fields. Now, a year and a half later, Hugo suddenly strikes a different chord. In the first ode _À la Colonne de la Place Vendôme_, written in February 1827, Buonaparte has become Napoleon, and his glory the glory of France. The occasion of the ode was this. At the conclusion of peace in 1814, Austria had demanded that the Frenchmen to whom Napoleon had given titles which conveyed the idea of supremacy over any Austrian town or province should cease to bear these titles. This was all that was required, no objection being raised to titles which merely recalled the French victories in Austria. The French government had persuaded Austria to refrain from making the agreement arrived at public, and the Austrian ambassador contrived to avoid wounding French susceptibility by placing himself on his reception evenings so near the door that it was not necessary to announce the guests. But in the beginning of 1827 this ambassador was recalled, and his successor was ordered by the Austrian government to decide the matter finally. Consequently, on one of his reception evenings, Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio, and Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, were simply announced by their military titles and their family names. They immediately withdrew, and the affair aroused a great sensation and considerable animosity. As the two officers in question were in high favour with the royal family, the royalist party took up their cause and made it the cause of France. Victor Hugo, who was created to give expression to every prevailing sentiment, and who was conscious before any one else of that movement in men's minds which in the course of a few years was to transform Napoleon into a legendary and national hero, made himself for the first time, in his ode _À la Colonne de la Place Vendôme_, the organ of the cult of the great memories of the Empire. The column, cast of the metal of conquered cannon, which roared as it was melted in the furnace, speaks to the poet in the silent watches of the night, in its character of last remnant of the great empire and the great army. He hears a murmur from the bronze battalions on its sides, hears the sound of names: _Tarentum, Reggio, Dalmatia, Treviso_, sees the eagles on the pedestal whetting their beaks, and feels that the immortal shades are awakening. Who dare think of wiping out this history of France written in blood with the points of swords! Who dare dispute the right of the old generals to the inheritance of Napoleon's glory! Who dare strike at the trophies of France! Every spark struck from the column is a flash of lightning. With magnificent eloquence and ardent enthusiasm Napoleon's history is evolved into a heroic poem, and any sagacious reader of that poem might have foreseen that in the course of a year Hugo (in his poem "Bounaberdi," in _Les Orientales_, the motto of which is: "Grand comme le monde") would go over to the veritable cult of Napoleon. And since Bonapartism and Liberalism, in those days shaded off into each other--_vide_ Béranger, Armand Carrel, and Heinrich Heine--it would also have been easy to foresee the possibility of his defining Romanticism a few years later (in the preface to _Hernani_) as "liberalism in literature."

[1] See the notes to Lamartine's _Chant du sacre_.

[2] Alfred de Musset, _Confessions d'un enfant du siècle_.

[3] See Saisset, _La philosophic et la renaissance religieuse. Revue des deux mondes_, 1853, tome i.

[4] _Manuel de piété à l'usage des seminaries_, 7 éd. Paris, 1835.

[5] _Journal d'un poète_, 47.

[6] See Vinet's interesting essays on modern French lyric poetry.

XIV

CONCLUSION

But what did more than anything else to forward the dissolution of the school of authority was the great and crowning piece of folly, as regards literature, committed by the Bourbons in 1824. Chateaubriand was dismissed in the most contemptuous manner from the Villèle ministry, and that at the moment when he had just added to the reputation of the name of Bourbon by the successful Spanish war, which he himself called his political _René_, that is to say, his political masterpiece. Chateaubriand, the man to whom in a manner everything was due, the man who had laid the foundation stone of the whole building that had been erected, was contemptuously set aside.[1] And the ingratitude of his colleagues was as glaring as that of the court, for it was he who had made ministers of Villèle and Corbière.[2]

His popularity amongst the royalists was at this time at its height, and with reason; for the war in Spain, which he had succeeded in carrying through in spite of all manner of opposition in Europe and the disinclination of France itself, was well calculated to do service to the cause of the monarchy by the grace of God, then in considerable disrepute.

Not that Chateaubriand himself was simple enough to have any respect whatever for that Ferdinand of Spain for whom French troops were to shed their blood, in order that he might be restored to a throne which his own people considered him unfit to occupy. He calls him a promise-breaker and a traitor, calls him a tyrant who allowed himself to be influenced by the evil passions of his female relations, one of those cowardly tyrants who have no peace until they have done some high-handed deed, and who sit and tremble when they have done it.

