ence. But neither the occupations of his profession and the interests of the little rural community round him, nor the calming influences of time, do anything for Jocelyn; and his melancholy existence culminates when he is hastily sent for to see a dying traveller in a neighbouring village, and there finds his lost love, whose confession he receives, and to whom he administers the last sacraments. When he has buried Laurence, he has no more to do in life, and dies in his humble presbytère, leaving behind him the sentimental record long drawn out of balked love, and wasted life, and melancholy beyond all hope.

666

to the hills, finds refuge in a cavern from the pursuit of his enemies. Here he ministers to another less happy refugee, who dies in his arms, leaving to his charge a stripling called the son, but in reality the daughter of the dead man, Laurence, who succeeds for a long time in deceiving her sole protector in respect to her sex. From the moment of her appearance thus, his cave becomes dear and beautiful to the young student, who, without knowing why, is immediately transported into the mysterious happiness of a first love. After he discovers her secret, the young man realizes the meaning of this new world in which he feels himself to be living, and for two years the lovers live an idyllic life Such is the story, weak, sweet, maudlin, of purity yet mutual fondness, adoring and superhuman. It caught the public each other with all the frankness of youth, attention forcibly, we are told, at the moyet living like a pair of angels in their ment of its production, and has attained a cave. This happiness is interrupted by a more or less secure place among French sudden appeal from the peasant who has classics. Jocelyn' is the one of my all along protected Jocelyn, calling him to works," Lamartine himself tells us, "which visit in prison a banished bishop on the has procured for me the most intimate and very eve of the guillotine. Tearing him- numerous communications with unknown self from the side of his love at the bidding persons of all ages and countries." Notof duty, the young man goes reluctantly withstanding, however, this popular testidown the mountain-side to the prison at mony, it is almost impossible to imagine Grenoble to visit his bishop. Here, how- anything more hectic and unnatural, more ever, he meets with a trial so immense opposed to the conditions of practicable that flesh and blood is incapable of sup- existence, than this long monologue, this porting it. The bishop, dying, insists on song upon one note. There have been making the unhappy neophyte a priest, in poetical heroes before now to whom love order that he himself may be enabled to has been the one thing worth living for; confess and to leave the world with all and, indeed, a visionary passion balked of the sacraments of the Church. Jocelyn, all fulfilment has taken a larger place in remembering his love, resists. He does poetry than perhaps any other manifestaall that he can to escape from this terrible tion of human feeling. It is the very soul, dilemma, but in vain; and at last finds for instance, of the noble poetry of Italy; himself with despair receiving the unde- but we need not say how different is the sired consecration, which makes Laurence poor and false ideal afforded us in "Focehenceforth impossible to him. The tre-lyn" from anything that could be suggest mendous interview they have at the top of ed even by the shadow of that high and their hill and on the threshold of their inspiring passion. Lamartine's hero is as cave before they part forever, is the cli- incapable of thinking of anything else, or max of the story. Jocelyn returns in of rising above his immediate personal moody anguish to his seminary. No con- recollections and hankerings for the thing sciousness of having done well, no hope forbidden, as he is of resisting the pressure of reconciling himself to the dreary future, of circumstances which steal his happiness supports him. In losing Laurence he from him. He has neither manhood loses everything. The next and only re- enough to face the raving and cursing maining change in his life is his transfer ecclesiastic in his prison and preserve his from the seminary to the mountain parish liberty, nor, when that liberty is gone, to of Valneige, where he spends the rest of accept the consequences. Neither the his days in the depths of poverty, good- strength to hold fast, nor the strength to ness, and self-absorption. Here, as in the give up, is in him. Such a frail and weak first awakening of his unsuspected love character is a favourite of fiction, where all for Laurence, which he supposes to be its vacillations do excellent service in affectionate friendship for a boy confided bringing out the varying shades of human to his care, there are charming touches of weakness; but this does not seem to have natural feeling, and of that rural life which been in the slightest degree Lamartine's is the truest thing in Lamartine's experi-intention. On the contrary, it is an ideal

