Chapter 13

The grandeur, the astonishing melancholy of this picture can not be exprest in human language: the most beautiful nights in Europe can give no idea of it. In the midst of our cultivated fields the imagination vainly seeks to expand itself; everywhere it meets with the dwellings of man; but in these desert countries the soul delights in penetrating and losing itself in these eternal forests; it loves to wander by the light of the moon on the borders of immense lakes, to hover over the roaring gulf of terrible cataracts, to fall with the masses of water, and, so to speak, mix and blend itself with a sublime and savage nature. These enjoyments are too keen; such is our weakness that exquisite pleasures become griefs, as if nature feared that we should forget that we are men. Absorbed in my existence, or rather drawn quite out of myself, having neither feeling nor distinct thought, but an indescribable I know not what, which was like that happiness which they say we shall enjoy in the other life, I was all at once recalled to this. I felt unwell, and perceived that I must not linger. I returned to our encampment, where, lying down by the savages, I soon fell into a deep sleep.

FRANÇOIS GUIZOT

Born in France in 1787, died in 1874; became a professor of literature in 1812, and later of modern history at the Sorbonne; published his "History of Civilization" in 1828-1830; elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1830; Minister of the Interior, 1830; Ambassador to England, in 1840; returning, entered the Cabinet where he remained until 1848, being at one time Prime Minister; after 1848 went into retirement and published books frequently until his death.

SHAKESPEARE AS AN EXAMPLE OF CIVILIZATION[49]

Voltaire was the first person in France who spoke of Shakespeare's genius;[50] and altho he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of opinion that Voltaire had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words "genius" and "glory" to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse.

[Footnote 49: From "Shakespeare and His Times."]

[Footnote 50: Voltaire's references to Shakespeare were made in his "Letters on England." From them dates the beginning of French interest in the English poet.]

At the present day all controversy regarding Shakespeare's genius and glory has come to an end. No one ventures any longer to dispute them; but a greater question has arisen--namely, whether Shakespeare's dramatic system is not far superior to that of Voltaire. This question I do not presume to decide. I merely say that it is now open for discussion. We have been led to it by the onward progress of ideas. I shall endeavor to point out the causes which have brought it about; but at present I insist merely upon the fact itself, and deduce from it one simple consequence, that literary criticism has changed its ground, and can no longer remain restricted to the limits within which it was formerly confined.

Literature does not escape from the revolutions of the human mind; it is compelled to follow it in its course, to transport itself beneath the horizon under which it is conveyed, to gain elevation and extension with the ideas which occupy its notice, and to consider the questions which it discusses under the new aspects and novel circumstances in which they are placed by the new state of thought and of society....

When we embrace human destiny in all its aspects, and human nature in all the conditions of man upon earth, we enter into possession of an exhaustless treasure. It is the peculiar advantage of such a system that it escapes, by its extent, from the dominion of any particular genius. We may discover its principles in Shakespeare's works; but he was not fully acquainted with them, nor did he always respect them. He should serve as an example, not as a model. Some men, even of superior talent, have attempted to write plays according to Shakespeare's taste, without perceiving that they were deficient in one important qualification for the task; and that was to write as he did, to write them for our age just as Shakespeare's plays were written for the age in which he lived. This is an enterprise the difficulties of which have, hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one.

We have seen how much art and effort were employed by Shakespeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unveil themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste and of more idle and inattentive imagination that the poet would have to do who should venture to follow in Shakespeare's footsteps. He would be called upon to give movement to personages embarrassed in much more complicated interests, preoccupied with much more various feelings, and subject to less simple habits of mind and to less decided tendencies. Neither science, nor reflection, nor the scruples of conscience, nor the uncertainties of thought frequently encumber Shakespeare's heroes; doubt is of little use among them, and the violence of their passions speedily transfers their belief to the side of the desires, or sets their actions above their belief. Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day according to the romantic system would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas now crowd and intersect each other in the mind of man, duties multiply in his conscience and obstacles and bonds around his life. Instead of those electric brains, prompt to communicate the spark which they have received; instead of those ardent and simple-minded men, whose projects like Macbeth's "will to hand"--the world now presents to the poet minds like Hamlet's, deep in the observation of those inward conflicts which our classical system has derived from a state of society more advanced than that of the time in which Shakespeare lived. So many feelings, interests, and ideas, the necessary consequences of modern civilization, might become even in their simplest form of expression a troublesome burden, which it would be difficult to carry through the rapid evolutions and bold advances of the romantic system.

