Page:A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.djvu/393

360 Odéon in 1848, and 'Le Cyclope' after Euripides, published in 1863. M. Autran is a member of the French Academy, and is celebrated for his knowledge of the classics.

To a Young Poetess. The verses we cite here from Victor de Laprade are not in his usual vein. They are graceful and musical, as become verses addressed to a young lady and a poetess. His ordinary vein is very different—nervous, powerful, lofty, and religious—one would say the poems of a spiritual athlete.

In truth, Laprade is one of the great poets of France, and may take rank with the greatest names of the time. The first work of Laprade, 'Les Parfums de Madeleine,' induced his friend M. Quinet to advise him to relinquish the bar and take up literature as a profession, and to enable him to follow the advice Quinet offered to procure an appointment for him. Then came 'Psyche.' It 'lightened the antique heathen legend with the Christian idea.' Psyche is the 'pagan Eve.' Like Ballanche in his 'Orphée,' like Quinet in his 'Prométhée,' like Wordsworth in his 'Laodamia' he caused a nobler and a higher sentiment—a sentiment unknown to the ancients—to gleam darkly forth from the story for which he in as indebted to them. The sentiment was a little vague, but it was there, and though the vulgar accused him of pantheism, the initiated could follow him, especially with the aid of the able preface. After the publication of this work in 1837, Laprade undertook a journey to the Alps. 'Here,' says his French biographer M. Ch Alexandre, 'Nature made him drunk with her beauties on the high tops of the mountains.' He has often made the voyage since with a sack and a stick like a mountaineer. 'Forez,' continues M. Alexandre, 'had made him a poet rustic and domestic, the family,—a poet religions of the past, Provence;—a poet Athenian, but Switzerland made him the poet of Nature.' He descended from the Alps quite transfigured:

He brought back with him a work of great freshness and force, the 'Odes and Poems' which appeared in January 1843. Of this work M. Alexandre says—'Nature had never been sung about, as it was in this book. Weber alone, in music, has this strange friendship for the elements. It is a sort of poetry at once végétale at marmoréenne. It has the whiteness of the marble and the sap of the oak.'

'The poet,'—we continue our quotation from M. Alexandre, merely translating as before his French,—'went to enjoy his success at Paris, and make acquaintance with the great masters of the time. He penetrated to the Abbaye-au-Bois guided by Ballanche, and saw Lamartine, Lammenais, and George Sand. He was eager (affamé) to contemplate all the grand poets. In 1835, not being able to see Victor Hugo from the Place Royale, where he had posted himself before the poet's house, he seized a nail and bore it off in triumph as a relic. He has got it still. Vive l'enthousiasme!'—Sir Walter