Poésies choisies de André Chénier
Chapter 16
L. 66. _n'aimer plus._ With an infinitive, the expletives _pas_, _point_, and _plus_ come immediately after _ne: ne plus_ aimer. Yet the construction we find here is also to be met with, though not so frequent: 'ils s'enveloppaient là-dedans, bien décidés à _ne_ penser _plus_.'--MICHELET. Ayer, p. 563; Haase, § 156, Rem, ii.
L. 71, _en riant_, deriding me.
IX. TEL J'ÉTAIS AUTREFOIS...
L. 1. _et tel_... See note to p. 40, l. 15.
L. 2. _Quand ma main_... A quaint periphrasis for 'When I am out of cash.'
L. 4. _m'a fermé le seuil._ Chénier had first written, 'Je vois qu'on m'a fermé la _porte_ inexorable.' On reconsidering it, he must have thought _fermer le seuil_ a more novel alliance of words, giving more force to the whole group _fermer le seuil inexorable_. Cf. _élever sa langue_ for _élever la voix_, p. 14, l. 203.
L. 7. _O soins_... Persius, _Sat._ i. 'O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane.'
Ll. 11-14. Persius, _Sat._ iii. 109-111; Horace, _Od._ i. 9. 21.
L. 15. _les grands discours._ Big words.
L. 16. _Et le sage Lycée, et l'auguste Portique_: the Lyceum, i.e. the Aristotelian philosophy; the Porticus, i.e. the Stoic school.
L. 17. _Et reviennent_... See note to p. 46, l. 17.
L. 17. _et soupirs et billets_... This departure from current usage in omitting the definite article, which gives more rapidity to an enumeration, cannot be imitated in English. It is a feature of the older syntax which has been most fortunately preserved. The use of the definite article in Old and Middle French was much the same as in modern English. It was often omitted (as also the indefinite article) before _homme_, _chose_, _femme_, before nouns taken in a general sense and abstract nouns. The English student knows that Old English said _se mann_ for man (in general), _tha godan menn_ for _good men_ (in general), _seo gesceadwisnes_ for _wisdom_ (even when personified). Is it not likely that the present usage in English, established in the Middle English period, was much influenced by contemporary French usage?
X. FUMANT DANS LE CRISTAL...
'The idea of this long fragment,' Chénier says, 'has been supplied me by a fine piece of Propertius, book iv, elegy 3;' and he proceeds to state that he has not servilely copied it, but, 'according to his wont,' mixed in it passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and everything that came to his hand, and frequently, too, 'following only himself.' He then criticizes his own achievement, and we shall, in our notes, avail ourselves of some of his remarks.
The first sketch of this piece was written on April 23, 1782, as appears from a mention in the MS.
L. 3. _Reine de mes banquets_... Chénier had first ended this line thus, 'que ma déesse y vienne.' He observes, 'I know not whether the arrangement of this line will be approved. To me it appears precise, natural, and full of freedom.'
L. 4. _Que des fleurs de sa tête elle pare la mienne._ 'The pleasant image offered by this line, Chénier observes, is drawn from a distich of Propertius in an... elegy which is the third of the first book.' Here it is: 'Et modo solvebam nostra de fronte corollas, Ponebamque tuis, Cynthia, temporibus.'
L. 9. _l'heure fuit_, 'hora fugit.' No thought has been more hackneyed. Chénier himself observes: 'The meaning of this piece is that of a thousand passages in Ovid and Horace.'
L. 11. _Un jour, tel est_... This line and the following, Chénier observes, are perhaps not, altogether, equal to the two lines of Propertius: 'Atque ubi iam _Venerem gravis interceperit aetas_, Sparserit et nigras _alba senecta comas_.'
Ll. 15, 16. Chénier says on these two lines: '_Voluptueux_ is not good. There was needed an epithet to depict that fine palpitation which causes a youthful breast to heave. _Des lèvres demi-closes_ is scarcely better. Unfortunately it is almost the only rhyme. The second line I think happy on account of the breath ascribed to the palpitations of the breast. The second hemistich of the first line makes this pass, for in poetry one word will pass under favour of another.'
