Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845

The MadonnaWith mighty pictures by the Great of OldNe'er did I long to deck my cell, intendingThat visitors should gape and peer, commendingIn Connoisseurship's jargon quaint and cold.One picture only would I aye beholdOn these still walls, 'mid these my toils unending;One, and but one: From mists of cloudy goldThe Virgin Mother, o'er her Babe-God bending—Her eyes with grandeur, His with reason bright—Should calm look down, in glory and in light,While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven.And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine:Thou, my Madonna, thou to me wert given,Divinest form of beauty most divine!

The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of samples, selected from Púshkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled André Chénier. This composition is founded upon one of the most well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the lines. The story of Chénier's imprisonment and untimely death, as well as the various allusions to the beautiful verses addressed by him to his fellow-prisoner, La Jeune Captive, to his calm bearing on the scaffold, and to the memorable exclamation which was made in the last accents ever uttered by his lips; all these things are, doubtless, sufficiently familiar to our readers; or, if not, a single reference, either to any of the thousand books describing that most bloody and yet powerfully attractive period of French history—nay, the simple turning to the article Chénier, in any biographical dictionary, will be amply sufficient to recall to the memory the principal facts of the sad story which Púshkin has made the subject of his noble elegy. It will be therefore unnecessary for us to detail the life and death of the hero of the poem, and we shall only throw together, in these short preliminary remarks, the few quotations and notes appended by the Russian poet to his work. These will not be found of any very formidable extent; and as the poem itself is not of a considerable length, we trust that the various passages, which these quotations are adduced to illustrate, will be sufficiently perceptible, without our submitting to the necessity of appending them in the form of marginal annotations or foot-notes, a necessity which would force us to load the text with those unsightly appendages to books in general, and to poetry in particular—the asterisks and daggers of marginal reference.

The supposed soliloquy of the martyred poet, which forms the principal portion of Púshkin's elegiac ode, is little else than an amplification, or pathetic and dignified paraphrase, of the exquisite composition actually written by Chénier on the eve of his execution; a composition become classical in the French literature:—

"Comme un dernier rayon, comme un dernier zephyrAnime le soir d'un beau jour,Au pied de l'échafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre."

Of the few persons to whom allusion is made in the verses, Abel, Fanny, and the Captive Maid, all that it is necessary to know is, that the first was one of his friends, the companion of his early happiness, and the fellow-labourer of his early studies—"Abel, doux confidant de mes jeunes mystères;" the second, one of his mistresses; and the third, a young lady, Mlle. de Coigny, who was for some time his fellow-prisoner, and the person to whom the poet addressed the touching verses which we have mentioned above. Mlle. de Coigny was the "Jeune Captive."

In justification of the very emphatic tone in which Púshkin has recorded the noble generosity and self-sacrifice which conducted Chénier to the revolutionary scaffold, it will be sufficient to quote the words of De la Touche, and to refer the reader to Chénier's Iambics, which drew down upon his head, and with good cause, the hatred and suspicion of Robespierre and his subordinate demons:—"Chénier avait mérité la haine des factieux. Il avait célébré Charlotte Corday, flétri Collot d'Herbois, attaqué Robespierre. On sait que le Roi avait demandé à l'Assemblée par une lettre pleine de calme et de dignité, le droit d'appeler au peuple du jugement qui le condamnait. Cette lettre, signée dans la nuit du 17 au 18 Janvier, est d'André Chénier."—H. De la Touche.

The unfortunate poet was executed on the 8th of Thermidor; i.e. the day before the fall of Robespierre. The fatal tumbril which bore Chénier to the guillotine, conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher, his friend:—"Ils parlèrent de la poesie à leurs derniers moments; pour eux, après l'amitiè, c'était la plus belle chose de la terre. Racine fût l'objet de leur entretien et de leur derrière admiration. Ils voulurent réciter ses vers; ils choisirent la prémière scène d'Andromaque."—H. de la Touche.

At the place of execution, Chénier struck his forehead with his hand, and exclaimed—"Pourtant j'avais quelque chose là!"

