HISTORY

OF

THE GIRONDISTS;

OR,

Personal Memoirs of the Patriots

OF

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

FROM UNPUBLISHED SOURCES.

BY

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE,

Author of "Travels in the Holy Land," etc.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

329 & 331 PEARL STREET,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1868.

MEMOIR OF M. DE LAMARTINE.

Alphonse de LAMARTINE was born at Mâcon in France, ou the 21st of October, 1792. His family name was De Prat, but he subsequently assumed that of Lamartine, after a maternal uncle, from whom he inherited a considerable fortune. His fa ther was major of a regiment of cavalry under Louis XVI., and his mother was grand-daughter of Madame Des Roys, undergoverness to the Princess d'Orléans. Thus attached to the ancien régime, the Lamartine family were necessarily deeply in volved by the French Revolution, and the poet's earliest recol lections are of a gloomy prison-house, in which he visited his father. His mother (who died the victim to a terrible accident) and his father, escaping the dangers of the period, retired to an obscure retreat near Milly, where the earliest years of the subject of our sketch were passed. The recollection of the domes tic serenity of his youth has never been effaced from his mind; and many times in after life, as poet and traveler, he has evoked the well-remembered images of this humble roof at Milly, with its "seven linden trees," his aged father, his mother and sisters, and all the grand and quiet scenery, so well calculated to excite and feed the imagination of a young, highly-gifted, and reflective mind.

In his first chapter of "Travels in the East," in 1832-33, he says " My mother had received from her mother, when on her death-bed, a handsome Bible of Royaumont,* froin which she taught me to read when I was very young. This Bible had engravings of sacred subjects at nearly every page. When I had read about half a page with tolerable correctness, my mother allowed me to see a picture; and, placing the book open on her knees, she explained the subject to me as a recompense for my progress. She was most tender and affectionate by nature, and the impressive and solemn tone of her clear and silvery voice added to ali she said an accent of strength, impressiveness, and love, which still resounds in my ears after six years that that voice has, alas' been mute."

It was under such influences that young Lamartine was educated until he left his native roof for the College of the Pères du Foi, at Belley, where the religious germs implanted by his mother

* The assumed name under which M. de Saci published his "History of the Old and New Testaments."

were luxuriantly developed in the melancholy retirement of the cloister; and his beautiful episode of Jocelyn is full of reminiscences borrowed from his calm and austere life in the house of the Holy Fathers.

On leaving college, M. de Lamartine passed some time at Lyons, whence he made his first brief visit to Italy, returning to Paris in the latter days of the empire. Brought up in detestation of Napoleon, he entered the world without very well knowing the course he was destined to take; at a distance from his mother and the watchful eyes of his fatherly preceptors, he passed some time, if not in actual dissipation, yet in that idleness which frequently characterizes the earlier days of men who are subsequently destined for a conspicuous and influential career. He did not neglect his severer studies, but he partook of the amusements which his age creates and enjoys-wandering with his friends in the wood of Vincennes, full of visionary dreams of lit erary fame, and especially of dramatic glory, enjoying the occasional society of Talma, who took pleasure in hearing Lamartine recite, in his melancholy and sonorous tones, unpublished fragments of a tragedy entitled Saul.

In 1813 the poet revisited Italy, where many of his Méditations were inspired by the "land of song and sunny skies ;" and one of the deepest inspirations of his Harmonies, called First Love, would make us believe in some soft and early mystery of the heart buried beneath the tomb.

On the fall of the emperor, Lamartine offered his services and his sword to the restored family, whose race had had the allegiance and blood of his ancestors, and he joined the body-guard of the royal family in 1815.

Jules Janin, the celebrated critic and reviewer, asserts that it was while on duty one night beneath the king's windows at the palace of St. Cloud, that Lamartine first yielded to the inspirations of poetry, composing verses which he next day committed to paper. After the hundred days, Lamartine retired from military service and completed his first Méditations Poëtiques, whose inspirations are mainly drawn from some lady-love, adored with all the ardor of a first passion, but of whom he was bereft by the hand of death, and bewails under the name of Elvire. In 1820, when poetry was but little appreciated in France, which had been crammed to satiety with the mythologic platitudes of the Voltairean school of versification, Lamartine-just recovering from a violent attack of illness, resulting mainly from mental excitement, which so often, while it impairs the frame, purifies and exalts the imagination went from bookseller to bookseller in Paris, offering a small volume in verse, and every where meeting with refusal, until at length one of the trade, named Nicolo, resolved on print. ing these Méditations. The volume was published at half-acrown, without name, preface, or introduction, and would unquestionably have fallen still-born from the press, but that Jules Janin-then (1820) young, though known to fame-seeing the

MEMOIR OF M. DE LAMARTINE.

unpretending brochure on a book-stall, bought it, and carried i⭑ home. Never," says this celebrated writer, "shall I forget my delight as I perused this volume of a nameless poet! For what was my surprise and admiration when suddenly my dazzled eyes and heart devoured this new world of poesy! when at length they found combined in one book all the sentiments of the soul and all the passions of the heart-all the joys of earth and all the ecstasies of heaven-all the hopes of the present and all the doubts which shadow the future. Behold, at length, I said to myself, a poet uniting in his verses all the most opposite conditions of poetry-enthusiasm and calmness, devotion and love."

Again J. Janin says" There is high matter for a poet's powers in the crumbling of thrones, and the fall of men like ears in harvest; but it is a far loftier task to float in imagination over all those battle-fields, and question the emancipated spirits wandering above their unburied forms."

So charmed, indeed, was Janin with his Premières Méditations, that he wrote a long and careful review of them, in a publication of wide circulation with which he was then connected. Thus the notice of literary cotemporaries was called to the volume. A large demand was at once created for the poems, and Lamartine, like Byron, whom he in many respects resembles, “awoke one morning and found himself famous."

Charles Nodier, one of the celebrated modern critics of France, attributes Lamartine's literary popularity to the analogy between the poetry which the author writes and the feelings of the age in which he lives; but we venture to think that it was the novelty of the style and subjects—the entire contrast to all that had preceded him (except Byron)—the melancholy which does not degenerate into affectation-the vagueness of idea which is yet not obscure--the terseness of the rhyme and the melody of the rhythm—which gave Lamartine his well-earned and well-sustained reputation; and thus in four years forty-five thousand copies of the Méditations were spread over the literary world, and Lamartine was ranked with Byron, Goethe, and Chateaubriand.

Janin then made his friendship; and as he was the cause of his fame, so has he always been his warm champion and most equitable critic.

Lamartine was always an avowed admirer of Byron; and when that great bard died, leaving his "Childe Harold" incomplete. Lamartine resolved to add a canto, and Le Dernier Chant du Pélerinage de Harold was favorably received by all lovers of the two poets-the great majority of readers in Europe. This poem is, notwithstanding its name and avowed purpose, an original composition. "In fact," says Janin, "In fact," says Janin, "Lamartine's own fancy carries him away so decidedly, that it would be in vain for him to attempt to try to imitate any poet or poem; he is too powerfully governed by his own nature, and his inspiration comes upon him with resistless force."