We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodramas calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as by dragging along without originality in the classical system you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory: he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national, if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry: both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds.

Doubtless stopt in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where under the protection of Shakespeare it would have liberty to attempt anything, scarcely ventures at the present day even to try timidly to follow him. Meanwhile England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time: that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible.

This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakespeare; it is our own; but Shakespeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us at the present day the spectacle of human things. Witnesses during thirty years of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness and excites our entire sympathy.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

Born in 1790, died in 1869; famous chiefly as a poet, being one of the greatest in modern France, but successful as an orator and prominent in political life during the troubled period of 1848, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs; author of several historical works, among them the "History of the Girondists."

OF MIRABEAU'S ORIGIN AND PLACE IN HISTORY[51]

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugees established in Provence, but of Italian origin. The progenitors were Tuscan. The family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his country in such bitter strains for her exiles and prosecutions. The blood of Machiavelli and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices, passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar correspondence the color and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.

[Footnote 51: From Book I of the "History of the Girondists"--the translation of R. T. Ryde in Bonn's Library, as revised for this collection.]

The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of the quarrels of Marius and Sulla, of Cæsar and Pompey. We perceive the great men descending to trifling matters. Mirabeau inspired this domestic majesty and virility in his very cradle. I dwell on these details, which may seem foreign to this history, but they explain it. The source of genius is often in ancestry, and the blood of descent is sometimes the prophecy of destiny.

Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father, who was styled the friend of man, but whose restless spirit and selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of all his family. The only virtue he was taught was honor, for by that name in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanor which was too frequently only the show of probity and the elegance of vice. Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of military habits except a love of licentiousness and play. The hand of his father was constantly extended not to aid him in rising, but to depress him still lower under the consequences of his errors. His youth was passed in the prisons of the state, where his passions, becoming envenomed by solitude, and his intellect rendered more acute by contact with the irons of his dungeon, his mind lost that modesty which rarely survives the infamy of precocious punishments.

Released from jail, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle de Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed, like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in the small theater of Aix. Not only cunning, seduction, and courage, but every resource of his nature was used to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly married before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his "Lettres à Sophie" has rendered immortal, opened its gates and freed him. He carried off Madame de Monier from her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some months, took refuge in Holland; they were seized there, separated and shut up, the one in a convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes.

Love, which, like fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in some crevice of man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze all the passions of Mirabeau. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he appeased; in liberty it was love which he sought and which delivered him; in study it was love which still illustrated his path. Entering his cell an obscure man, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but perverted--ripe for anything, even ready to sell himself, in order to buy fortune and celebrity. The drama of life had been conceived in his head; he wanted only the stage, and that was being prepared for him by time. During the few short years which elapsed between his leaving the keep of Vincennes and the tribune of the National Assembly, he employed himself with polemic labors which would have weighed down another man, but which only kept Mirabeau in health. Such topics as the bank of Saint Charles, the institutions of Holland, the books on Prussia, with Beaumarchais (his style and character), with lengthened pleadings on questions of warfare, the balance of European power, finance, leading to biting invectives and wars of words with the ministers of the hour, made scenes that resembled those in the Roman forum of the days of Clodius and Cicero. We discern the men of antiquity even in his most modern controversies. We may hear the first roarings or popular tumults which were so soon to burst forth, and which his voice was destined to control.

At the first election of Aix, when rejected with contempt by the noblesse, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then delivered, the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed commanded the attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs of the Revolution. Comparing himself, in his lofty language, to the men of antiquity, he placed himself already in the public estimation in the elevated position he aspired to reach. Men became accustomed to identify him with the names he cited; he made a loud noise in order to prepare minds for great commotions; he announced himself proudly to the nation, in that sublime apostrophe in his address to the Marseillais: "When the last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust toward heaven, and from this dust sprang Marius!--Marius, who was less great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having prostrated in Rome the aristocracy of the nobility."

From the moment of his entry into the National Assembly Mirabeau filled it: he became the whole people. His gestures were commands; his movements _coups d'etat_. He placed himself on a level with the throne, and the nobility itself felt itself subdued by a power emanating from its own body. The clergy, and the people, with their desires to reconcile democracy with the church, lent him their influence, in order to destroy the double aristocracy of the nobility and bishops.