L. 17. _Phryné._ A Greek courtesan who sat to Praxiteles for his statues of Venus.
Ll. 31, 32. 'I have,' Chénier observes, 'imitated as best I could these divine lines of Ovid: "... nee brachia longo... margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite"' (_Met._ lib. i).
L. 31. _sur soi._ See note to p. 19, l. 38.
Ll. 37-42. Virgil, _Georg._ i. 204-207, 252, Chénier, mentioning these sources, exclaims, 'What verses! and how does one dare write any after these! Mine, so petty and so inferior, have yet perhaps the advantage of mentioning Euripus and Malea, places celebrated for shipwrecks.'
L. 40. _Euripe... Malée_. Euripus separates Euboea from the mainland; Malea is a promontory in Laconia.
L. 46. _jeune homme._ It is the Latin _puer_ (cf. obs. Eng. _boy_), a servant.
XI. SOUFFRE UN MOMENT ENCOR...
L. 2. _L'axe_, the wheel. Thus Homer, _Il_. xvi. 378, uses [Greek: axôn] for [Greek: trochos], Chénier was particularly fond of this word, and a note of his lets us into the secret of his affection for it. Having written, in a sketch of another piece, 'Si d'un _axe_ brûlant le soleil nous éclaire,' he observes, 'I like _axe_ better than _char_. It is less trivial. The Latins say it everywhere: "Volat vi fervidus _axis_," Virg. (_Georg._ iii. 107); "Spoliis onerato Caesaris _axe_" Propert. (ii. 3. 13).' Anacreon, _Od._ iv, compares human life to a wheel. Cf. BUCOLICS, XIV, p. 35, l. 5.
L. 4. Horace, _Od._ ii. 9: a reminiscence already met with, see p. 14, l. 209.
Ll. 17, 18. _Moi qui...mon réveil._ Cf. this other instance occurring in Chénier, 'Moi, l'espérance amie est bien loin de mon coeur.' As we say, 'mon coeur _à moi_,' for the sake of emphasis, we can also, somewhat more disconnectedly; say '_moi_, mon coeur est sans espoir,' '_elle_, son coeur est libre.' The thought expressed here is a reminiscence of La Fontaine, _Fabl._ VII. xii.
L. 20. _Le nocher... Nocher_ (from Lat. _nauclerus_, Greek [Greek: nauklêros]), formerly a master's mate or a skipper, is, with _nautonier_, a poetic word for _pilote_.
L. 21. _d'esclaves abondant._ _Abondant en esclaves_ would be more accordant with modern usage. La Bruyère writes, 'Si les hommes abondent _de_ biens' (in LITTRÉ), and Haase, § 114, illustrates the construction with a quotation from a letter of La Fontaine.
L. 23. _du Potose._ Cerro de Potosi, a mountain of Bolivia, rich in metallic ores.
L. 28. _libre de chaîne._ _Chaîne_ ought to have taken an _s_. But then it would not have rhymed for the eye.
L. 34, _les sables brûlants._ See note to p. 61 l. 19.
L. 37. _nonchalant du terme._ This use of _nonchalant de_ shows Chénier to have been familiar with Montaigne, in whose writings it occurs frequently, e.g. 'Je veux... que la mort me trouve plantant mes choulx, mais _nonchalant d'elle_,' I. xix. _Nonchalant = non + chalant_, pres. part. of _chaloir_ (Lat. _calere_, to be hot, hence, desire ardently), an obsolescent verb now only used impersonally in the third person singular of the present indicative: 'Il ne me chaut de cela.'
XII. NON, JE NE L'AIME PLUS...
Ll. 5-8. Tibullus, II. iv. 13 ff.
L. 9. _Voilà donc comme on aime!_ This use of the indefinite _on_, at the same time familiar and poetical, occurs in Corneille, _Pol._ II. i: 'Est-ce là comme _on_ aime?' And in Molière, _Tart._ II. iv: 'C'est donc ainsi qu'_on_ aime?' The _nuance_ cannot pass into English.
