ble turn their eyes to thee without being dazzled by it. These are the sole means of finding the happiness you want. The Great Mind has only struck thee to render thee sensible to the woes of thy brethren, and that thou mayest seek to soothe them. If thy heart be like to the well of the crocodile, it is also like those trees which only yield their balm to heal the wounds of others when wounded themselves by the steel.' Thus spoke the fortuneteller of the desert of Scambra, to the woman of the Apalachean mountains, and retired again into his cavern in the rock." Adieu, my dear friend, I embrace you, and love you with all my heart. 203 ON THE POET GILBERT.* WHEN we see M. Gilbert poor and without a name, attack the powerful faction of men of letters, who in the last century dispensed fame and fortune;-when we see him in this unequal contest struggle almost alone against the opinions most in fashion, and the highest reputations, we cannot but acknowledge in his success the prodigious empire of talent. A collection of Heroics, of translations, and fugitive pieces, under the title of the Literary Debut, announced M. Gilbert to the world of letters. A young man who seeks his own talent, is very liable to mistake it; the Juvenal of the eighteenth century deceived himself with respect to his. The espistle from Eloisa to Abelard, had revived a species of poetry which had been almost forgotten since the days of Ovid. The Heroide, a poem, partly historic, partly elegiac, has this strong objection that it rests on declamation and common place expressions of love. The poet, making his hero speak for himself, can neither elevate his language to the proper inspired mark, suited to the lyre, nor descend to the familiar tone of a letter. The subject of Eloisa alone permitted at once all the naivete of passion, and all the art of the Muse, because religion lends a pomp to language without depriv * He died in the year 1780. See the remarkable account of his death in the Historical and Literary Memoirs and Anecdoties by Baron de Grimm, English translation, anno. 1780. ing it of its simplicity. Love then assumes a character at once sublime and formidable, when the most serious occupations, the holy temple itself, the sacred altars, the terrible mysteries of religion all recal the idea of it, are all associated with its recollections.* The history of Madame de Gange did not present M. Gilbert with as powerful an engine as religion. Yet fraternal affection, contrasted with jealousy, might have furnished him with some very pathetic situations. In the Heroide of Dido, the poet has translated some of the verses of the Eneid very happily, particularly the non ignara malis. In woe myself, I learned to weep for woe. I know not however whether this sentiment be in itself as just as it is amiable; it is certain at least that there are men whose hearts adversity seems to harden; they have shed all their tears for themselves. Nature had given M. Gilbert some fancy and much assurance; so that he succeeded better in the Ode, than in Heroics. The exordium of his Last Judgment is very fine. What benefits have all your savage virtues produced Oppress'd on all sides, cast down, you crouch Under the feet of the wicked whose boldness is prosperous. Let this God come then if ever he existed! Since virtue is the subject of misfortune Since the child of sorrow calls and is not heard He must sleep in Heaven beneath his silent thunders. The sound of the trumpet which awakens the dead from the tomb, answers alone to the question of the wick *MASSILLON. The Prodigal Son. ed. It would be difficult to find a turn more animated, more lyric. Every one knows the lines which conclude this ode. The Eternal has broken his useless thunder,- The fine expression widow of a king people, speaking of Rome, which is in the ode addressed to Monsieur upon his journey to Piedmont :-the apostrophe of the impious to Christ in the ode upon the Jubilee: we have irretrievably convicted thee of imposture oh Christ! with the poet's reflection in speaking again in his own character, after this blasphemy: thus spoke in past times a people of false sages;-Thunder personified which would select the head of the blasphemer to crush it with its power, if the time of mercy were not come ;-the people marching in the steps of the cross, those old warriors who to appease the vengeance of the lord go to offer laurels, and the sufferings of a body of which the tomb already possesses the half;-all these things appear to us in the true nature of the ode which: Winging to heaven its ambitious flight Holds in its measures, commerce with the gods. Why then should M. Gilbert, who joins boldness of expressian to the lyric movement, not be placed in the same rank with Malherbe, Racine, and Rousseau ?—It is that he fails frequently in harmony of numbers, without which there can be no real poetry. Poetic imagery and thoughts, cannot of themselves constitute a poet, there must be also harmony of versification, a melodious combination of sounds; the chords of the lyre must be heard to vibrate. Unfortunately the secret of this divine harmony cannot be taught, a happy ear is the gift of nature. M: Gilbert does not understand those changes of tone which cross each other, and, by the mixture of their accords, often communicate a heavenly transport a delicious rapture to the soul.* In some few strophes he has somewhat seized this harmony so necessary to the lyriac ge nius. In speaking of the battle of Ushant he exclaims: Haste to revenge, the time's arrived When these our haughty foes so oft forsworn Dunkirk invokes you, hear you not her voice M. Gilbert has sometimes laid down the lyre, to assume the voice of the orator. "There was once a country," says he, in the peroration of his eulogium of Léopold Duke of Lorraine, "there was once a country in which the subjects had a right to judge their master, at the moment when Providence calls monarchs to himself to require from them an account of their actions. They assembled in a throng around his body, which was exposed on the side of the tomb, when one insulted the unfortunate corpse by saying: My innocent family were poisoned by thy orders.Another exclaimed: He plundered me of all my property.-Another: Men were in his eyes no more than the flocks that graze the fields; all condemned him to become the prey of ravenous birds. But if he had been just, then the whole nation with hair dishevelled, uttering dreadful cries, assembled to deplore their loss, and to raise for him a superb mausoleum, while Longinus, chap. 32. |