a character as that of Napoleon displayed on so large a stage, so great a
genius amid such scenery of action, insures an immortality. ‘The page of
universal history’ which he was always coveting, he has attained; and it
is a page which, from its singularity and its errors, its shame and its
glory, will distract the attention from other pages. No one who has ever
had in his mind the idea of Napoleon’s character can forget it. Nothing
too can be more natural than that the French should remember it. His
character possessed the primary imagination, the elementary conceiving
power, in which they are deficient. So far from being restricted to the
poetry of society, he would not have even appreciated it. A certain
bareness marks his mind; his style is curt; the imaginative product is
left rude; there is the distinct abstraction of the military diagram. The
tact of light and passing talk, the detective imagination which is akin
to that tact, and discovers the quick essence of social things,—he never
had. In speaking of his power over popular fancies, Béranger has called
him ‘the greatest poet of modern times.’ No genius can be more unlike his
own, and therefore perhaps it is that he admires it so much. During the
Hundred Days, Béranger says he was never under the illusion, then not
rare, that the Emperor could become a constitutional monarch. The lion,
he felt, would not change his skin. After the return of the Bourbons,
he says, doubtless with truth, that his ‘_instinct du peuple_’ told him
they could never ally themselves with liberal principles, or unite with
that new order of society which, though dating from the Revolution, had
acquired in five-and-twenty years a half-prescriptive right. They and
their followers came in to _take_ possession, and it was impossible they
could unite with what _was_ in possession. During the whole reign of the
hereditary Bourbon dynasty, Béranger was in opposition. Representing the
natural sentiments of the new Frenchman, he could not bear the natural
tendency of the ruling power to the half-forgotten practices of old
France. The legitimate Bourbons were by their position the chieftains of
the party advocating their right by birth; they could not be the kings of
a people; and the poet of the people was against them. After the genius
of Napoleon, all other governing minds would seem tame and contracted;
and Charles X. was not a man to diminish the inevitable feeling. Béranger
despised him. As the poet warred with the weapons of poetry, the
Government retorted with the penalties of State. He was turned out of his
petty clerkship, he was twice imprisoned; but these things only increased
his popularity; and a firm and genial mind, so far from being moved, sang
songs at La Force itself. The Revolution of 1830 was willing to make his
fortune.
‘Je l’ai traitée,’ he says, ‘comme une puissance qui peut avoir
des caprices auxquels il faut être en mesure de résister. Tous
ou presque tous mes amis ont passé au ministère: j’en ai même
encore un ou deux qui restent suspendus à ce mât de cocagne. Je
me plais à croire qu’ils y sont accrochés par la basque, malgré
les efforts qu’ils font pour descendre. J’aurais donc pu avoir
part à la distribution des emplois. Malheureusement je n’ai
pas l’amour des sinécures, et tout travail obligé m’est devenu
insupportable, hors peut-être encore celui d’expéditionnaire.
Des médisants out prétendu que je faisais de la vertu. Fi donc!
je faisais de la paresse. Ce défaut m’a tenu lieu de bien des
qualités; aussi je le recommande à beaucoup de nos honnêtes
gens. Il expose pourtant à de singuliers reproches. C’est à
cette paresse si douce, que des censeurs rigides ont attribué
l’éloignement où je me suis tenu de ceux de mes honorables
amis qui ont eu le malheur d’arriver au pouvoir. Faisant trop
d’honneur à ce qu’ils veulent bien appeler ma bonne tête, et
oubliant trop combien il y a loin du simple bon sens à la
science des grandes affaires, ces censeurs prétendent que mes
conseils eussent éclairé plus d’un ministre. A les croire,
tapi derrière le fauteuil de velours de nos hommes d’état,
j’aurais conjuré les vents, dissipé les orages, et fait nager
la France dans un océan de délices. Nous aurions tous de la
liberté à revendre ou plutôt à donner, car nous n’en savons
pas bien encore le prix. Eh! messieurs mes deux ou trois amis,
qui prenez un chansonnier pour un magicien, on ne vous a donc
pas dit que le pouvoir est une cloche qui empêche ceux qui la
mettent en branle d’entendre aucun autre son? Sans doute des
ministres consultent quelquefois ceux qu’ils ont sous la main:
consulter est un moyen de parler de soi qu’on néglige rarement.
