of "Telemachus." It lay more in a certain interpretation that the book
was supposed to bear. "Telemachus" was understood to be a covert
criticism of Louis XIV., and of the principle of absolute monarchy
embodied in him. This imputed intention of the book could not fail to
become known at Versailles. The result, of course, was fatal, and
finally fatal, to the prospects, whatever these may have been, of
Fenelon's restoration to favor at court. The archbishop thenceforward
was left to do in comparative obscurity the duties of his episcopal
office in his diocese of Cambray. He devoted himself, with exemplary and
touching fidelity, to the interests of his flock, loving them and loved
by them, until he died. It was an entirely worthy and adequate
employment of his powers. The only abatement needful from the praise to
be bestowed upon his behavior in this pastoral relation is that he
suffered himself sometimes to think of his position as one of
"disgrace." His reputation meantime for holy character and conduct was
European. His palace at Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of
suffering need, indeed almost his whole diocese, lying on the frontier
of France, was by mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war as
a kind of mutual inviolable ground, invested with privilege of
sanctuary. It was an instructive example of the serene and beautiful
ascendency sometimes divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness.
There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair of the
"Telemachus" publication, when it looked as if, after long delay, a
complete worldly triumph for Fenelon was assured, and was near. The
father of the Duke of Burgundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand
between Fenelon's late pupil and the throne, nothing but the precarious
life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The Duke of
Burgundy, through all changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his
affectionate loyalty to Fenelon. Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and
watchful king, his grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he
yet had found means to send to Fenelon, from time to time, reassuring
signals of his trust and love. Fenelon was now, in all eyes, the
predestined prime minister of a new reign about to commence. Through
devoted friends of his own, near to the person of the prince at court,
Fenelon sent minutes of advice to his pupil, which outlined a whole
beneficent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed dawning
for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency and of Louis XV. might,
perhaps, have been averted, and, with that spared to France, the
revolution itself might have been accomplished without the Revolution.
But it was not to be. The Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and
then, within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He died
sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from the dread
responsibility of reigning.
"All my ties are broken," mourned Fenelon; "there is no longer any thing
to bind me to the earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but
two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with
well-grounded apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy
revival of recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fenelon:
"Here was a man who could have served us well under the disasters by
which my kingdom is about to be assailed."
Fenelon's literary productions are various; but they all have the
common character of being works written for the sake of life, rather
than for the sake of literature. They were inspired each by a practical
purpose, and adapted each to a particular occasion. His treatise on the
"Education of Girls" was written for the use of a mother who desired
instruction on the topic from Fenelon. His argument on the "Being of a
God" was prepared as a duty of his preceptorship to the prince. But the
one book of Fenelon, which was an historical event when it appeared, and
which stands an indestructible classic in literature, is the
"Telemachus." It remains for us briefly to give some idea of this book.
The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who suppose
themselves to have obtained a true idea of "Telemachus" from having
partly read it at school, as an exercise in French. The essence of the
work lies beyond those few opening pages to which the exploration of
school-boys and school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of
Fenelon is much more than a charming piece of romantic and sentimental
poetry in prose. It is a kind of epic, indeed, like the "Odyssey," only
written in rhythmical prose instead of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the
"Odyssey," it is an idyllic epic written with an ulterior purpose of
moral and political didactics. It was designed as a manual of
instruction--instruction made delightful to a prince--to inculcate the
duties incumbent on a sovereign.
Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the son of Ulysses. Fenelon's
story relates the adventures encountered by Telemachus in search for his
father, so long delayed on his return from Troy to Ithaca. Telemachus is
imagined by Fenelon to be attended by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom,
masked from his recognition, as well as from the recognition of others,
under the form of an old man. Minerva, of course, constantly imparts the
wisest counsel to young Telemachus, who has his weaknesses, as had the
young Duke of Burgundy, but who is essentially well-disposed, as Fenelon
hoped his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing can exceed
the urbanity and grace with which the delicate business is conducted by
Fenelon, of teaching a bad prince, with a very bad example set him by
his grandfather, to be a good king. The style in which the story is
told, and in which the advice is insinuated, is exquisite, is beyond
praise. The "soft delicious" stream of sound runs on, as from a
fountain, and like "linked sweetness long drawn out." Never had prose a
flow of melody more luscious. It is perpetual ravishment to the ear. The
invention, too, of incident is fruitful, while the landscape and
coloring are magical for beauty. We give a few extracts, to be read with
that application in mind to Louis XIV., and to the state of France,
which, when the book was first printed, gave it such an exciting
interest in the eyes of Europe. Telemachus, after the manner of AEneas to
Queen Dido, is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island he has
come, the adventures that have previously befallen him. He says that he,
with Mentor (Minerva in disguise), found himself in Crete. Mentor had
been there before, and was ready to tell Telemachus all about the
country. Telemachus was naturally interested to learn respecting the
Cretan monarchy. Mentor, he says, informed him as follows:
The king's authority over the subject is absolute, but the authority
of the law is absolute over him. His power to do good is unlimited,
but he is restrained from doing evil. The laws have put the people
into his hands, as the most valuable deposit, upon condition that he
shall treat them as his children. It is the intent of the law that the
wisdom and equity of one man shall be the happiness of many, and not
that the wretchedness and slavery of many should gratify the pride and
luxury of one. The king ought to possess nothing more than the
subject, except what is necessary to alleviate the fatigue of his
station, and impress upon the minds of the people a reverence of that
authority by which the laws are executed. Moreover, the king should
indulge himself less, as well in ease as in pleasure, and should be
less disposed to the pomp and the pride of life than any other man. He
ought not to be distinguished from the rest of mankind by the
greatness of his wealth, or the vanity of his enjoyments, but by
superior wisdom, more heroic virtue, and more splendid glory. Abroad
he ought to be the defender of his country, by commanding her armies;
and at home the judge of his people, distributing justice among them,
improving their morals, and increasing their felicity. It is not for
himself that the gods have intrusted him with royalty. He is exalted
above individuals only that he may be the servant of the people. To
the public he owes all his time, all his attention, and all his love;
he deserves dignity only in proportion as he gives up private
enjoyments for the public good.
Pretty sound doctrine, the foregoing, on the subject of the duties
devolving on a king. The "paternal" idea, to be sure, of government is
in it; but there is the idea, too, of limited or constitutional
monarchy. The spirit of just and liberal political thought had, it
seems, not been wholly extinguished, even at the court, by that
oppression of mind--an oppression seldom, if ever, in human history
exceeded--which was enforced under the unmitigated absolutism of Louis
XIV. The literature that, with Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, the
Encyclopaedists, prepared the Revolution, had already begun virtually to
be written when Fenelon wrote his "Telemachus." It is easy to see why
the fame of Fenelon should by exception have been dear even to the
hottest infidel haters of that ecclesiastical hierarchy to which the
archbishop of Cambray himself belonged. This lover of liberty, this
gentle rebuker of kings, was of the freethinkers, at least in the
sympathy of political thought. Nay, the Revolution itself is foreshown
in a remarkable glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the
"Telemachus." Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by the
author to reprove and instruct for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To
Idomeneus--a character taken, and not unplausibly taken, to have been
suggested to Fenelon by the example of Louis XIV.--to this imaginary
counterpart of the reigning monarch of France, Mentor holds the
following language. How could the sequel of Bourbon despotism in
France--a sequel suspended now for a time, but two or three generations
later to be dreadfully visited on the heirs of Louis XIV.--have been
more fully foreshadowed? The "Telemachus":
Remember that the sovereign who is most absolute is always least
powerful; he seizes upon all, and his grasp is ruin. He is, indeed,
the sole proprietor of whatever his state contains; but, for that
reason, his state contains nothing of value; the fields are
uncultivated, and almost a desert; the towns lose some of their few
inhabitants every day; and trade every day declines. The king, who
must cease to be a king when he ceases to have subjects, and who is
great only in virtue of his people, is himself insensibly losing his
character and his power, as the number of his people, from whom alone
both are derived, insensibly diminishes. His dominions are at length
exhausted of money and of men: the loss of men is the greatest and the
most irreparable he can sustain. Absolute power degrades every subject
to a slave. The tyrant is flattered even to an appearance of
adoration, and every one trembles at the glance of his eye; but, at
the least revolt, this enormous power perishes by its own excess. It
derived no strength from the love of the people; it wearied and
provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every individual of the
state impatient of its continuance. At the first stroke of opposition,
the idol is overturned, broken to pieces, and trodden under foot.
Contempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust, and every other passion
of the soul unite against so hateful a despotism. The king who, in his
vain prosperity, found no man bold enough to tell him the truth, in
his adversity finds no man kind enough to excuse his faults, or to
defend him against his enemies.
So much is perhaps enough to indicate the political drift of the
"Telemachus." That drift is, indeed, observable everywhere throughout
the book.
We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting Fenelon
appear more purely now in his character as dreamer and poet. Young
Prince Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and AEneas-like, his descent into
Hades. This incident affords Fenelon opportunity to exercise his best
powers of awful and of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas
are, in this episode of the "Telemachus," superinduced upon pagan, after
a manner hard, perhaps, to reconcile with the verisimilitude required by
art, but at least productive of very noble and very beautiful results.
First, one glimpse of Tartarus as conceived by Fenelon. It is the
spectacle of kings who on earth abused their power that Telemachus is
beholding:
Telemachus observed the countenance of these criminals to be pale and
ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they suffered at the
heart. They looked inward with a self-abhorrence now inseparable from
their existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment,
and it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They
haunted them like hideous specters, and continually started up before
them in all their enormity. They wished for a second death, that might
separate them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had
separated their spirits from the body--a death that might at once
extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the
depths of hell to hide them from the persecuting beams of truth, in
impenetrable darkness; but they are reserved for the cup of vengeance,
which, though they drink of it forever, shall be ever full. The truth,
from which they fled, has overtaken them, an invincible and
unrelenting enemy. The ray which once might have illuminated them,
like the mild radiance of the day, now pierces them like lightning--a
fierce and fatal fire, that, without injury to the external parts,
infixes a burning torment at the heart. By truth, now an avenging
flame, the very soul is melted like metal in a furnace; it dissolves
all, but destroys nothing; it disunites the first elements of life,
yet the sufferer can never die. He is, as it were, divided against
himself, without rest and without comfort; animated by no vital
principle, but the rage that kindles at his own misconduct, and the
dreadful madness that results from despair.
If the "perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets" that the "Telemachus"
affords is felt at times to be almost cloying, it is not, as our readers
have now seen, for want of occasional contrasts of a bitterness
sufficiently mordant and drastic. But the didactic purpose is never lost
sight of by the author. Here is an aspect of the Elysium found by
Telemachus. How could any thing be more delectably conceived and
described? The translator, Dr. Hawkesworth, is animated to an English
style that befits the sweetness of his original. The "Telemachus:"
In this place resided all the good kings who had wisely governed
mankind from the beginning of time. They were separated from the rest
of the just; for, as wicked princes suffer more dreadful punishment
than other offenders in Tartarus, so good kings enjoy infinitely
greater felicity than other lovers of virtue, in the fields of
Elysium.