cover. It is a puzzle upon which the ingenuity of some critic at leisure might occupy itself, were the question worth the trouble. The story is, however, solemnly introduced to us as coming from the lips of a prophet-hermit of Lebanon, who dies as soon as he has accomplished the recital. The angel whose fall is the subject of the tale belongs to those primitive times when the sons of God made alliances with the daughters of men, at the curious cost, according to Lamartine, of living nine lives (an unlucky number) upon earth before they could once more attain their native heaven. The treatment of the fallen angel is original at least, if nothing more. When he drops suddenly into manhood, moved by the hot and generous

figure which he means to set before us, a being superior to the common rules of humanity, a saint and martyr, the very emblem and impersonation of poetical self-sacrifice. We cannot find a line to show that the poet himself felt anything to be wanting in the type he chooses of perfect love and suffering; and though the reader is more impatient than sympathetic, the writer has always the air of being perfectly satisfied with his own creation, and convinced that he has set forth in it a high and most attractive ideal. Laurence is still more shadowy than her priest-lover; and but for the intense happiness which we are told she is capable of conferring by her presence, her looks, and her caresses, is the mere symbol of a woman without any character at all. In short, the reader purpose of saving his human love (who feels that this ideal pair are very badly knows nothing of him) from the hands of used by their Maker, who makes them giants, he brings with him no reminissuffer an infinity of vague torture without cences of his better state, no traditions of any compensation for it, any sense of heaven or heavenly knowledge, but beduty to support them, any nobility of res- comes a salvage man, without even the ignation to reconcile their lives to ordinary power of speech, knowing nothing about existence. What is called self-renuncia- himself, and unable to communicate with tion thus becomes a mere forced and in- the primitive people about him. This voluntary endurance, against which they transformation is so complete, that even struggle all their lives: while the happi- when taught by Daïdha, the object of his ness to which they aspire is degraded affections, to speak, and raised by his love into a monotonous rapture of touch and for her to a certain humanity, no sort of clasp and caress; not passion, but maud-recollection ever seems to come back to lin fondness; not despair, but maudlin lamentations over what they would but cannot possess.

The second poem which the author, with some vague plan in his head, of which he does not reveal the fin mot, meant to form part of a series of which "Jocelyn" was the first-also finds its centre of interest in the same blazing, hot love which is the only power worth noticing in the universe, according to Lamartine. We do not pretend to say what the connection between the two may be. At first glance we might suppose that one of them represents that "love which never had an earthly close," which is always so captivating to the imagination and the other, love satisfied and triumphant forcing its way through all obstacles. This transparent contrast and connection, however, is destroyed by the fact that the "Chute d'un Ange" closes in still more dismal despair and misery than anything that happens to Jocelyn; and that the muddle of torture, like the muddle of bliss, comes about apparently without any moral cause whatever, from circumstances over which neither the poet nor his hero has any control. What moral meaning there is in it, or rather is intended to be in it, is beyond our power to disVOL. XIV. 678

LIVING AGE.

him; and the only purpose for which he is brought upon this earth seems again to be mere billing and cooing, accomplished under the most tragic risks, and with hideous interruptions of suffering, over which the couple, increased by the addition of twin babies of portentous appetite, have many extraordinary triumphs, emerging again constantly on the other side of the cloud into a sickly paradise of embraces, sucklings, and such-like conjugal and nursery blisses. What is meant by the very earthly Olympus of primeval giant gods into which they are carried, or by the final mysterious conclusion in the desert, when Daïdha dies cursing, for the death of her children, the husband who has resigned heaven for her, we are unable to tell; neither can we feel that this climax demonstrates the emptiness of human good as shown in the desolate ending as much of the happy and fortunate as of the disappointed lover, though probably this is what the poet meant. The angel-father breaks into blasphemy when he sees his edifice of happiness fall to pieces around him, and makes a last pyrotechnic effort to consume himself along with his dead wife and children; but even when he comes to this conclusion, nothing beyond