Mais il ne suffirait pas de consulter de bonne foi des gens
qui conseilleraient de même. Il faudrait encore exécuter: ceci
est la part du caractère. Les intentions les plus pures, le
patriotisme le plus éclairé ne le donnent pas toujours. Qui
n’a vu de hauts personnages quitter un donneur d’avis avec une
pensée courageuse, et, l’instant d’après, revenir vers lui,
de je ne sais quel lieu de fascination, avec l’embarras d’un
démenti donné aux résolutions les plus sages? “Oh!” disent-ils,
“nous n’y serons plus repris! quelle galère!” Le plus honteux
ajoute: “Je voudrais bien vous voir à ma place!” Quand un
ministre dit cela, soyez sûr qu’il n’a plus la tête à lui.
Cependant il en est un, mais un seul, qui, sans avoir perdu la
tête, a répété souvent ce mot de la meilleure foi du monde;
aussi ne l’adressait-il jamais à un ami.’
The statesman alluded to in the last paragraph is Manuel, his intimate
friend, from whom he declares he could never have been separated, but
whose death prevented his obtaining political honours. Nobody can
read the above passage without feeling its tone of political sense.
An enthusiasm for, yet half distrust of, the Revolution of July seems
as sound a sentiment as could be looked for even in the most sensible
contemporary. What he has thought of the present dynasty we do not know.
He probably has as little concurred in the silly encomiums of its mere
partisans as in the wild execrations of its disappointed enemies. His
opinion could not have been either that of the English who _fêted_ Louis
Napoleon in 1855, or of those who despised him in 1851. The political
fortunes of France during the last ten years must have been a painful
scene of observation to one who remembered the taking of the Bastille. If
there be such a thing as failure in the world, this looks like it.
Although we are very far from thinking that Béranger’s claims on
posterity are founded on his having utilised his talent in favour of
liberty, it is very natural that he should think or half-think himself
that it is so. His power over the multitude must have given him great
pleasure; it is something to be able to write mottoes for a revolution;
to write words for people to use, and hear people use those words.
The same sort of pleasure which Horace derived from his nearness to
the centre of great action, Béranger has derived from the power which
his thorough sympathy with his countrymen has given him over them.
A political satire may be ephemeral from the rapid oblivion of its
circumstances; but it is not unnatural that the author, inevitably proud
of its effect, may consider it of higher worth than mere verses of
society.
This shrewd sense gives a solidity to the verses of Béranger which the
social and amusing sort of poetry commonly wants; but nothing can redeem
it from the reproach of wanting _back_ thought. This is inevitable in
such literature; as it professes to delineate for us the light essence
of a fugitive world, it cannot be expected to dwell on those deep and
eternal principles on which that world is based. It ignores them as
light talk ignores them. The most opposite thing to the poetry of
society is the poetry of inspiration. There exists, of course, a kind
of imagination which detects the secrets of the universe—which fills
us sometimes with dread, sometimes with hope—which awakens the soul,
which makes pure the feelings, which explains nature, reveals what is
above nature, chastens ‘the deep heart of man.’ Our senses teach us
what the world is; our intuitions where it is. We see the blue and
gold of the world, its lively amusements, its gorgeous if superficial
splendour, its currents of men; we feel its light spirits, we enjoy its
happiness; we enjoy it, and we are puzzled. What is the object of all
this? Why do we do all this? What is the universe _for_? Such a book as
Béranger’s suggests this difficulty in its strongest form. It embodies
the essence of all that pleasure-loving, pleasure-giving, unaccountable
world in which men spend their lives,—which they are compelled to live
in, but which the moment you get out of it seems so odd that you can
hardly believe it is real. On this account, as we were saying before,
there is no book the impression of which varies so much in different
moods of mind. Sometimes no reading is so pleasant; at others you
half-despise and half-hate the idea of it; it seems to sum up and make
clear the littleness of your own nature. Few can bear the theory of their
amusements; it is essential to the pride of man to believe that he is
industrious. We are irritated at literary laughter, and wroth at printed
mirth. We turn angrily away to that higher poetry which gives the outline
within which all these light colours are painted. From the capital of
levity, and its self-amusing crowds; from the elastic _vaudeville_ and
the grinning actors; from _chansons_ and _cafés_ we turn away to the
solemn in nature, to the blue over-arching sky: the one remains, the many
pass; no number of seasons impairs the bloom of those hues, they are as
soft to-morrow as to-day. The immeasurable depth folds us in. ‘Eternity,’
as the original thinker said, ‘is everlasting.’ We breathe a deep breath.