All that had been built by antiquity and cemented by ages fell in a few months. Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of ruin. His character of tribune then ceased, that of the statesman began, and in this part he was even greater than in the other. There, when all else crept and crawled, he acted with firmness, advancing boldly. The Revolution in his brain was no longer a momentary idea--it became a settled plan. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the prudence of policy, flowed easily from his lips. His eloquence, imperative as the law, was now a talent for giving force to reason. His language lighted and inspired everything; and tho almost alone at this moment, he had the courage to remain alone. He braved envy, hatred, murmurs, supported as he was by a strong feeling of his superiority. He dismissed with disdain the passions which had hitherto beset him. He would no longer serve them when his cause no longer needed them. He spoke to men now only in the name of his genius, a title which was enough to cause obedience to him....

The characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was less audacity than justness. Beneath the grandeur of his expression was always to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot of the tribune, he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune, he was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish expenditures, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his powers, the incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of being the great man of an age, Mirabeau was wanting only in honesty. The people were not his devotees, but his instruments. His faith was in posterity. His conscience existed only in his thought. The fanaticism of his ideas was quite human. The chilling materialism of his age had crusht in his heart all expansive force, and craving for imperishable things. His dying words were: "Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon eternal sleep." He was especially of his time, and his course bears no impress of infinity. Neither his character, his acts, nor his thoughts have the brand of immortality. If he had believed, in God, he might have died a martyr.

LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS

Born in 1797, died in 1877; settled in Paris in 1821; published his "History of the French Revolution" in 1823-27; established with Mignet and others the _National_ in 1830, in which he contributed largely to the overthrow of the Bourbons; supported Louis Philippe; became a member of various cabinets, 1832-36; Premier in 1836 and 1840; published his "Consulate and Empire" in 1845-62; arrested by Louis Napoleon in 1851; led the opposition to the Empire in 1863; protested against the war of 1870; conducted the negotiations with Germany for an armistice; chosen chief of the executive power in 1871; negotiated the peace with Germany; supprest the Commune; elected President in 1871, resigning in 1873.

THE BURNING OF MOSCOW[52]

At last, having reached the summit of a hill, the army suddenly discovered below them, and at no great distance, an immense city shining with a thousand colors, surmounted by a host of gilded domes, resplendent with light; a singular mixture of woods, lakes, cottages, palaces, churches, bell-towers, a town both Gothic and Byzantine, realizing all that the Eastern stories relate of the marvels of Asia. While the monasteries, flanked with towers, formed the girdle of this great city, in the center, raised on an eminence, was a strong citadel, a kind of capitol, whence were seen at the same time the temples of the Deity and the palaces of the emperors, where above embattled walls rose majestic domes, bearing the emblem that represents the whole history of Russia and her ambition, the cross over the reversed crescent. This citadel was the Kremlin, the ancient abode of the Czars.

[Footnote 52: From Book XLIV of the "History of the Consulate and Empire." Napoleon's army entered Moscow on September 15, 1812, or seven days after the battle of Borodino, "the bloodiest battle of the century," the losses on each side having been about 40,000. Napoleon had crossed the river Niemen in June of this year with an invading army of 400,000 men. When he crossed it again in December, after the burning of Moscow, the French numbered only 20,000, The "Consulate and Empire" has been translated by D. F. Campbell, F. N. Redhead and N. Stapleton.]

The imagination, and the idea of glory, being both excited by this magical spectacle, the soldiers raised one shout of "Moscow! Moscow!" Those who had remained at the foot of the hill hastened to reach the top; for a moment all ranks mingled, and everybody wished to contemplate the great capital, toward which we had made such an adventurous march. One could not have enough of this dazzling spectacle, calculated to awaken so many different feelings. Napoleon arrived in his turn, and, struck with what he saw, he--who, like the oldest soldiers in the army, had successively visited Cairo, Memphis, the Jordan, Milan, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid--could not help experiencing deep emotion.

Arrived at this summit of his glory, from which he was to descend with such a rapid step toward the abyss, he experienced a sort of intoxication, forgot all the reproaches that his good sense, the only conscience of conquerors, had addrest to him for two months, and for a moment believed still that his enterprise was a great and marvelous one--that to have dared to march from Paris to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Moscow, was a great and happy rashness, justified by the event. Certain of his glory, he still believed in his good fortune, and his lieutenants, as amazed as he, remembering no more their frequent discontents during this campaign, gave vent to those victorious demonstrations in which they had not indulged at the termination of the bloody day of Borodino. This moment of satisfaction, lively and short, was one of the most deeply felt in his life. Alas! it was to be the last!