extraordinary facility of youth which is | martine has done. It is a portion of his set upon one thing to-day, and to-morrow "Confidences," he is the hero, the god of has forgotten its very existence. If we the little southern world, into which he may judge of "Saul" from the "Frag- threw himself with all the enthusiasm of ment Biblique," which we find in Lamar- youth. Of all his landscapes, except the tine's later volumes, it will be difficult to home scenery of Milly, there is none of believe in Talma's admiration. This, as which he has so taken in the peculiar and far as we can judge, was the only time pervading charm. The sunny yet dangerthat he attempted the drama. Even ous sea, the lovely isles, the hill-terraces, earlier, however, than "Saul," the inci- with their wonderful Elysian points of dent which forms the groundwork of the vision, the subtle sweetness of the air, the tales of "Graziella” and “Raphael" had mingling of sky and water, with all their occurred in the young poet's own life; ineffable tones of light and colour, have and nothing could have served the occa- been nowhere more perfectly represented; sion better, or called forth his genius so and if the passion and despair of the well as the romance which no natural young Neapolitan may be excessive, they modesty prompted him to keep secret, in are made possible by her country, by the all its delightful mixture of reality and softening effects of that seductive air, and fiction the "Dichtung und Wahrheit" by the extreme youth of the heroine. of which a greater poet and mightier ge- Very different is the sickly and unnatural nius did not disdain the charm. effect of the companion story “Raphael,” It is only just to Lamartine, however, the scene of which is laid in the town, and to say that his graceful but languishing on the lake, of Aix in Savoy, and in which and sentimental tales are more prepos- the sentimental passion of the two lovers sessing to the reader, and call forth in a becomes nauseous to the reader in its very much lesser degree the natural opposition commencement, and is infinitely more obwhich is roused in everybody's mind by jectionable in its ostentatious purity than highly-pitched egotism and vanity, than any ordinary tale of passion. The hero of those of Goethe. "Graziella," in partic- "Graziella" is young and guileless, half ular, is a beautiful little idyl, perfectly unaware of, and more than half partaking pure, picturesque, and touching. The the innocent frenzy he awakens; but Italian girl herself has something of the Raphael is a miserable poor creature, charm which we have already remarked good for nothing but to lie at his misin Lamartine's early sketches of his own tress's feet, to listen to her movements childhood. She is represented in all the through the door that divides them, to homely circumstances of her lot, without rave about her perfections and his love. any attempt to make an impossible young The sickly caresses- the long, silent raplady out of the humble Procitana. This tures in which the two gaze into each error, which is one into which English other's eyes-the still more sickly ravromancers continually fall, does not seem ings of their love, which has no pleasant to affect the Frenchman, though whether beginning, no dramatic working up tothis may be a consequence of the demo- wards a climax, but jumps into languishcratical atmosphere of his nation, or arises ing completeness at once,- all breathe an merely from his higher artistic suscepti- unhealthy, artificial, enervating atmosbility, it is difficult to tell. Whatever the phere, pernicious to the last degree for cause may be, however, Graziella is as any young mind which could be charmed complete a fisher-girl as the little Lamar- by it, and not far from disgusting to the tine was a goat-herd among his native maturer reader. In both these produchills. Neither her costume nor her habits tions, the poet, as we have said, is his of life are sacrificed to the elevation and own hero. The incidents are professedly refinement necessary to a heroine. To be true; and the author gives himself credit sure, the costume of a fisher-lass from throughout his autobiographical works for Procida is less objectionable in romance having passed through all the tumults and than the homely gown of an English coun- agitations of these exhibitions of wouldtry girl; but the plot ventures almost to be passion. We say would-be, for there the edge of ridicule when he represents is not in reality any passion in them. his Graziella trying on the costume of Nothing of the fiery directness of overcivilization, and pinching her larger beauty whelming emotion is in either narrative. into the French corsets and silk gown, "Raphael," in particular, is slowly piled up which in her ignorance she thought likely with a leisurely gloating over the mental to please him. Altogether this poetic lit- fondnesses and fine sentiments of the tle tale is, we think, the finest thing La-languishing pair, which stops all feeling