And perhaps we have higher moments. We comprehend the ‘unintelligible
world;’ we see into ‘the life of things;’ we fancy we know whence we
come and whither we go; words we have repeated for years have a meaning
for the first time; texts of old Scripture seem to apply to _us_....
And—and—Mr. Thackeray would say, You come back into the town, and order
dinner at a _restaurant_, and read Béranger once more.
And though this is true—though the author of _Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens_
has certainly no claim to be called a profound divine—though we do not
find in him any proper expression, scarcely any momentary recognition,
of those intuitions which explain in a measure the scheme and idea of
things, and form the back-thought and inner structure of such minds
as ours,—his sense and sympathy with the people enable him, perhaps
compel him, to delineate those essential conditions which constitute the
structure of exterior life, and determine with inevitable certainty the
common life of common persons. He has no call to deal with heaven or the
universe, but he knows the earth; he is restricted to the boundaries of
time, but he understands time. He has extended his delineations beyond
what in this country would be considered correct; _Les Cinq Étages_ can
scarcely be quoted here; but a perhaps higher example of the same kind of
art may be so:
‘_Le Vieux Vagabond._
‘Dans ce fossé cessons de vivre;
Je finis vieux, infirme et las;
Les passants vont dire: “Il est ivre.”
Tant mieux! ils ne me plaindront pas.
J’en vois qui détournent la tête;
D’autres me jettent quelques sous.
Courez vite, allez à la fête:
Vieux vagabond, je puis mourir sans vous.
‘Oui, je meurs ici de vieillesse,
Parce qu’on ne meurt pas de faim.
J’espérais voir de ma détresse
L’hôpital adoucir la fin;
Mais tout est plein dans chaque hospice,
Tant le peuple est infortuné.
La rue, hélas! fut ma nourrice:
Vieux vagabond, mourons où je suis né.
‘Aux artisans, dans mon jeune âge,
J’ai dit: “Qu’on m’enseigne un métier.”
“Va, nous n’avons pas trop d’ouvrage,”
Répondaient-ils, “va mendier.”
Riches, qui me disiez: “Travaille,”
J’eus bien des os de vos repas;
J’ai bien dormi sur votre paille:
Vieux vagabond, je ne vous maudis pas.
‘J’aurais pu voler, moi, pauvre homme;
Mais non: mieux vaut tendre la main.
Au plus, j’ai dérobé la pomme
Qui mûrit au bord du chemin.
Vingt fois pourtant on me verrouille
Dans les cachots, de par le roi.
De mon seul bien on me dépouille:
Vieux vagabond, le soleil est à moi.
‘Le pauvre a-t-il une patrie?
Que me font vos vins et vos blés,
Votre gloire et votre industrie,
Et vos orateurs assemblés?
Dans vos murs ouverts à ses armes
Lorsque l’étranger s’engraissait,
Comme un sot j’ai versé des larmes:
Vieux vagabond, sa main me nourrissait.
‘Comme un insecte fait pour nuire,
Hommes, que ne m’écrasiez-vous!
Ah! plutôt vous deviez m’instruire
A travailler au bien de tous.
Mis à l’abri du vent contraire,
Le ver fût devenu fourmi;
Je vous aurais chéris en frère:
Vieux vagabond, je meurs votre ennemi.’
