This sensibility, half sensual and half moral, which we observe in Werter and in Rousseau, is a bad preservative against thoughts of suicide. "To be carnally-minded is death," says St. Paul; "but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace." Pamela and Werter admirably exemplify, in our opinion, this verse of St. Paul. Pamela, who resists the passion of her master and the inclination of her own heart,-Pamela lives, by virtue of a strength of mind elevated by religion, above material emotions. To be spiritually-minded is life and peace. Werter, overcome by his passion-and a passion which borrows much from the ardor of the senses-Werter dies; and it is his passion, it is his sensibility, which has become the mistress of his soul, which drives him to the commission of suicide. But among the different passions which urge men to suicide, there are differences which it is well to remark, especially when we study the manner in which literature expresses and represents the idea of suicide; for on the expression of this idea and this emotion with which it inspires us, depends much of the passion which it gives birth to. We are more disposed to excuse the suicide which a strong and violent passion urges us to commit, and especially one of those passions which are common to all men, than the suicide which a particular passion or an exceptional malady produces. The more we are disposed to excuse, the more we are disposed to be affected; for there is always some approbation mingled with our pity. Thus Werter, who dies from love, affects us more than Chatterton, who dies from wounded pride and from a literary vanity, which, of all the vanities in the world, is the most sensitive, but for which the public has the least indulgence, because it is that with which it sympathizes the least. But what is singular, and at the same time melancholy to notice, is that, in proportion as suicides are more numerous, it seems that the causes are less serious. People do not now kill themselves to defend their honor, as Pamela contemplated, or from love, like Werter. By cultivating our sensibility too assiduously, we have acquired too sensitive a temperament. We groan at the least touch; every movement becomes a shock, every scratch becomes a wound, and all opposition to our will becomes a cause of despair. The soul has become a Sybarite; it can no longer even support the wrinkle of a rose-leaf. This sickly sensibility, made keener by pride, constitutes the character of Chatterton, as he has been represented on the stage, and it is for this reason that his suicide affects us so little. Chatterton does not kill himself as a desperate lover, or as a Stoic. He kills himself because his vanity has been wounded, and because, instead of honoring his genius, the lord mayor of London advises him to abandon making verses, and offers to make him his valet-de-chambre. This would perhaps show that the lord mayor was a fool, but is not a sufficient reason why Chatterton should commit suicide. Would it not, indeed, be holding our life very cheap, to place it at the mercy of every fool whom we may happen to meet? His suicide was caused by wounded pride. . . "Damned country! the abode of scorn, be forever accursed!" exclaimed he, after having read a journal which pretended that he was not the author of his poems, and the letter in which the lord mayor offers to take him into his service. (Taking the vial of opium.) "Oh my soul, I have sold you!-I redeem you with this." (He drinks the opium.) "Free from all! equal to all at present! Welcome first hour of repose that I have enjoyed! Last hour of my life, welcome dawn of an eternal day! Farewell humiliations, hatreds, sarcasms, uncertainties, anguishes, miseries, tortures of the soul, farewell! Oh, with happiness I bid you all farewell!" Thus the calumny of a journal and the impertinence of a letter, are the motives of the suicide of Chatterton. When Cato killed himself, it was at least for more than that. We are aware, that the ingenious author of Chatterton has attached to his hero a theory with regard to the duties which society is obliged to fulfill towards poets. It must, when it discovers genius, sustain it, encourage it, and free it from the cares and embarrassments of life: in short, genius ought to have its civil list. We would cordially consent, and our contribution would be ready, if we could only know by what sign to recognize it. Does it show itself by the display of a sensitive vanity? by a quickness to be discouraged? by the abortion of its hopes? by the esteem of itself and a contempt for others? Alas! according to this account, genius runs the streets; and very foolish would he be who would make himself debtor, when he could, by puffing his own de What! fects, become the creditor. We will attempt to describe the characteristics of genius; but it seems that genius has a mark too much forgotten in this age; a mark which characterized it formerly in an extraordinary manner. Patience and vitality are its essential elements. See Dante, Homer, Tasso, Milton,* and a host of others. They did not escape misfortune; they lived, nevertheless, because they had within them that strength which enabled them to bear the pains of life. God had not given them genius, as a light perfume escapes from a vial when it is shaken, but as a generous viaticum which sustains man during a long voyage. you have within you a divine and immortal thought, and cannot support the ennuis of life, the scorn of fools, the malignity of calumniators, the coldness of the indifferent! What! you walk with your head in the heavens, and you complain because an insect, concealed in the grass, stings your feet as you pass by!