of indulgence; and when the sentimental | story of "Jocelyn," the best known of lover, wrapped up in thoughts of his Julia, these larger works, is one prolonged accepts from his mother the price of her meditation interspersed with a few intrees, and hurries away, under pretence of sickness, to Aix, to indulge his maudlin passion by another meeting, the reader loses all patience with so miserable a hero. But to the poet it seems quite reasonable and natural, not to say angelic, of the mother to make any sacrifice to satisfy the necessities of her son's heart, and quite consistent with the son's honour and poetic nobility of soul to leave all the duties of life behind him, and moon his life away dancing attendance upon his sickly love, "collant ses lèvres à ses beaux pieds," and raving and being raved at with weak and wordy adoration.

cidents, rather than a dramatic poem, though the tale it tells has chances strange enough to bring out character, had the vague young hero possessed any. The story is supposed to be taken from a manuscript found in the house of a village curé after his death, and was in reality, we are informed, an account of the actual adventures of a parish priest well known to the poet. The habit of founding works of art upon incidents of real life is an almost infallible sign of a second-rate genius, though it is an expedient which all the world loves to attribute to every imaginative writer. Following this very In the other narratives of the "Confi- commonplace suggestion, Lamartine condences," such, for instance, as the tale stantly takes credit to himself for being called "Fior d' Aliza," the poet is not merely the narrator of actual events, with the hero but the sympathizing friend of what truth we are unable to decide. The the chief sufferers, with some gain in very name of the curé thus plucked out of point of modesty, but not much in point his privacy and made into a poem is, we of art. All for love, in a sense which goes think, indicated in the "Confidences." altogether beyond our robuster meaning, Such an effort, however, to make fact is his perpetual motto. The world ap- stand in the place of art, is seldom suc pears to him only as a place in which two cessful; and that man would be wise inyoung persons may bill and coo, turning deed who could discern any individual all its beautiful and noble scenery into a features in the colourless apparition of succession of nests for the inevitable turtle-Jocelyn. He is a type of generosity, doves. In all this, let us do him justice, there is nothing licentious or immoral. When there may happen to occur a love which cannot end in marriage, it is almost ostentatiously demonstrated to be a union of the heart only; and it is on the whole a pure idyl which Lamartine loves. The most that can be said of him is, that he indulges freely in the amiable indecency, chiefly concerned with babies and their mothers, which Continental manners permit and authorize. He is fond of nursery exhibitions, of sucklings and their play; but only the prudish English taste perhaps will object to this, such improprieties being considered in other regions virtuous, nay, religious. This defect and an undue exhibition of the delights of wedded and lawful love, are almost all the moral sins of which we can accuse him; and there are even among ourselves, no doubt, a host of virtuous critics to whom the fact of wedlock makes everything correct and legitimate. This is not the kind of weakness, however, which we naturally expect from a Frenchman.

The kindred works written in verse instead of in poetical prose, which are of congenial character to the tales of the "Confidences," cannot be said to add much to Lamartine's reputation. The

love, self-sacrifice, and impressionable feeling, but not in the smallest degree a recognizable man. The poet, in a postscriptum which now prefaces the work, denies the imputation of having intended to write "a plea against the celibacy of the clergy, an attack upon religion." The idea of making, as he says, "of a poem a controversy in verse, for or against any question of discipline," had, he declares, never entered his head; though it cannot be denied that the accusation seems justified, at least by the character of the tale. The young Jocelyn, overhearing the lamentations of his mother-such lamentations as no doubt Lamartine heard not unfrequently at home over the defective dot which kept her daughter from marrying, makes an instant sacrifice of his own dawning youth and aspirations, and dedicates himself to the priesthood in order thus to endow his sister with the entire possessions of the family. No idea that this was anything but a perfectly noble and manly act crosses the mind of either poet or hero. We then follow him to the seminary, where, with much painful repression of his feelings, he goes through his preliminary studies. These, however, are interrupted by the Revolution; his home is broken up, and he himself, hunted

ence. But neither the occupations of his profession and the interests of the little rural community round him, nor the calming influences of time, do anything for Jocelyn; and his melancholy existence culminates when he is hastily sent for to see a dying traveller in a neighbouring village, and there finds his lost love, whose confession he receives, and to whom he administers the last sacraments. When he has buried Laurence, he has no more to do in life, and dies in his humble presbytère, leaving behind him the sentimental record long drawn out of balked love, and wasted life, and melancholy beyond all hope.

