Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/86

 70 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES probably been composed in a grotto (at Belle-Isle), which more than a century after was still called the grotto of Saint- Amant, and " to which he retired when he was sick with too much wine." Gautier says : " It is a very fine piece, and of the strangest novelty for the epoch in which it appeared. It con- tains in germ almost all the literary revolution which afterwards broke out. In it, nature is studied im- mediately, and not through the works of previous masters. You find nothing in the poets called classi- cal of that time which has this freshness of colouring, this transparency of light, this vagrant and melancholy reverie, this calm and sweet style, which give so great a charm to the ode on * Solitude.' " His friend Faret's eulogium must be cited for its ingenious quaintness, in the style of the time. He assures us that if all those who admired it had followed their first impulse after reading it, "Solitude" would have been destroyed by its own praise ! Three lines have been specially and most justly admired ; they are so beautiful that they must be given in the original : — " J'escoute h. demy transporte, Le bruit des aisles du Silence, Qui vole dans robscurite." By-the-bye this poem was translated into I^tin by Etienne Bachot, a famous doctor, who wrote also (is that other famous doctor, John Brown, of Edin- burgh, aware of the fact?) Ilorce Stibsecivce. I have already mentioned the " Contemplator," which, with M. Livet, I am inclined to regard as even more profound and tender than the "Solitude." In Le Soleil Levant ("The Sunrise") there is a charming