I 93 ] 

 OUR IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 



ALGERNON SYDNEY AND VICTOR HUGO. 



Algernon Sydney. 



ONE of the most singular phenomena in the history of the modern liter- 

 ature of France, is the sudden, I may almost say instantaneous change which 

 has come over the spirit of her poetic dreams within these few years. The 

 revolution, desolating and terrible as were its immediate consequences, 

 must notwithstanding be allowed to have proved a most powerful regene- 

 rator of French literature. The intellectual soil, if I may employ the 

 metaphor, was well nigh exhausted, and required the cleansing of a mighty 

 torrent to prepare it for the seed time. The course of that popular com- 

 motion was indeed as of a river of death, and many a stately building that 

 the heart still pineth for, sank beneath its fury ; but it left a richness and 

 self-giving energy behind it, the efficacy of which was speedily discovered. 



Victor Hugo. 



Your remarks are for the most part dictated by a proper spirit ; but of 

 all the mental improvements visible at the commencement of the revolu- 

 tion, the most remarkable was certainly, eloquence. The effect produced 

 upon the mind of men was electrical ; and the visionary and romantic cha- 

 racter which distinguished the political oratory of that day, bore an ultimate 

 relationship to poetry both in its cause and its end. Barnatt and Mirabeau, 

 and their companion enthusiasts, seemed suddenly to have been endowed 

 with a totally different organization. The seventeen lettres de cachet 

 which had been launched against Mirabeau had goaded him to a state of 

 frenzy. I can imagine the storm of his anger and declamation to have been 

 irresistible in the ears of an excited populace, whom the lightning of his 

 communicative wrath had partially blinded. But I must not linger on this 

 subject. While the land was rocking to and fro with the shock of this 

 moral earthquake, the gentler Graces of Poetry and Music were hiding 

 themselves in fear and trembling. Men, who in more peaceful times would 

 have surrendered their hearts to the conduct of their fancy, were now acted 

 upon only by the discordant passions of liberty and ambition. It was not 

 until the downfall of Napoleon that poetry began to recover any portion 

 of its former energy, and then it assumed the dramatic form, as the best 

 calculated to convey the burning enthusiasm for freedom and glory, by 

 which the public mind was still actuated. This was the commencement 

 of the new school of poetry. The poets of France had been hitherto little 

 more than the dependents of her princes. From the reign of Louis the 

 Twelfth, to the death of Louis^the Fourteenth, this was especially the case. 

 Boileau and Racine were literally the servants of the monarch, compelled 

 to write, not according to the dictates of their own imaginations, but in obe- 

 dience to the commands of their master. They were, therefore, peculiarly 

 the poets of the court, and not of the nation. As to addressing themselves 

 to the public, that was altogether impossible. The court constituted the 

 Academy, and there was no appeal from its inexorable decision. 

 Algernon Sydney. 



It is a curious fact, that the history of French literature scarcely furnishes 

 us with an example of a poet who has attained, like our own Bloomfield, 

 or Ettrick Shepherd, any reputation from his own uneducated and unassisted 

 genius. 