to the hills, finds refuge in a cavern from the pursuit of his enemies. Here he ministers to another less happy refugee, who dies in his arms, leaving to his charge a stripling called the son, but in reality the daughter of the dead man, Laurence, who succeeds for a long time in deceiving her sole protector in respect to her sex. From the moment of her appearance thus, his cave becomes dear and beautiful to the young student, who, without knowing why, is immediately transported into the mysterious happiness of a first love. After he discovers her secret, the young man realizes the meaning of this new world in which he feels himself to be living, and for two years the lovers live an idyllic life Such is the story, weak, sweet, maudlin, of purity yet mutual fondness, adoring and superhuman. It caught the public each other with all the frankness of youth, attention forcibly, we are told, at the moyet living like a pair of angels in their ment of its production, and has attained a cave. This happiness is interrupted by a more or less secure place among French sudden appeal from the peasant who has classics. "Jocelyn' is the one of my all along protected Jocelyn, calling him to works," Lamartine himself tells us, "which visit in prison a banished bishop on the has procured for me the most intimate and very eve of the guillotine. Tearing him- numerous communications with unknown self from the side of his love at the bidding persons of all ages and countries." Notof duty, the young man goes reluctantly withstanding, however, this popular testidown the mountain-side to the prison at mony, it is almost impossible to imagine Grenoble to visit his bishop. Here, how- anything more hectic and unnatural, more ever, he meets with a trial so immense opposed to the conditions of practicable that flesh and blood is incapable of sup- existence, than this long monologue, this porting it. The bishop, dying, insists on song upon one note. There have been making the unhappy neophyte a priest, in poetical heroes before now to whom love order that he himself may be enabled to has been the one thing worth living for; confess and to leave the world with all and, indeed, a visionary passion balked of the sacraments of the Church. Jocelyn, all fulfilment has taken a larger place in remembering his love, resists. He does poetry than perhaps any other manifestaall that he can to escape from this terrible tion of human feeling. It is the very soul, dilemma, but in vain; and at last finds for instance, of the noble poetry of Italy; himself with despair receiving the unde- but we need not say how different is the sired consecration, which makes Laurence poor and false ideal afforded us in "Focehenceforth impossible to him. The tre- lyn" from anything that could be suggestmendous interview they have at the top of ed even by the shadow of that high and their hill and on the threshold of their inspiring passion. Lamartine's hero is as cave before they part forever, is the cli- incapable of thinking of anything else, or max of the story. Jocelyn returns in of rising above his immediate personal moody anguish to his seminary. No con- recollections and hankerings for the thing sciousness of having done well, no hope forbidden, as he is of resisting the pressure of reconciling himself to the dreary future, of circumstances which steal his happiness supports him. In losing Laurence he from him. He has neither manhood loses everything. The next and only re- enough to face the raving and cursing maining change in his life is his transfer ecclesiastic in his prison and preserve his from the seminary to the mountain parish liberty, nor, when that liberty is gone, to of Valneige, where he spends the rest of accept the consequences. Neither the his days in the depths of poverty, good- strength to hold fast, nor the strength to ness, and self-absorption. Here, as in the give up, is in him. Such a frail and weak first awakening of his unsuspected love character is a favourite of fiction, where all for Laurence, which he supposes to be its vacillations do excellent service in affectionate friendship for a boy confided bringing out the varying shades of human to his care, there are charming touches of weakness; but this does not seem to have natural feeling, and of that rural life which been in the slightest degree Lamartine's is the truest thing in Lamartine's experi-intention. On the contrary, it is an ideal