André Chénier"Ainsi, triste et captif, ma lyre toutefois S'éveillait."While earth, with wonderment and fear,O'er Byron's urn is sadly bending,And unto Europe's dirge its earBy Dante's side his shade is lending,Another shade my voice doth crave,Who erst, unsung, unwept, unfriended,In the grim Terror-days descendedFrom the red scaffold, to the grave.Love, Peace, the Woodlands, did inspireThat Poet's dreams, sublime and free;And to that Bard a stranger's lyreShall ring—shall ring to him and thee.The lifted axe—what! cannot slaughter tire?—For a new victim calls again.The bard is ready; hark, his pensive lyreAwakes its last, its parting strain.At dawn he dies—a mob-feast hot and gory;But that young Poet's latest breathWhat doth it sing? Freedom it sings and glory,'Twas faithful even unto death."     *    *    *    *    **    *    *    *    *    **    *    *    *    *    **    *    *    *    *    **     *   "I shall not see ye, days of bliss and freedom:The scaffold calls. My last hours wearilyDrag on. At dawn I die. The headsman's hand defiling,By the long hair will lift my head on highAbove the crowd unmoved and smiling.Farewell! My homeless dust, O friends! shall ne'er reposeIn that dear spot where erst we pass'd 'neath sunny bowersIn science and in feasts our careless days, and choseBeforehand for our urns a place among the flowers.And if, my friends, in after yearsWith sadness my remembrance moves ye,O, grant my dying prayer!—the prayer of one who loves ye:Weep, loved ones, weep my lot, with still and silent tears;Beware, or by those drops suspicion ye may waken;In this bad age, ye know, e'en tears for crimes are taken:Brother for brother now, alas! must weep no more.And yet another prayer: you've listen'd o'er and o'erUnto my idle rhymes, my spirit's careless breathings,Mournful and gay by turns, traditions and bequeathingsOf all my vanish'd youth. And hopes, and joy, and pain,And tears, and love, my friends, those burning leaves contain,Yea, they contain my life. From Abel and from FannyGather them all; for they are gifts of Muses many.Keep them. The stern cold world, and fashion's gilded hall,Shall never hear of them. Alas! my head must fallUntimely: my unripe and crude imaginationTo glory hath bequeath'd no grand and high creation;I shall die all. But ye, who love my parting soul,Keep for yourselves, O friends! my true though simple scroll;And when the storm is past, in a fond crowd assembleSometimes to read my lines—to read, to weep, and tremble,And weep, and read again, and say—Yes, this is he;These are his words. And I, from death's cold fetter free,Will rise unseen and sit among ye in the bower;And drink your tears, as drinks the desert-sand the shower—In sweet oblivion.... Then shall, haply, be repaidAll my love-woes, and thou, haply, my Captive Maid,Will list my love-song then, pale, mournful, but relenting...."But for a while the Bard ceased here his sad lamenting,Ceased for a moment's space, and his pale head he bow'd.The spring-days of his youth, loves, woes, a busy crowd,Flitted before him. Girls with languid eyes and tender,And feasts, and songs, and eyes of dark and burning splendour,All, all revived; and far to the dim past he flew,Dream-wing'd. But soon stream'd forth his murmur-song anew:—"Why luredst thou me astray, thou Genius evil-fated?For love, for quiet arts, and peace, I was created;Why did I leave the