L. 13. Tibullus, I. v. 21.
Ll. 14, 15. _Ignorés et contents... notre asile...._ This abridged construction, with the past participle or the adjective before which _étant_ is understood, is neat when not equivocal, that is, when the past participle or the adjective are clearly connected with a noun or pronoun in the principal clause (_notre_, in the present case). Ayer, § 278, 3.
L. 30. _Le vent...._ Tibul. I. v. 36. A frequent image in Latin writers. In French many are the variations on this original theme: 'Autant en emporte le vent' (= so much breath is wasted). 'Ses paroles miellées S'en étant aux vents envolées,' writes La Fontaine, _Fab._ X. xi, and Bertin, _Am._ II. i, imitating the passage of Tibullus, has 'Les vents, hélas! en tourbillons fougueux Sur l'océan ont emporté mes voeux' (a sentence, by the bye, in which it is difficult to see the logic of 'en tourbillons fougueux' and 'sur l'océan').
Ll. 33-54. Tibullus, i. 9. 17.
L. 33. _Garde d'être._ For _garde-toi d'être_. In the older language the pronoun object of reflexive verbs was frequently omitted. A trace of this ellipsis is still extant with _faire_ followed by a reflexive verb in the _infinitive_ (_faire taire_ = _faire se taire_). Haase, § 61. We still say _dépêchons_, _arrêtez_, for _dépêchons-nous_, _arrêtez-vous_.
L. 38. _J'allais couvrant._ See note to p. 27, l. 29.
L. 42. _Qui font jeu de..._, a simplification of the phrase 'se faire un jeu de.'
L. 48. _avec le lin._ _Mouchoir_ would have appeared too prosaic in those days.
Ll. 52. _a monté ma lyre avec ma voix._ Another instance of 'one word passing under favour of another,' for a voice can hardly be said to be _strung_. See note to p. 64, X, ll. 15, 16.
Ll. 53, 54. Vulcan, the god of fire, for 'fire'. _L'onde où tout s'oublie_ is misleading as suggesting Lethe. _Consumer_, though representing chiefly the action of fire, originally means 'to use up destructively,' and so can apply to the action of water. (Cf. this English instance: 'The horses were partly (the ships being broken) _consumed_ in the sea.'--Usher, _Aun._ vi. 424, in _N.E.D._) The verb is moreover in the singular according to Chénier's practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74).
XIII. O NÉCESSITÉ DURE!...
L. 3. _tissus._ See note to p. 15, l. 260.
L. 7. Voltaire, _Mérope_, II. ii: 'Il souffre le mépris qui suit la pauvreté.'
Ll. 14, 15. _Mes parents,... Mes écrits imparfaits._ Elliptically expressed, the thought understood being obviously: 'such are the objections raised by my heart.' _Imparfaits_, of course, means unfinished.'
Ll. 21. _aveugle d'espérance_, blinded by hope.
XIV. AUX DEUX FRÈRES TRUDAINE.
Ll. 7, 8. _Autant que l'univers... autant il a...._ _Autant que... autant..._ was displaced by _autant... autant..._ only lately. See Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.
L. 9. _sais-je voir._ _Sais-je_ is here more expressive than _puis-je_ would be.
Ll. 15, 16. _Qu'une bouche... peut cacher un serpent à l'ombre d'un sourire._ An incoherent metaphor.
L. 26. _vague._ _Vague_, in the sense of Lat. _vagus_, 'wandering,' seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: '[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au _vague_ peuple hébreu.'--RONSARD.
Ll. 37. _ce lac enchanté._ The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).
L. 38. _trois pâtres_--Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.
L. 39. _leurs neveux._ Their descendants a sense which the English 'nephew' retained till the end of the seventeenth century.
L. 43. _Hasly._ A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.
L. 49. _ce trésor indulgent_, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.
L. 52. _presser l'herbe._ One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English '_press_ a couch, a bed,' is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.
L. 53. Virgil, _Ecl._ i. 83.
L. 54. _Ma conque._ A wrong extension of the sense of 'conch,' the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of 'horn.'
L. 55. _cet air_, the _Ranz-des-Vaches_.
L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, _Epod._ ii. 39 ff.