Chateaubriand's reason for making war was this. He knew that France was undermined by Bonapartist and Republican plots, which were widely spread even in the army; he knew that discontent with the restored monarchical government was universal; therefore, trusting to the friendship of the Emperor Alexander, he determined, in spite of Canning's protests and Metternich's dissuasions, to stake everything on one card. Victory, which he considered probable, meant the suppression of the plots, the union under the white flag of all the different parties, and the firm establishment of the Bourbons on the family thrones of Spain and France. In the case of victory, which the inward disunion of Spain might even make easy (as it actually did), the French nation would behold the spectacle of the tricoloured flag lowered to the white, and would, for the first time since Napoleon's palmy days, hear tidings of victories won by the arms of France, and that in a country which the great Emperor himself had not been able thoroughly to subdue. All this meant "new laurels for the race of St. Louis," as Chateaubriand says, and--new laurels for its minister of foreign affairs, a fact which he did not forget to take into account.[3]

As we all know, the French army under the command of the Duke of Angoulème, the heir-apparent, succeeded, almost without bloodshed, in liberating Ferdinand at Cadiz, and conducting him back to Madrid. Ferdinand immediately wrote a letter of thanks to Louis XVIII. The answer to this was written for Louis by Chateaubriand; it is amusing to compare it with Paul Louis Courier's imaginary letter from Louis to Ferdinand. Chateaubriand exhorts the Spanish monarch to refrain from high-handedness, "which, instead of strengthening the power of the king, only weakens it"--a piece of good advice to which Ferdinand paid uncommonly little attention.

In its giddy elation over this Spanish triumph the court entirely neglected the man to whom the success was originally due. Chateaubriand was no favourite. The Duchess of Angoulème did not address a word to him when he came, on receiving the news of Ferdinand's liberation, to offer his congratulations on her husband's success. Villèle and Corbière were envious of him, and feared that he might wish to take their places; such an idea had never occurred to him, but they were too deeply in his debt not to bear him a grudge.

The court and the cabinet plotted to bring about his downfall. On the 5th of June 1824 Corbière interrupted him in the middle of a speech in the Chamber, to prevent his enjoying a triumph as an orator immediately before his disgrace. On the following morning, when Chateaubriand, still suspecting no evil, presented himself at the Tuileries to pay his respects to the King's brother, he learned his fate from the manner in which an aide-de-camp said to him: "Monsieur le Comte, I did not expect to see you here. Have you not received anything?" Shortly afterwards his secretary brought him his formal dismissal by the King in the shape of a curt "ordonnance" of a dozen lines. It was little wonder that he felt himself irreparably insulted by the tone of the letter and the manner of his dismissal.[4] In mentioning Villèle's attempt to excuse himself by pleading an accidental delay in the delivery of the letter, but for which the humiliating incident at the Tuileries would not have occurred, Chateaubriand justifiably remarks "that it is hardly the thing to address to a man of position a letter which one would be ashamed to write to a footman who was to be turned out of the house."

Christian humility was not the leading feature in Chateaubriand's character; he did not turn the right cheek when he was struck on the left. He writes very characteristically: "And yet my long and faithful attachment did perhaps deserve some little consideration. It was impossible for me entirely to ignore what I perhaps after all really was worth, or entirely to forget that I was _the restorer of religion_, the author of _The Spirit of Christianity_."

The restorer of religion did not feel obliged to act in the spirit of Christianity. He naïvely says: "It would have been better if I had displayed a humbler, more cast-down, more Christian spirit. Unfortunately I am not faultless, have not attained to the perfection recommended in the Gospel. If my enemy gave me a box on the ear I should not turn round and present the other cheek. If he were a subject I should have his life, or he should take mine; if he were the King ..."

The sentence does not end, because Chateaubriand's behaviour made any end superfluous. He went over openly to the opposition, and it is to be noted that it was to the thorough-going opposition, which had always seemed to him to be the only sensible thing under a representative government, anything less being impotent. The day after his fall he met with a warm reception from the whole party then in antagonism to the government. An article by Bertin in the _Journal des Débats_ announced that he had become the leader of the party, and he was soon also practically the editor of that newspaper.

The whole Seraphic school, of which he was the founder, soon followed him. Lafayette sent him a laurel leaf. Constant flattered him. He began to fraternise with Béranger, who afterwards addressed a poem to him. Two of its verses run:

Son éloquence à ces rois fit l'aumône: Prodigue fée, en ses enchantements Plus elle voit de rouille à leur vieux trône, Plus elle y sème et fleurs et diamants.

Mais de nos droits il gardait la mémoire. Les insensés dirent: Le ciel est beau. Chassons cet homme, et soufflons sur sa gloire, Comme au grand jour on éteint un flambeau.

Victor Hugo addressed a eulogistic and consolatory ode to him (livre iii. ode 2) containing such sentiments as: Was a court the place for you? and: What can be more beautiful than a laurel scathed by lightning?

Chateaubriand's defection was a fatal blow to the monarchy by the grace of God. As long as the illusions of the restoration lasted, the poets of France were _Immanuelistic_ and saw a guardian angel beside every cradle and every bier. With Chateaubriand's illusions vanished the illusions of all the rest, and the Immanuelistic school was succeeded by one to which Southey gave the name of _Satanic_, a name which it accepted--a school with a keen eye for all that is evil and terrible, a gloomy view of life, and a tendency to rebellion.

But while the minds of Frenchmen were still occupied with this unexpected and momentous event, there occurred a more momentous event, which stirred the whole world, namely, Byron's death in Greece.

