M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 275 



against knowledge, were from persecutors become victims of execra- 

 ble and frightful excesses. The romantic, chivalric, and Christian li- 

 terature of Europe had, even in the sixteenth century, found its place 

 by the side of that produced in the truly golden ages of Greece and 

 Rome ; nevertheless it had not in France taken its proper flight, be- 

 cause the rage for classicisme had deprived the poets of their vigour 

 and prevented them from soaring to the heights to which their na- 

 tural genius entitled them to aspire. It was requisite then to create 

 a literature absolutely new, which would at once form a school and 

 satisfy at the same time the imperious wants of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. Chateaubriand was, in France, the founder of this new system; 

 and, like a second Columbus, he discovered his rich mine of literature 

 in the forests of the new world. Filled with an idea so thrilling and 

 exciting to a young mind just opening to life, and enlightened by the 

 dazzling rays of a brilliant genius, he composed his American poem 

 of" Natchez,'' which, however, was not published for more than thirty 

 years, its author during a part of the interval having been, so to speak, 

 buried in a kind of cabane in England. He carefully avoided writing 

 this poem in verse, although pre-eminently endowed with a talent for 

 poetry; because at that period (1 790) poetry had begun to fall into dis- 

 credit, for the revolution had almost annihilated it a statement which 

 may be easily understood at present, when, both in France and England, 

 the drama is enacted rather in parliament than on the boards of their 

 theatres. His prose offers all the brilliancy of poetry, without the 

 monotony of rhyme, more vigorous, dignified, and original than 

 Telernachus. Besides almost all its own positive charms it has none 

 of the faults of that far too highly lauded work. The French revo- 

 lution broke out in the midst of these lovely and brilliant composi- 

 tions, and tore this author from his country in order to combat men 

 who dishonoured that liberty that he said he adored. It must be con- 

 fessed that he chose the longest road to render it homage; for, having 

 disembarked from America in 1792, he rejoined the army of the 

 prince of Conde, whom he accompanied in his two unfortunate cam- 

 paigns on the Rhine. 



Seeing at length the inutility of his efforts to aid the cause of the 

 Bourbons and of his caste by his sword, he retired to England, where, 

 during several years he was most painfully situated, and in the course 

 of his stay became a prey also to a lingering fever.* During his 

 residence in London, Chateaubriand published his " Historical Essay 

 on Revolutions," in which he shows himself by turns, in the same 

 chapter, aristocratic or democratic, accordingly as he was wrought on 

 by the cruel malady under whose influence he wrote. It was likewise 

 in England that he completed his famous "Genie du Christianisme," a 

 work more justly celebrated and more generally read than any other 

 of that period ; and, if it had appeared before the revolution, it would 



* The thought of his family, persecuted and massacred by the butchers who then 

 reigned, made him fall into a profound melancholy which would doubtless have over- 

 whelmed him, if, in the noble hospitality of England, he had not found the most sooth- 

 ing balm to his wounds. At a later period, and in happier times, lo paid the debt that 

 he had contracted towards England by proclaiming what heliad received of her from 

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