Telemachus advanced toward these kings, whom he found in groves of
delightful fragrance, reclining upon the downy turf, where the flowers
and herbage were perpetually renewed. A thousand rills wandered
through these scenes of delight, and refreshed the soil with a gentle
and unpolluted wave; the song of innumerable birds echoed in the
groves. Spring strewed the ground with her flowers, while at the same
time autumn loaded the trees with her fruit. In this place the burning
heat of the dog-star was never felt, and the stormy north was
forbidden to scatter over it the frosts of winter. Neither War that
thirsts for blood, nor Envy that bites with an envenomed tooth, like
the vipers that are wreathed around her arms and fostered in her
bosom, nor Jealousy, nor Distrust, nor Fears, nor vain Desires, invade
these sacred domains of peace. The day is here without end, and the
shades of night are unknown. Here the bodies of the blessed are
clothed with a pure and lambent light, as with a garment. The light
does not resemble that vouchsafed to mortals upon earth, which is
rather darkness visible; it is rather a celestial glory than a
light--an emanation that penetrates the grossest body with more
subtilty than the rays of the sun penetrate the purest crystal, which
rather strengthens than dazzles the sight, and diffuses through the
soul a serenity which no language can express. By this ethereal
essence the blessed are sustained in everlasting life; it pervades
them; it is incorporated with them, as food with the mortal body; they
see it, they feel it, they breathe it, and it produces in them an
inexhaustible source of serenity and joy. It is a fountain of delight,
in which they are absorbed as fishes are absorbed in the sea; they
wish for nothing, and, having nothing, they possess all things. This
celestial light satiates the hunger of the soul; every desire is
precluded; and they have a fulness of joy which sets them above all
that mortals seek with such restless ardor, to fill the vacuity that
aches forever in their breast. All the delightful objects that
surround them are disregarded; for their felicity springs up within,
and, being perfect, can derive nothing from without. So the gods,
satiated with nectar and ambrosia, disdain, as gross and impure, all
the dainties of the most luxurious table upon earth. From these seats
of tranquillity all evils fly far away; death, disease, poverty, pain,
regret, remorse, fear, even hope--which is sometimes not less painful
than fear itself--animosity, disgust, and resentment can never enter
there.
The leaden good sense of Louis XIV. pronounced Fenelon the "most
chimerical" man in France. The founder of the kingdom of heaven would
have been a dreamer, to this most worldly-minded of "Most Christian"
monarchs. Bossuet, who, about to die, read something of Fenelon's
"Telemachus," said it was a book hardly serious enough for a clergyman
to write. A _more_ serious book, whether its purpose be regarded, or its
undoubted actual influence in molding the character of a prospective
ruler of France, was not written by any clergyman of Fenelon's or
Bossuet's time.
Fenelon was an eloquent preacher as well as an elegant writer. His
influence exerted in both the two functions, that of the writer and that
of the preacher, was powerfully felt in favor of the freedom of nature
in style as against the conventionality of culture and art. He
insensibly helped on that reform from a too rigid classicism, which in
our day we have seen pushed to its extreme in the exaggerations of
romanticism. Few wiser words have ever been spoken on the subject of
oratory than are to be found in his "Dialogues on Eloquence."
Disappearing space warns us that we must perforce let pass from presence
the gracious spirit of Fenelon. But we should wrong this most engaging
of prelates, and we should wrong our readers, not still to represent a
side of his character and of his literary work, a very important side,
that thus far has been only hinted at in incidental allusion. We mean
that distinctively religious side which belongs alike to the man and to
the writer.
Fenelon, as priest, was something more than professional preacher,
pastor, theologian. He was a devout soul, the subject of a transcendent
Christian experience, even verging on mysticism. In his capacity of
spiritual director, he wrote what are called "spiritual letters," many
of which survive, included in his published works. These have a very
peculiarly ripe, sweet, chaste, St. John-like quality of tone, and they
are written in a pure, simple, transparent style, that reads as if the
thought found its own form of expression without the smallest trouble on
the part of the writer. The style, in fact, is absolute perfection; you
cannot tell the mere literal truth about it and not thus seem to be
exaggerating its merit. Even in translation some charm of such ultimate
felicity in it cannot fail to be felt.