The news of Byron's death raised the enthusiasm for the first war of liberation that had been fought since the Revolution to fever heat. A new ideal was conceived by the human mind. With Napoleon the glory of energy had passed away, and the heroes of action had for a time disappeared from the earth. Human enthusiasm was, as has been said, in the plight of a pedestal from which the statue has been removed. Byron took possession of the vacant place with his fantastically magnificent heroes. Napoleon had supplanted Werther, René, and Faust; Byron's Promethean and despairing heroes supplanted Napoleon. Byron was in marvellous accord with the spirit and the cravings of the age. Orthodox dogmas had in the early years of the century overcome revolutionary and free-thinking principles; now orthodoxy was in its turn undermined and obsolete. There was at this moment no future for either thorough-going unbelief or thorough-going piety. There remained doubt, as doubt--_poetic_ Radicalism, the thousand painful and agitating questions concerning the goal and the worth of human life. These were the questions which Byron asked.

But he did not ask indifferently. It was the spirit of rebellion which asked with his voice, and which through his voice made of the young generation in all lands one cosmopolitan society. They united their voices with his in the cry:

.... Revolution Alone can save the world from hell's pollution.

His death did far more to advance the cause of liberty in general than his life. Under the restored monarchy by the grace of God society had been reduced to an extreme of believing subjection to authority, of slavish subjection to theology, of dutiful subjection to power--to an extreme of supineness and hypocrisy. That monarchy was rotten to the core, but supported outwardly by superstition and bayonets. In England Bentham, the Radical philosopher, ashamed to see the reaction successful even in that most advanced of countries, had tried to undermine it by appealing to men's _interests_. Byron let loose all the _passions_. His attack was not directed at any one point; he aimed at revolutionising men's minds, at awaking them to the sense of tyranny.

The politicians of the Holy Alliance period believed that they had bound the spirit of the Revolution in everlasting chains, that they had broken, once and for all, the link which united the nineteenth century to the eighteenth. "Then this one man tied the knot again, which a million of soldiers had hewn through. American republicanism, German free-thought, French revolutionism, Anglo-Saxon radicalism--everything seemed combined in this one spirit. After the Revolution had been suppressed, the press gagged, and science induced to submit, the son of imagination, the outlawed poet, stepped into the breach," and called all vigorous intellects to arms again against the common enemy.[5] The restored monarchy does not really survive him. The principle of authority has never had a more inveterate opponent.

In literature the French reaction begins in the name of _feeling_ with Madame de Staël and the whole group of writers connected with her; in society it begins in the name of _order_ with Robespierre and those revolutionists who were his associates. Madame de Staël and Robespierre have this in common, that they are both pupils of Rousseau. After the reaction against Voltaire comes the reaction against Rousseau. On the festival of the Supreme Being follows the great Te Deum in Notre-Dame; on Madame de Staël follows Bonald. The principle of feeling is ousted, or employed, as in the writings of Chateaubriand, to support authority; the principle of order is merged in the principle of authority, which soon controls every domain of life and literature. This principle is, as it were, personified in the first group of reactionaries, led by Joseph de Maistre and Bonald. It has its epic in _Les Martyrs_, and the idea of order reigns in its poets' descriptions of heaven, of hell, and sometimes even of terrestrial scenery. It has its political monument in the Holy Alliance. The supernatural everywhere supplants the natural. We have not only seraphic epic, but also seraphic lyric poetry, seraphic love, pious pilgrimages, and seraphic predictions and visions.

In no country had the principle of authority in the domain of literary style received such homage and honour as in France. The new school itself begins by acknowledging it. But it unfortunately soon becomes evident that the principle of the newly introduced matter, namely, Christian tradition, is utterly at variance with the traditional principles of literature--and authority begins to totter. Much the same thing happens in another domain. The lady in whose brain the idea of the Holy Alliance originates stands in high favour with the powers as long as her principles seem entirely to coincide with theirs; the moment they discover that it is possible for Christian tradition to unsettle men's minds with regard to authority, they feel obliged to break the tool they have been using; and thenceforward the idea of the brotherhood of humanity is regarded as the source of rebellious feelings and doctrines which undermine authority. Lamennais is the author by whom the principle of authority is most consistently set forth and determinedly upheld during this period; but it soon becomes apparent that beneath his doctrine of the sovereignty of universal reason lies concealed the revolutionary doctrine of the sovereignty of the people; the principle, as it were, puts an end to itself. At this same time the enemies of the liberty of the press are compelled to make use of this liberty for their own purposes, and the enemies of parliamentary government defend parliamentary government in order to bring about the fall of a ministry which keeps them out of power. Soon all the personages whom we have watched appearing on the scene, from Chateaubriand to Madame de Krüdener, from Victor Hugo to Lamennais, are at war with the potentates whose cause they began by championing with such ardour, and at war with that principle of authority which had ruled themselves and the age.

And the principle falls, never to rise again.

[1] For particulars of this dismissal see Chateaubriand, _Congrès de Vérone_, ii, 502, &c; and Guizot, _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de mon temps_.

[2] _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, vii. 269, &c.

[3] Chateaubriand, _Congrès de Vérone_, i. 20, 41; ii. 528.

[4] _Congrès de Vérone_, ii. 508-528.