M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 281 



at all. Of this attack it seems reasonable to suppose that he had 

 some presentiment ; for he says somewhere in the course of his work 

 that the people themselves are the only competent judges of works 

 produced in their own country. This admission undoubtedly entitled 

 him to the indulgence of his English critics. Whatever faults Cha- 

 teaubriand has been charged with, whatever wrong views of par- 

 ticular writers he may have taken, whatever political prejudices he 

 may have allowed to disfigure a purely literary work, he cannot be 

 charged with ignorance of his subject. Every body knows that he 

 passed the greater part of his life in attempting to translate Milton. 

 Whether he succeeded or not we do not stop to enquire here, for that 

 would of itself require an extended article. Every one knows also 

 that such a work could not be done respectably without much prepa- 

 ration, without reading and profoundly studying the English writers 

 who lived before and after the singer of Paradise Lost. These vo- 

 lumes, loose, vague, and unconnected as they are, furnish nothing else 

 but the very proof that the translator of Milton did not venture on his 

 task without a very considerable stock of materials. Whether he should 

 have risked ruining a justly high reputation by undertaking so difficult 

 a task at all it is not for us to consider. We are not ignorant of the fact 

 that Chateaubriand has inserted portions of his outre-tombe memoires, 

 as, alas ! he himself terms them with ghastly merriment, and thus 

 presents himself to our notice like one in full health attending his own 

 obsequies. The publication of the " Lectures des Memoires de Cha- 

 teaubriand has brought on him the snears of the malevolent and 

 moved the pity of his literary advocates in France. That Chatea- 

 briand is a weak man the acts of his life testify. His vanity is clearly 

 discoverable in all his works, and perhaps more in the Essay before 

 us than in any other. But it is not fair in educated English writers 

 to charge on Chateaubriand a failure, if it be so, in an attempt that 

 might have daunted the genius of greater minds than are at present 

 to be found on the continent of Europe. 



"THE HOUR WHEN KINDRED SPIRITS MEET." 



THE hour when kindred spirits meet, 

 Harmonious, blends all feelings sweet : 

 Our hearts, with sympathetic glow, 

 Make the soul's music here below, 

 And, emulous of angel's love, 

 Swell with the tones of that above ! 

 Seldom, alas ! on earth we feel 

 The rapture which such hours reveal ; 

 Yet, Memory oft, with glistening tear. 

 Lingers o'er scenes to her so dear, 

 Each hallowed voice she hears again, 

 Soft as the wild harp's dying strain ' 



R. S. 