-Protect genius against its own infirmities and weaknesses, say some people.-But we distrust that genius which can only live in a hot-house; and we expect of this sickly plant, neither flowers which have perfume, nor fruit which have flavor. They say, that genius wants but two things: Life and revery, bread and time. Bread! God has said to man, that he should only eat of it by the sweat of his brow. Why should genius be dispensed from the law of labor, which is the law of God?" My work," says the genius, “is to dream." Alas! Revery is not a profession, which society can recognize and reward. It is wrong, say some; it is to genius that we are indebted for poetry, and poetry must have its price in the world. Yes; but it does obtain the best price which man can pay to man; it obtains glory. And see what admirable justice in this distribution which man makes of glory to great poets! Until the day when poetry leaps forth, grand and beautiful, from the long reveries of the poet, no one knows whether the dream would be barren or fruitful, and if there would remain to the man who awoke, any thing of the enchantments of the man who had slept. * "And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that is praiseworthy."-MILTON. For if the dreamer, after he had awoke, were to relate to me his nonsense, why should I reward him? Why should I say to him: Dream on, dreamer of foolish dreams; while you are sleeping, I will work for you? No! To the uncertain work of revery, man is right in offering only the uncertain hope of glory. It is by means of the hope of glory that he supports his revery, not knowing what his dreams will bring forth. But the day when poetry bursts forth from the brain of the divine dreamer, then in addition to glory, man gives to genius, especially in our own times, honor and fortune; and often, what seems so extraordinary, at the time when it pleases God to take from genius some of its own strength and beauty; as if when man is anxious to add to the gifts which God has given him, God takes back his own, in order to avoid the mingling of the treasures of earth with the treasures of heaven. We have examined the different vicissitudes of sentiment which man has of his own life. We have seen how ancient and modern literature expressed them, and what a remarkable difference there is between them. One inspiring the love of life, the other the love of death; one borrowing its images and its ideas from every thing which lives, from all that is embellished with the light and brilliancy of day; the other deriving its thoughts from the meditation of human destiny, and its emotions in the spectacle, and in contemplations, of death; one more simple, the other more subtle and refined; the one which represents the beautiful in the arts and the true in morals, the other which, in the arts, represents the exaggerated and the fantastic, and which in morals, represents materialism, disguised under the fine name of sensibility; in a word, one more wholesome and more moral than the other, because, in making us love life, it makes us love the duties which we are called upon to discharge; because it encourages man to be patient and firm; while the other, in inspiring us with a disgust for life, inspires us also with a disgust of our duties, and makes us love indolence in expecting nothing but annihilation. VIII. OF PATERNAL LOVE-THE OLD HORACE, DON DIEGO AND GERONTE IN HORATIUS-THE CID AND THE LIAR OF CORNEILLE-TRIBOULET IN THE LE ROI S'AMUSE, BY VICTOR HUGO. We do not wish to define paternal love. It is the merit of dramatic literature not to define sentiments, but to put them into action. We ought then, in our criticisms upon this literature, to distrust our capacity for analysis and definition; we ought not to dissect that which is alive. We will take paternal love as it has been represented in our ancient drama, especially in Corneille, and compare it with paternal love as it has been represented in the dramas and romances of our own times. In Corneille, paternal love has an extraordinary character of firmness and grandeur. At the first glance, it would seem that Don Diego and the old Horace are wanting in tenderness. They have not, at least, that which passes among us for tenderness: we mean this weakness and this agitation which we call sensibility. But take these great souls at the moments when they are off their guard, at those moments when some unexpected event deprives them of the command which they have over themselves. Take the old Horace when his sons are going to the battle: Ah! [says he,] do not overcome my feelings! My voice wants expression, and my heart boldness In this farewell I have only tears. Do your duty, and leave the rest to the gods! Act iii. scene 3. Here tenderness is displayed in the manner in which a great soul should feel, which is troubled and acknowledges |