shade, and life's untroubled way,And liberty, and friends, and peace, more dear than they!Fate lull'd my golden youth, and cast a glamour round me,And joy, with careless hand, and happiness, had crown'd me,And the Muse shared my hours of leisure, pure and free.In those so joyous nights, lighted with friendly glee,How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter—Waking the household gods—how rang each shouting rafter!Then, weary of the feast, I from the wine-cup turn'd,For a new sudden fire within my bosom burn'd,And to my lady's bower I flew upon the morrow,And found her half in wrath and half in girlish sorrow,And with fond threats, and tears bedimming her soft eyes,She cursed my age, still drown'd in ceaseless revelries,She drove me from her, wept, forgave, and pouting chided:How sweetly then my time like some bright river glided!Ah, why from this calm life, in youth's most golden prime,Plunged I in this abyss, this seething hell of crime,Of passions fierce and fell, black ignorance, and madness,Malice, and lust of gold! O visionary Gladness!Where hast thou lured me, where? And was it then for me,A worshipper of love, of peace, and poesy,To brawl with sworders vile, wretches who stab for hire!Was it for me to tame the restive courser's fireTo shake the rein, or wield the mercenary blade!And yet, what shall I leave?—A trace that soon shall fade,Of blind and senseless zeal; of courage—idle merit!—Be dumb, my voice, be dumb! And thou, thou lying spirit,Thou word, thou empty sound....Oh no!Be still, ye murmurings of weakness!And thou, O Bard! with rapture glow:Thou hast not bent, with slavish meekness,Before our age's shame thy brow;The splendours of the wicked spurning,Thou wav'dst a torch, terrific burning,Whose lurid lustre fiercely fellOn that foul nest of vulture-rulers;Loud rang thy lash and reach'd them well.Around them hiss'd thy winged verse;Thou did'st invoke upon them the avenger;Thou sang'st to Marat's worshippersThe dagger and the Virgin-Nemesis!When that old holy man strove from the axe to tearWith a chain-laden hand his master's crowned head,Thou gav'st thy hand unto the noble pair;Before ye, struck with horror, fellThat Areopagus of hell.Be proud, O Bard! and thou, fiend-wolf of blood and guile,Sport with my head awhile;'Tis in thy clutch. But hark! and know, thou Godless one,My shout shall follow thee, my triumph-laugh of joy!Aye, drink our blood, live to destroy:Thou'rt but a pigmy still; thy race shall soon be run.An hour will come, an hour thou can'st not flee—Thou shalt fall, Tyrant! IndignationWill Wake at last. The sobs and mournings of a nationWill waken weary destiny.But now I go.... 'Tis time.... But thou shalt follow me!I wait thy coming."Thus rang the Bard's dying lay,And all was still around. The dim lamp's quiet ray'Gan pale before the gleam of morning,Into that dungeon stream'd the dawn-light of the day,Upon the grate he bends a glance unshrinking....A noise. They come, they call. There is no hope! 'Tis they!Locks, bolts, and bars, and chains, are clinking.They call.... Stay, stay; one day, but one day more,And he shall live in libertyA mighty citizen, when all is o'er,Amid a nation great and free.The silent train moves on. There stands the headsman grim;But the Bard's path of death, the ray of friendship lighteth,Murmuring Glory's name, he mounts—His brow he smiteth—Weep, Muse, for him!