L. 73. _aux lieux amers._ England; where Chénier made a stay as Secretary to the French Embassy. For _aux = en les_ see note to p. 16, l. 308.
L. 79. _Arve._ The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.
L. 80. _la cime._ Engelberg; in Unterwalden.
L. 85. _monts chevelus._ Dubellay has 'forêts chevelues' and J.-B. Rousseau 'monts chevelus,' Cf. Virgil, _Ecl._ v. 63.
Ll. 86. _Qui contenez._ In the sense which E. _contain_ formerly had, of 'to confine.'
L. 93. _grotte...._ The _Trou de Saint Béat_ or _Saint Bat_ by the Lake of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said to have ended his days in abstinence.
XV. O DÉLICES D'AMOUR!...
In the editions by G. de Chénier and Moland this piece appears among the _Élégies italiennes_, under the title _Éloge de la vieillesse_. A. Chénier had marked it [Greek: Eleg. ital]. His design is here, as we are told in one of his notes, to 'contredire pied à pied l'élégie contre la vieillesse.' The poem has been left unfinished.
L. 5. _Rome d'amours...._ If we are to take this as a genuine confession, A. Chénier would have been as sensible to the charms of the Roman beauties as he is known to have been to those of the Parisian belles.
XVI. SOUVENT LE MALHEUREUX SOURIT....
L. 3. _L'Allobroge_, the country of the Allobroges, now Savoy.
XVII. JE T'INDIQUE LE FRUIT....
This fragment Becq de Fouquières thought was meant as part of the _Art d'aimer_, but G. de Chénier says that it is, in the MS., marked with the sign _El._ (elegy).
L. 6. _qui ne font qu'un._ These words are struck out in the MS. No doubt Chénier thought the phrase too hackneyed.
L. 14. _infidèles._ Not to be trusted, treacherous, perfidious, as in this line: 'Je n'ai que trop connu leurs larmes _infidèles_,' Voltaire, _Orph._ III. i.
XVIII. TOUT HOMME A SES DOULEURS....
L. 3. _ennui._ See note to p. 52, l. 52.
L. 10 ff. Cf. La Fontaine, _Fables_, VI. xi.
XIX. AINSI, LORSQUE SOUVENT....
L. 1. _Ainsi...._ This beginning shows that the fragment was meant as a comparison to be used in some future piece.
Ll. 2. _Douvre._ Dover is, in French, Douvres, with an s, which has been left out for the requirements of the metre.
L. 3. _noir_, dark.
L. 12. This periphrastic line is a blemish amidst the precision of the rest. _Tapis_ did very well as a Latinism in the BUCOLICS. It is quite out of place here.
L. 17. _sa main faible et lente...._ I should take _lente_ here as meaning 'limp' in the same Latin sense in which we found it before. See note to p. 45, XXXI, l. 8.
XX. SANS PARENTS, SANS AMIS....
L. 4. _sur ma bouche...._ The current phrase is _à la bouche_, sometimes _dans la bouche_. _Sur_ is used in _sur les lèvres_, _sur la langue_, and in _avoir le sourire sur la bouche_.
L. 5. _noir_, dark, melancholy.
XXII. SUR LA MORT D'UN ENFANT.
L. 1. _L'innocente victime._ A child of Mme Laurent Lecoulteux, who, living at Lucienne, was often visited by André Chénier during his stay at Versailles in 1793, and sung by him under the name of Fanny; only a fragment of the elegy is here given.
L. 6. _Adieu, dans la maison d'où l'on ne revient pas._ There is here a bold ellipsis: 'Adieu, _toi qui es_ dans la maison....' _Maison_ is Biblical; John xiv. 2. _D'où l'on ne revient pas_, cf. Job vii, 9.
L. 13. _L'axe de l'humble char._ For _axe_ see note to p. 65, xi, l. 2. The phrasing now seems very old-fashioned indeed.
L. 22. _Où ta mère..._ She died, in fact, an untimely death, after having lost her children.
XXIII. LE COURROUX D'UN AMANT...
Becq de Fouquières' edition places this piece in the _Art d'aimer_.