Almost any "spiritual" letter that we happen first to strike will be as
good as any other, to illustrate the rare culture of heart, the deep
spiritual wisdom, the perfect urbanity in manner, reconciled with the
perfect frankness in fact, and the circumfluent grace of literary style,
with which this heavenly-minded man conducted, through correspondence,
his cure of individual souls. We pluck out a few specimen sentences from
two different letters, and present them detached, without setting of
context:
Consent to be humiliated; silence and peace in humiliation are the
true good of the soul. One might be tempted to speak humbly, and one
might find a thousand fine pretexts for doing so; but it is still
better to be silent humbly. The humility which still speaks is still
to be suspected; in speaking, self-love consoles itself a little.
What now follows, ending our extracts from Fenelon's writings, we give,
not only for its own value, but for the light it throws on the charming
humility of the author:
It has seemed to me that you needed to enlarge your heart in the
matter of the defects of others....
Perfection bears with ease the imperfection of others; it becomes all
things to all men. One must grow accustomed to the idea of the
grossest defects in good souls....
I beg of you more than ever not to spare me in respect of my defects.
Should you believe that you see one that I perhaps have not, that will
be no great misfortune. If your hints wound me, that sensitiveness
will show me that you have touched the quick; thus you will always
have conferred on me a great benefit in disciplining me to be little,
and in accustoming me to take reproof. I ought to be more abased that
another in proportion as I am more exalted by my position, and as God
requires of me more complete death to all. I need such simplicity, and
I hope that, far from weakening, it will strengthen our union of
heart.
It is impossible not to associate with Fenelon, in the thought of this
spiritual life of his, explored and purified so deep, that remarkable
woman, Madame Guyon, to whom in certain religious relations the great
and gentle archbishop ostensibly, and perhaps really, submitted himself,
as one who learns to one who teaches. Her exaltation--how far real, and
how far illusory only, let us leave it for the All-knower to judge--made
Madame Guyon easily equal to the seemingly audacious part of spiritual
guide to a man who was at once one of the most illustrious writers, one
of the most highly placed Church dignitaries, and one of the saintliest
Christians in Europe. It is undoubtedly true that the sage can learn
more from the fool than the fool can from the sage; and therefore if it
could be proved to have been indeed the fact that, of the two, Fenelon
was the greater gainer from the relation existing between himself and
Madame Guyon, that might well be only because he was already a wiser
person than she.
We have no room here to show Madame Guyon by any of her extant letters
addressed to Fenelon; but we may take the present occasion to introduce
at least a few stanzas from one of those sweet little Christian poems of
hers which a spirit not far alien from Fenelon's own, we mean William
Cowper, has put for us into fairly happy English expression. Madame
Guyon spent ten years in prison--for teaching that souls should love God
unselfishly, for his own sake only!--and it is in prison that this
meekly triumphing song of hers must be imagined as sung by the author.
It bears the title, "The Soul that Loves God Finds Him Everywhere."
* * * * *
To me remains nor place nor time;
My country is in every clime;
I can be calm and free from care
On any shore, since God is there.
While place we seek, or place we shun,
The soul finds happiness in none;
But, with a God to guide our way,
'Tis equal joy to go or stay.
Could I be cast where thou art not,
That were indeed a dreadful lot;
But regions none remote I call,
Secure of finding God in all.
* * * * *
Ah, then! to his embrace repair;
My soul, thou art no stranger there;
There love divine shall be thy guard,
And peace and safety thy reward.
French literature, unfortunately, is on the whole such in character as
to need all that it can show to be cast into the scale of moral
elevation and purity. Fenelon alone--he was not alone, as the instance
of Madame Guyon has just freshly been reminding us--but Fenelon alone
were enough, in quality supported by quantity, not indeed to overcome,
but to go far toward overcoming, the perverse inclination of the
balance.
XIV.
LE SAGE.
1668-1747.