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

PART XVIII

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with windRage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"Shakspeare.

On returning to London I found the world in the "transition state." The spirit of the people was changed; the nature of the war was changed; the principle of the great parties in the legislature was changed. A new era of the contest had arrived; and, in the midst of the general perplexity as to the nature of the approaching events, every one exhibited a conviction, that when they came their magnitude would turn all the struggles of the past into child's play.

I, too, had my share in the change. I had now passed my public novitiate, and had obtained my experience of statesmanship on a scale, if too small for history, yet sufficiently large to teach me the working of the machinery. National conspiracy, the council-chamber, popular ebullition, and the tardy but powerful action of public justice, had been my tutors; and I was now felt, by the higher powers, to be not unfit for trust in a larger field. A seat in the English House of Commons soon enabled me to give satisfactory evidence that I had not altogether overlooked the character of the crisis; and, after some interviews with the premier, his approval of my conduct in Ireland was followed by the proposal of office, with a seat in the cabinet.

I had thus attained, in the vigour of life, a distinction for which hundreds, perhaps thousands, had laboured through life in vain. But mine was no couch of rosy prosperity. The period was threatening. The old days of official repose were past, never to return. The state of Europe was hourly assuming an aspect of the deepest peril. The war had hitherto been but the struggle of armies; it now threatened to be the struggle of nations. It had hitherto lived on the natural resources of public expenditure; it now began to prey upon the vitals of the kingdom. The ordinary finance of England was to be succeeded by demands pressing heavily on the existing generation, and laying a hereditary burden on all that were to follow. The nature of our antagonist deepened the difficulty. All the common casualties of nations were so far from breaking the enemy down, that they only gave him renewed power. Poverty swelled his ranks; confiscation swelled his coffers; bankruptcy gave him strength; faction invigorated his government; and insubordination made him invincible. In the midst of this confusion, even a new terror arose. The democracy of France, after startling Europe, had seemed to be sinking into feebleness and apathy, when a new wonder appeared in the political hemisphere, too glaring and too ominous to suffer our eyes to turn from it for a moment. The Consulate assumed the rule of France. Combining the fiery vigour of republicanism with the perseverance of monarchy, it now carried the whole force of the country into foreign fields. Every foreign capital began to tremble. The whole European system shook before a power which smote it with the force of a cannon-ball against a crumbling bastion. The extraordinary man who now took the lead in France, had touched the string which vibrated in the heart of every native of the soil. He had found them weary of the crimes of the democracy; he told them that a career of universal supremacy was open before them. He had found them degraded by the consciousness of riot and regicide; he told them that they were the chevaliers of the new age, and destined to eclipse the chevaliers of all the ages past. His Italian campaigns, by their rapidity, their fine combinations, and their astonishing success, had created a new art of war. He had brought them romantic triumphs from the land of romance. Day by day the populace of the capital were summoned to see pageants of Italian standards, cannon, and prisoners. Every courier that galloped through the streets brought tidings of some new conquest; and every meeting of the Councils was employed in announcing the addition of some classic province, the overthrow of some hostile diadem, or the arrival of some convoy of those most magnificent of all the spoils of war, the treasures of the Italian arts. France began to dream of the conquest of the world.

The contrast between her past calamities and her present splendour, powerfully heightened the illusion. France loves illusion; she has always rejoiced in glittering deceptions, even with the perfect knowledge that they were deceptions; and here stood the most dazzling of political charlatans, the great wonder-worker, raising phantoms of national glory even out of the charnel. The wrecks of faction, the remnants of the monarchy, and the corpses lying headless in the shadow of the guillotine, gave all semblance to the conception—France was a charnel. Her people, by nature rushing into extremes, wild and fierce, yet gallant and generous, had become at length conscious of the national fall in the eyes of Europe. They had been scandalized by the rudeness, the baseness, and the brutishness, of rabble supremacy. They gazed upon their own crimsoned hands and tarnished weapons with intolerable disgust; and it was in this moment of depression that they saw a sudden beam of military renown shot across the national darkness. After so long defeat that it had extinguished all but the memory of her old triumphs, France was a conqueror; after a century of helpless exhaustion, she had risen into almost supernatural vigour; after a hundred years, scarcely marked by a single victory, her capital rang with the daily sound of successful battles against the veterans of Frederick and Maria Theresa; after lingering for generations in the obscurity so bitter to the popular heart, France had been suddenly thrown into the broadest lustre of European sovereignty. The world was changed; and the limits of that change offered only a more resistless lure to the popular passion, for their being still indistinct to the keenest eye of man.

But our chief struggle was at home, and the reaction of our foreign disasters came with terrible weight upon a cabinet already tottering. We saw its fate. Days and nights of the most anxious consultation, could not relieve us from the hourly increasing evidence, that the Continent was on the verge of ruin. The voice of Opposition, reinforced by the roar of the multitude, could no longer be shut out by the curtains of the council-chamber. Fox, always formidable, was never more confident and more popular, than when he made the House ring with prophecies of national downfall. His attacks were now incessant. He flung his hand-grenades night after night into our camp, and constantly with still greater damage. We still fought, but it was the fight of despair. Pitt was imperturbable; but there was not one among his colleagues who did not feel the hopelessness of calling for public reliance, when, in every successive debate, we heard the leader of Opposition contemptuously asking, what answer we had to the Gazette crowded with bankruptcy? to the resolutions of great bodies of the people denouncing the war? or to the deadly evidence of its effects in the bulletin which he held in his hand, announcing some new defeat of our allies; some new treaty of submission; some new barter of provinces for the precarious existence of foreign thrones?

In all my recollections of public life, this was the period of the deepest perplexity. The name of the great minister has been humiliated by those who judge of the past only by the present. But then all was new. The general eye of statesmanship had been deceived by the formal grandeur of the continential sovereignties. They had lain untouched, like the bodies of their kings, with all their armour on, and with every feature unchanged; and such they might have remained for ages to come, had not a new force broken open their gilded and sculptured shrines, torn off their cerements, and exposed them to the light and air. Then a touch extinguished them; the armour dropped into dust; the royal robes dissolved; the royal features disappeared; and the whole illusion left nothing but its moral behind.

