The two stanzas your correspondent E.R.C.B. has cited (Vol. ii., p. 71.)
are from an elegiac poem by MALHERBE (who died in 1628, at the good old
age of seventy-three), which is entitled _Consolation à Monsieur Du
Perrier sur la Mort de sa Fille_. It has always been a great favorite of
mine; for, like Gray's Elegy and the celebrated _Coplas_ of Jorge
Manrique on the death of his father, beside its philosophic moralising
strain, it has that pathetic character which makes its way at once to
the heart. I will transcribe the first four stanzas for the sake of the
beauty of the fourth:--
"Ta douleur, Du Perrier, sera done éternelle,
Et les tristes discours
Que te met en l'esprit l'amitié paternelle
L'augmenteront toujours.
"Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue,
Par un commun trépas,
Est-ce quelque dédale, où ta raison perdue
Ne se retrouve pas?
"Je sai de quels appas son enfance estoit pleine;
Et n'ay pas entrepris,
Injurieux ami, de soulager ta peine
Avecque son mépris.
"Mais elles estoit du monde, où les plus belles choses
Ont le pire destin:
Et Rose elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,
L'espace d'un matin."
The whole poem consists of twenty-one stanzas and should be read as a
whole; but there are several other striking passages. The consolation
the poet offers to his friend breathes the spirit of Epictetus:--
"De moy, déjà deux fois d'une pareille foudre
Je me suis vu perclus,
Et deux fois la raison m'a si bien fait resoudre,
Qu'il ne m'en souvient plus.
"Non qu'il ne me soit grief que la terre possède
Ce qui me fut si cher;
Mais en un accident qui n'a point de remède,
II n'en faut point chercher."
Then follow the two stanzas cited by your correspondent, and the closing
verse is:--
"De murmurer contre-elle et perdre patience,
Il est mal-à-propos:
Vouloir ce que Dieu veut, est la seule science
Qui nous met en repos."
The stanza beginning "Le pauvre en sa cabane," is an admirable imitation
of the "Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede," &c. of Horace, which a
countryman of the poet is said to have less happily rendered "La pâle
mort avec son pied de cheval," &c.
Malherbe has been duly appreciated in France: his works, in one edition,
are accompanied by an elaborate comment by Menage and Chevreau: Racan
wrote his life, and Godeau, Bishop of Vence, a panegyrical preface. He
was a man of wit, and ready at an impromptu; yet it is said, that in
writing a consolotary poem to the President de Verdun, on the death of
his wife, he was so long {105} in bringing his verses to that degree of
perfection which satisfied his own fastidious taste, that the president
was happily remarried, and the consolation not at all required.
Bishop Hurd, in a note on the _Epistle to Augustus_, p. 72., says:
"Malherbe was to the French pretty much what Horace had been to
Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the
lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of
their old poets. And, as their talents of a _good ear_, _elegant
judgment_, and _correct expression_, were the same, they
presented her to the public in all the air and grace, and yet
_severity_, of beauty, of which her form was susceptible."