Pathos in such a song as this enters into poetry. We sympathise with
the essential lot of man. Poems of this kind are doubtless rare in
Béranger. His commoner style is lighter and more cheerful; but no poet
who has painted so well the light effervescence of light society can,
when he likes, paint so well the solid, stubborn forms with which it is
encompassed. The genial, firm sense of a large mind sees and comprehends
all of human life, which lies within the sphere of sense. He is an
epicurean, as all merely sensible men by inevitable consequence are; and
as an epicurean, he prefers to deal with the superficial and gay forms of
life; but he can deal with others when he chooses to be serious. Indeed,
there is no melancholy like the melancholy of the epicurean. He is alive
to the fixed conditions of earth, but not to that which is above earth.
He muses on the temporary, as such; he admits the skeleton, but not the
soul. It is wonderful that Béranger is so cheerful as he is.
We may conclude as we began. In all his works, in lyrics of levity, of
politics, of worldly reflection,—Béranger, if he had not a single object,
has attained a uniform result. He has given us an idea of the essential
French character, such as we fancy it must be, but can never for
ourselves hope to see that it is. We understand the nice tact, the quick
intelligence, the gay precision; the essence of the drama we know—the
spirit of what we have seen. We know his feeling:—
‘J’aime qu’un Russe soit Russe,
Et qu’un Anglais soit Anglais;
Si l’on est Prussien en Prusse,
En France soyons Français.’
He has acted accordingly: he has delineated to us the essential Frenchman.
_MR. CLOUGH’S POEMS._[14]
(1862.)
No one can be more rigid than we are in our rules as to the publication
of remains and memoirs. It is very natural that the friends of a
cultivated man who seemed about to do something, but who died before
he did it, should desire to publish to the world the grounds of their
faith, and the little symptoms of his immature excellence. But though
they act very naturally, they act very unwisely. In the present state
of the world there are too many half-excellent people: there is a
superfluity of persons who have all the knowledge, all the culture, all
the requisite taste,—all the tools, in short, of achievement, but who
are deficient in the latent impulse and secret vigour which alone can
turn such instruments to account. They have all the outward and visible
signs of future success; they want the invisible spirit, which can
only be demonstrated by trial and victory. Nothing, therefore, is more
tedious or more worthless than the posthumous delineation of the possible
successes of one who did not succeed. The dreadful remains of nice young
persons which abound among us prove almost nothing as to the future fate
of those persons, if they had survived. We can only tell that any one
is a man of genius by his having produced some work of genius. Young
men must practise themselves in youthful essays; and to some of their
friends these may seem works not only of fair promise, but of achieved
excellence. The cold world of critics and readers will not, however,
think so; that world well understands the distinction between promise and
performance, and sees that these laudable _juvenilia_ differ from good
books as much as legitimate bills of exchange differ from actual cash.
If we did not believe that Mr. Clough’s poems, or at least several
of them, had real merit, not as promissory germs, but as completed
performances, it would not seem to us to be within our province to notice
them. Nor, if Mr. Clough were now living among us, would he wish us to
do so. The marked peculiarity, and, so to say, the _flavour_ of his
mind, was a sort of truthful scepticism, which made him anxious never
to overstate his own assurance of anything; which disinclined him to
overrate the doings of his friends; and which absolutely compelled him
to underrate his own past writings, as well as his capability for future
literary success. He could not have borne to have his poems reviewed with
‘nice remarks’ and sentimental epithets of insincere praise. He was equal
to his precept:—
‘Where are the great, whom thou wouldst wish to praise thee?
Where are the pure, whom thou wouldst choose to love thee?
Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding raise thee?
Seek, seeker, in thyself; submit to find
In the stones, bread, and life in the blank mind.’
To offer petty praise and posthumous compliments to a stoic of this
temper, is like buying sugar-plums for St. Simon Stylites. We venture to
write an article on Mr. Clough, because we believe that his poems depict
an intellect in a state which is always natural ‘to such a being as man
in such a world as the present,’ which is peculiarly natural to us just
now; and because we believe that many of these poems are very remarkable
for true vigour and artistic excellence, although they certainly have
defects and shortcomings, which would have been lessened, if not removed,
if their author had lived longer and had written more.
In a certain sense there are two great opinions about everything. There
are two about the universe itself. The world as we know it is this.
There is a vast, visible, indisputable sphere, of which we never lose
the consciousness, of which no one seriously denies the existence, about
the most important part of which most people agree tolerably and fairly.