It can be no dishonour to the memory of the first of statesmen, to acknowledge that he had not the gift of prophecy. Europe had never before seen a war of the people. The burning passions, rude vigour, and remorseless daring of the multitude, were phenomena of which man knows no more than he knows of the materials of destruction which lie hid in the central caverns of the globe, and which some new era may be suffered to develope, for the new havoc of posterity. Even to this hour, I think that the true source of revolutionary triumph has been mistaken. It was not in the furious energy of its factions, nor in the wild revenge of the people, nor even in the dazzling view of national conquest. These were but gusts of the popular tempest, currents of the great popular tide. But the mighty mover of all was the sudden change from the disgusts and depressions of serfdom, into a sense that all the world of possession lay before the bold heart and the ruthless hand. Every form of wealth and enjoyment was offered to the man who had begun life in the condition of one chained to the ground, and who could never have hoped to change his toil but for the grave. But the barrier was now cast down, and all were free to rush in. The treasury of national honours was suddenly flung open, and all might share the spoil. This was the true secret of the astonishing power of the Revolution. The man who was nothing to-day, might be everything to-morrow. The conscript might be a captain, a colonel, a general, before the Austrian or Prussian soldier could be a corporal. Who can wonder at the march of France, or the flight of her enemies?

Although every night now produced a debate, and the demand on the activity and vigilance of ministers was incessant and exhausting, the real debates in both Houses were few in comparison with those of later times. In those pitched battles of the great parties, their whole strength was mustered from every quarter; the question was long announced; and its decision was regarded as giving the most complete measure of the strength of the Cabinet and Opposition. One of these nights came, unfortunately for ministers, on the very day in which the bulletin arrived, announcing the signature of the first Austrian armistice. The passage of the Tyrol had stripped Austria of its mountain barrier. Terror had done the rest; and the armistice was signed within three marches of Vienna! The courier who had been sent to the Austrian ambassador, and had been permitted to pass through France, reported the whole nation to be in a frenzy of triumph. He had every where seen civic processions, military displays, and illuminations in the cities. The exultation of the people had risen to the utmost height of national enthusiasm; and Europe was pronounced, by every Frenchman, from the Directory to the postilion, to be at their feet.

This intelligence was all but fatal. If a shower of cannon-balls had been poured in upon the ministerial benches, it could scarcely have produced a more sweeping effect. It was clear that the sagacity of the "independent members"—only another name for the most flexible portion of the House—was fully awake to the contingency; the "waiters upon Providence," as they were called, with no very reverent allusion, were evidently on the point of deciding for themselves; and the "King's friends"—a party unknown to the constitution, but perfectly knowing, and known by, the treasury—began to move away by small sections; and, crowded as the clubs were during the day, I never saw the minister rise with so few of his customary troops behind him. But the Opposition bench was crowded to repletion; and their leader sat looking round with good-humoured astonishment, and sometimes with equally good-humoured burlesque, on the sudden increase of his recruits. The motion was in answer to a royal message on continental subsidies. Nothing could have been more difficult than the topic at that juncture. But I never listened to Pitt with more genuine admiration. Fox, in his declamatory bursts, was superior to every speaker whom I have ever heard. His appearance of feeling was irresistible. It seemed that, if one could have stripped his heart, it could scarcely have shown its pulsations more vividly to the eye, than they transpired from his fluent and most eloquent tongue. But if Fox was the most powerful of declaimers, Pitt was the mightiest master of the language of national council. He, too, could be occasionally glowing and imaginative. He could even launch the lighter weapons of sarcasm with singular dexterity; but his true rank was as the ruler of Empire, and his true talent was never developed but when he spoke for the interests of Empire.

On this night he was more earnest and more impressive than ever; the true description would have been, more imperial. He spoke, less like a debater, than like one who held the sceptre in his hand; and one who also felt that he was transmitting his wisdom as a parting legacy to a great people.