Margaret was in the habit of sending to her correspondents, in lieu of
letters, sheets of criticism on her recent readings. From such quite
private folios, never intended for the press, and, indeed, containing
here and there names and allusions, which it is now necessary to veil
or suppress, I select the following notices, chiefly of French books.
Most of these were addressed to me, but the three first to an earlier
friend.
'Reading Schiller's introduction to the Wars of the League,
I have been led back to my old friend, the Duke of Sully,
and his charming king. He was a man, that Henri! How gay and
graceful seems his unflinching frankness! He wore life
as lightly as the feather in his cap. I have become much
interested, too, in the two Guises, who had seemed to me mere
intriguers, and not of so splendid abilities, when I was less
able to appreciate the difficulties they daily and hourly
combated. I want to read some more books about them. Do you
know whether I could get Matthieu, or de Thou, or the Memoirs
of the House of Nevers?
'I do not think this is a respectable way of passing my
summer, but I cannot help it.
'I never read any life of Molière. Are the facts very
interesting? You see clearly in his writing what he was: a
man not high, not poetic; but firm, wide, genuine, whose
clearsightedness only made him more noble. I love him well
that he could see without showing these myriad mean faults of
the social man, and yet make no nearer approach to misanthropy
than his Alceste. These witty Frenchmen. Rabelais, Montaigne,
Molière, are great as were their marshals and _preux
chevaliers_; when the Frenchman tries to be poetical,
he becomes theatrical, but he can be romantic, and also
dignified, maugre shrugs and snuff-boxes.'
* * * * *
'_Thursday Evening_.--Although I have been much engaged these
two days. I have read Spiridion twice. I could have wished
to go through it the second time more at leisure, but as I am
going away, I thought I would send it back, lest it should be
wanted before my return.
'The development of the religious sentiment being the same as
in Hélene, I at first missed the lyric effusion of that work,
which seems to me more and more beautiful, as I think of it
more. This, however, was a mere prejudice, of course, as the
thought here is poured into a quite different mould, and I was
not troubled by it on a second reading.
'Again, when I came to look at the work by itself, I thought
the attempt too bold. A piece of character-painting does not
seem to be the place for a statement of these wide and high
subjects. For here the philosophy is not merely implied in the
poetry and religion, but assumes to show a face of its own.
And, as none should meddle with these matters who are not in
earnest, so, such will prefer to find the thought of a teacher
or fellow-disciple expressed as directly and as bare of
ornament as possible.
'I was interested in De Wette's Theodor, and that learned and
(_on dit_) profound man seemed to me so to fail, that I did
not finish the book, nor try whether I could believe the
novice should ever arrive at manly stature.
'I am not so clear as to the scope and bearing of this
book, as of that. I suppose if I were to read Lamennais, or
L'Erminier, I should know what they all want or intend. And
if you meet with _Les paroles d'un Croyant_, I will beg you to
get it for me, for I am more curious than ever. I had supposed
the view taken by these persons in France, to be the same with
that of Novalis and the German Catholics, in which I have
been deeply interested. But from this book, it would seem to
approach the faith of some of my friends here, which has been
styled Psychotheism. And the gap in the theoretical fabric is
the same as with them. I read with unutterable interest the
despair of Alexis in his Eclectic course, his return to the
teachings of external nature, his new birth, and consequent
appreciation of poetry and music. But the question of Free
Will,--how to reconcile its workings with necessity and
compensation,--how to reconcile the life of the heart with
that of the intellect,--how to listen to the whispering breeze
of Spirit, while breasting, as a man should, the surges of the
world,--these enigmas Sand and her friends seem to have solved
no better than M.F. and her friends.
'The practical optimism is much the same as ours, except that
there is more hope for the masses--soon.
'This work is written with great vigor, scarce any faltering
on the wing. The horrors are disgusting, as are those of every
writer except Dante. Even genius should content itself in
dipping the pencil in cloud and mist. The apparitions of
Spiridion are managed with great beauty. As in Hélene, as in
Novalis, I recognized, with delight, the eye that gazed, the
ear that listened, till the spectres came, as they do to the
Highlander on his rocky couch, to the German peasant on his
mountain. How different from the vulgar eye which looks, but
never sees! Here the beautiful apparition advances from the
solar ray, or returns to the fountain of light and truth, as
it should, when eagle eyes are gazing.
'I am astonished at her insight into the life of thought. She
must know it through some man. Women, under any circumstances,
can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep
river; they have not strength to contend with the current.
Brave, if they do not delicately shrink from the cold water.
No Sibyls have existed like those of Michel Angelo; those
of Raphael are the true brides of a God, but not themselves
divine. It is easy for women to be heroic in action, but when
it comes to interrogating God, the universe, the soul, and,
above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart
down to their nests like so many larks, and, if they cannot
find them, fret like the French Corinne. Goethe's Makaria
was born of the stars. Mr. Flint's Platonic old lady a _lusus
naturæ_, and the Dudevant has loved a philosopher.
'I suppose the view of the present state of Catholicism no way
exaggerated. Alexis is no more persecuted than Abelard was,
and is so, for the same reasons. From the examinations of the
Italian convents in Leopold's time, it seems that the grossest
materialism not only reigns, but is taught and professed in
them. And Catholicism loads and infects as all dead forms do,
however beautiful and noble during their lives.' * *