XXIV. ALLEZ, MES VERS, ALLEZ..
This fragment, given by G. de Chénier and Moland under the heading _Élégie italienne_, was meant for the concluding lines of a poem.
L. 1. _je me confie en vous._ _Se confier_ is constructed with _en_, _dans_, _à_, _sur_.
L. 4. _vous admette... à sa présence._ _En sa présence_ is generally said.
XXV. EH BIEN! JE LE VOULAIS...
L. 6. _Hier_, a dissyllable. It was a monosyllable in the older language, as indeed, etymologically, it should be.
ÉPITRES.
I. A LE BRUN ET AU MARQUIS DE BRAZAIS.
L. 3._Brazais._ André Chénier, at the time he wrote this epistle, was serving as _cadet gentilhomme_ in a regiment of infantry quartered at Strasbourg, and the Marquis de Brazais was a cavalry officer in the same garrison. The piece, elegant and delicate as it is, is therefore to be ranked among the poet's _juvenilia_.
L. 5. _Pandore._ The fable of Pandora's box is too well known to need relating.
L. 6. _trésor de misère._ A Biblical expression. Cf. Prov. x. 2 and Jas. v. 3. In the latter passage the French translation by de Saci has: 'C'est là le _trésor de colère_ que vous amassez pour les derniers jours,' where the English Bible has: 'Ye have heaped treasure together.'
L. 13 ff. Imitated from Horace, _Od._ I. v.
L. 15. _d'un pouvoir... dominé_, i.e. dominé _par_ un pouvoir. Haase, § 113.
L. 18. _A cette mer trompeuse et se livre et s'engage._ The preposition _à_ required by _se livrer_, is an archaism after _s'engager_. For _à_=_sur_ see Haase, § 130 B, and cf. note to p. 97, l. 383. It would seem, at first sight, that _s'engager sur_ says less than _se livrer à_, but it makes the step more irretrievable.
Ll. 25 ff. _heureux dont le zèle..._ Elliptical for 'heureux _celui_ dont le zèle,' on the analogy of 'heureux _qui..._'
L. 27. _ses flancs._ The shipwrecked man's sides.
Ll. 28. _Réchauffer dans son sein._ The rescuer's bosom.
L. 29. _Et de soit fol amour._ The shipwrecked man's love. There is throughout these lines a sad confusion due to a loose use of the possessive, besides which _le zèle_ (l. 25) is awkwardly made the subject of the whole sentence.--_Étouffer la semence._ The same metaphor occurs in La Fontaine, _Ode pour la paix_: '_Étouffe_ tous ces travaux et leurs _semences_ mortelles,' and in Racine, _Alexandre_, VI. iii: '_Étouffe_ dans mon sang ces _semences_ de guerre.'
L. 33. _Plaindre... l'occasion ravie._ _Plaindre_ = 'to lament, regret,' as in 'Ce triste et fier honneur m'émeut sans m'ébranler; J'aime ce qu'il me donne et je _plains_ ce qu'il m'ôte,' Corneille, _Hor._ II. iii.
Ll. 35 ff. Tibullus, III. iii.
L. 38. _l'or du Pactole._ The river Pactolus, in Lydia, was famed for its golden sands.
L. 40. _mon coeur... prosterné._ An incoherent metaphor.
L. 60. See Horace, _Od._ I. xxxiii.
Ll. 61. _Lesbie_, Lesbia, Catullus' mistress.
L. 62. _Cynthie_, Cynthia, Propertius' mistress.
L. 64. See Virgil, _Ecl._ x.
L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his _Tristia_.
L. 73. _un tel foudre._ According to French grammars, _foudre_ is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: _La foudre_ a éclaté. C'est _un foudre_ de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where _foudre_, poetic for 'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (_Hor._ IV. v. and _Héracl._ I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, _Mar.-Thér._
L. 93. _Castor_, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.
Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see _Aen._ ix.
L. 99. _Le Brun._ 'Son of the author of the poem _La Religion_, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.' (_Note of A. Chénier._)
L. 102. _leçons d'Ascra_, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem _Ascraeum carmen_, _Georg._ ii. 176.
L. 103. _Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais._ Chénier, in another epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans _les douze palais_ où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next _paleys_ to abyde,' _Compl. Mars_, 53. See _N.E.D._ Brazais had written a poem, _L'Année_, which never appeared in print.
