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Page 22
Ah, pleasant age to live in, when good intentions in poetry were more richly
endowed than ever is Research, even Research in Prehistoric English, among us
niggard moderns! How I wish I knew a Cardinal, or, even as you did, a Prime
Minister, who would praise and pension me; but Envy be still! Your existence
was more happy indeed; you constructed odes, corrected sonnets, presided at
the Ho'tel Rambouillet, while the learned ladies were still young and fair,
and you enjoyed a prodigious celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished
Epic. 'Who, indeed,' says a sympathetic author, M. The'ophile Gautier, 'who
could expect less than a miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of
art--a perfect Turk in the science of poetry, a person so well pensioned, and
so favoured by the great?' Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good
faith to advertise your merits. Hard must have been the heart that could
resist the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc de
Montausier, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and Monseigneur Godeau,
Bishop of Vence, or M. Colbert, who had such a genius for finance.
If bishops and politicians and prime ministers skilled in finance, and some
critics, Me'nage and Sarrazin and Vaugetas, if ladies of birth and taste, if
all the world in fact, combined to tell you that you were a great poet, how
can we blame you for taking yourself seriously, and appraising yourself at the
public estimate?
It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops especially,
and when every minor poet believes in himself on the testimony of his own
conceit, you may be acquitted of vanity if you listened to the plaudits of
your friends. Nay, you ventured to pronounce judgment on contemporaries whom
Posterity has preferred to your perfections. 'Molie're,' said you,
'understands the nature of comedy, and presents it in a natural style. The
plot of his best pieces is borrowed, but not without judgment; his _morale_ is
fair, and he has only to avoid scurrility.'
Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain!
Of yourself you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature, that your
'courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work not absolutely
good.' And yet you regarded 'La Pucelle' with some complacency.
On the 'Pucelle' you were occupied during a generation of mortal men. I marvel
not at the length of your labours, as you received a yearly pension till the
Epic was finished, but your Muse was no Alcmena, and no Hercules was the
result of that prolonged night of creations. First you gravely wrote out (it
was the task of five years) all the compositions in prose. Ah, why did you not
leave it in that commonplace but appropriate medium? What says the Pre'cieuse
about you in Boileau's satire?
In Chapelain, for all his foes have said,
She finds but one defect, he can't be read;
Yet thinks the world might taste his maiden's woes,
If only he would turn his verse to prose!
The verse had been prose, and prose, perhaps, it should have remained. Yet for
this precious 'Pucelle,' in the age when 'Paradise Lost' was sold for five
pounds, you are believed to have received about four thousand. Horace was
wrong, mediocre poets may exist (now and then), and he was a wise man who
first spoke of _aurea mediocritas_. At length the great work was achieved, a
work thrice blessed in its theme, that divine Maiden to whom France owes all,
and whom you and Voltaire have recompensed so strangely. In folio, in italics,
with a score of portraits and engravings, and _culs de lampe_, the great work
was given to the world, and had a success. Six editions in eighteen months are
figures which fill the poetic heart with envy and admiration. And then, alas!
the bubble burst. A great lady, Madame de Longveille, hearing the 'Pucelle'
read aloud, murmured that it was 'perfect indeed, but perfectly wearisome.'
Then the satires began, and the satirists never left you till your poetic
reputation was a rag, till the mildest Abbe' at Me'nage's had his cheap sneer
for Chapelain.
I make no doubt, Sir, that envy and jealousy had much to do with the onslaught
on your 'Pucelle.' These qualities, alas! are not strange to literary minds;
does not even Hesiod tell us 'potter hates potter, and poet hates poet'? But
contemporary spites do not harm true genius. Who suffered more than Molie're
from cabals? Yet neither the court nor the town ever deserted him, and he is
still the joy of the world. I admit that his adversaries were weaker than
yours. What were Boursault and Le Boulanger, and Thomas Corneille and De
Vise', what were they all compared to your enemy, Boileau? Brossette tells a
story which really makes a man pity you. There was a M. de Puimorin who, to be
in the fashion, laughed at your once popular Epic. 'It is all very well for a
man to laugh who cannot even read.' Whereon m. de Puimorin replied: 'Qu'il
n'avoit que trop su' lire, depuis que Chapelain s'e'toit avise' de faire
imprimer.' A new horror had been added to the accomplishment of reading since
Chapelain had published. This repartee was applauded, and M. de Puimorin tried
to turn it into an epigram. He did complete the last couplet,
He'las! pour mes pe'che's, je n'ai su' que trop lire
Depuis que tu fais imprimer.
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