On the other hand, there is the invisible world, about which men are
not agreed at all, which all but the faintest minority admit to exist
somehow and somewhere, but as to the nature or locality of which there
is no efficient popular demonstration, no such compulsory argument as
will _force_ the unwilling conviction of any one disposed to denial.
As our minds rise, as our knowledge enlarges, as our wisdom grows, as
our instincts deepen, our conviction of this invisible world is daily
strengthened, and our estimate of its nature is continually improved.
But—and this is the most striking peculiarity of the whole subject—the
more we improve, the higher we rise, the nobler we conceive the unseen
world which is in us and about us, in which we live and move, the more
unlike that world becomes to the world which we _do_ see. The divinities
of Olympus were in a very plain and intelligible sense part and parcel
of this earth; they were better specimens than could be found below, but
they belonged to extant species; they were better editions of visible
existences; they were like the heroines whom young men imagine after
seeing the young ladies of their vicinity—they were better and handsomer,
but they were of the same sort; they had never been seen, but they
might have been seen any day. So too of the God with whom the Patriarch
wrestled: he might have been wrestled with even if he was not; he was
that sort of person. If we contrast with these the God of whom Christ
speaks—the God who has not been seen at any time, whom no man hath seen
or can see, who is infinite in nature, whose ways are past finding out,
the transition is palpable. We have passed from gods—from an invisible
world which is similar to, which is a _natural appendix_ to, the world in
which we live,—and we have come to believe in an invisible world, which
is altogether unlike that which we see, which is certainly not opposed
to our experience, but is altogether beyond and unlike our experience;
which belongs to another set of things altogether; which is, as we speak,
transcendental. The ‘possible’ of early barbarism is like the reality of
early barbarism; the ‘may be,’ the ‘great perhaps,’ of late civilisation
is most unlike the earth, whether barbaric or civilised.
Two opinions as to the universe naturally result from this fundamental
contrast. There are plenty of minds like that of Voltaire, who have
simply no sense or perception of the invisible world whatever, who have
no ear for religion, who are in the technical sense unconverted, whom no
conceivable process could convert without altering what to bystanders
and ordinary observers is their identity. They are, as a rule, acute,
sensible, discerning, and humane; but the first observation which the
most ordinary person would make as to them is, that they are ‘limited;’
they understand palpable existence; they elaborate it, and beautify and
improve it; but an admiring bystander, who can do none of these things,
who can beautify nothing, who, if he tried, would only make what is ugly
uglier, is conscious of a latent superiority, which he can hardly help
connecting with his apparent inferiority. We cannot write Voltaire’s
sentences; we cannot make things as clear as he made them; but we do
not much care for our deficiency. Perhaps we think ‘things ought not
to be so plain as all that.’ There is a hidden, secret, unknown side
to this universe, which these picturesque painters of the visible,
these many-handed manipulators of the palpable, are not aware of, which
would spoil their dexterity if it were displayed to them. Sleep-walkers
can tread safely on the very edge of a precipice; but those who see,
cannot. On the other hand, there are those whose minds have not only
been converted, but in some sense _inverted_. They are so occupied with
the invisible world as to be absorbed in it entirely; they have no true
conception of that which stands plainly before them; they never look
coolly at it, and are cross with those who do; they are wrapt up in their
own faith as to an unseen existence; they rush upon mankind with ‘Ah,
there it is! there it is!—don’t you see it?’ and so incur the ridicule of
an age.
The best of us try to avoid both fates. We strive, more or less, to ‘make
the best of both worlds.’ We know that the invisible world cannot be duly
discerned, or perfectly appreciated. We know that we see as in a glass
darkly; but still we look on the glass. We frame to ourselves some image
which we know to be incomplete, which probably is in part untrue, which
we try to improve day by day, of which we do not deny the defects,—but
which nevertheless is our ‘all;’ which we hope, when the accounts are
taken, may be found not utterly _unlike_ the unknown reality. This is,
as it seems, the best religion for finite beings, living, if we may say
so, on the very edge of two dissimilar worlds, on the very line on which
the infinite, unfathomable sea surges up, and just where the queer little
bay of this world ends. We count the pebbles on the shore, and image to
ourselves as best we may the secrets of the great deep.