L. 105. A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge, qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.
L. 111. _tableaux fardés_. Counterfeit, spurious. See the obs. verb _fard_ in _N.E.D._
L. 128. _L'ami religieux._ The following quotation (from the _N.E.D._) may serve for an explanation: 'A man devoted to a man, Loyal, _religious_ in love's hallowed vows.' Porter, _Angry wom. Abingd._ (Percy Soc.), 37.
L. 130. Bavius, a Latin poetaster; see Virgil, _Ecl._ iii, 90. Zoilus, the detractor of Homer. Gacou, a French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the libellous detractor of Boileau and J.-B. Rousseau. Linière, another French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the declared enemy of Chapelain. (See Boileau, _Sat._ ix. 237.)
L. 147. Plutarch relates that Scipio would always take Lelius' advice, which made him say that Lelius was the poet and Scipio the actor. Plutarch, _An seni sit ger. resp._ xxvii.
L. 148. When Phocion, sentenced to death, was on the point of drinking the hemlock, Nicocles besought the favour of drinking first, which request his friend granted. Plutarch, _Phoc._ xxxvi.
L. 168. _faisceaux_, the fasces.
L. 201. _âme mutuelle._ A new alliance of words, on the analogy of _affection mutuelle_.
L. 202. Cf. Theocritus, _Idyll._ xii. 18.
Ll. 207, 208. _ils s'attendent... d'être._ _S'attendre de_ is now of rarer occurrence than _s'attendre à_, but it was not so formerly. 'On ne s'attendait guère _De_ voir Ulysse en cette affaire.' La Fontaine, _Fab._ X. iii. See LITTRÉ.
II. AMI, CHEZ NOS FRANÇAIS.
L. 16. _Sans aller_ refers to _me_, the object in the principal clause. _Sans que j'aille_ would be better syntax. But the prepositional infinitive was used in older French in a still more disconnected manner. 'Rends-le-moi _sans te fouiller_,' writes Molière, _L'Avare_ I. iii., could easily be more explicit, with: 'without _me_ or _my_ searching you,' See Haase, § 85 D.
Ll. 16-19. See Boileau, _Sat._ ix. 221-5, who is here excellently satirized.
L. 28. An allusion to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. La Fontaine, _Fab._ III. xi.
L. 41. _Non d'aller._ An abrupt change in the construction. The meaning is: 'But it is not useful to go...'
Ll. 47-60. The germ of all this development is in a letter of Chénier to his friend de Pange: 'Tu sais combien mes muses sont vagabondes. Elles ne peuvent achever promptement un seul projet; elles en font marcher cent à la fois (a general marshalling his troops, ll. 49, 50). Elles font un pied à ce poème et une épaule à celui-là. Ils boitent tous et ils seront sur pieds tous ensemble (The image of the sculptor, ll. 51-6). Elles les couvent tous à la fois; ils sortiront tous à la fois' (the simile of incubation, ll. 57-60).
L. 59. _Sauront._ This use of _savoir_, as also that of _pouvoir_, so frequent in French, in sentences where the English translation is fain to omit them, is a French idiom, especially noticeable in the language of the seventeenth century. An Englishman cannot help being made aware of this feature when reading Molière, for instance.
L. 71. _des traits._ Whatever there is that is salient, striking, brilliant, in a literary composition, LITTRÉ says, s.v. 31°: fine touches.
Ll. 73. _inspire._ For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.
Ll. 79-92. Here the simile of the founder has displaced that of the potter in the letter quoted above: 'L'argile que j'avais amollie et humectée pour en faire un pot à l'eau, sous mon doigt capricieux, devient une tasse ou une théière.'
L. 94. Cf. La Fontaine, _Épître à Mgr de Soissons_.
L. 96. _et je crée avec eux._ Thus happily does Chénier characterize his attempt at _original imitation_. Another important declaration will be found at ll. 117-9.