632 FRENCH EPIC POETRY, 



his Napoleon; Auguste Barthelemy and Joseph Mery did the 

 same with their Napoleon en Egypte and Le Fils de l' Homme, 

 the latter occasioned by a visit to the Emperor's son, the Duke 

 of Reichstadt, and in spite of their merits these poems failed to 

 captivate the mind of the nation. They even passed into oblivion 

 long ago. However, the time when the dream of an entire nation 

 would be realised was drawing near. But first the shackles by 

 which the minds had been hampered for over 300 years had to 

 be shaken off ; the useless and cumbersome accessories, the hack- 

 neyed machines of the times of the Franciade had to be thrown 

 on the scrapheap and the main interest of poetry had to be vested 

 in the history of mankind and in the picture of purely himnan 

 passions. After the consummation of all this, and only then, 

 :it came to be proved, without the help of descents into Hades, 

 without phenomenal shipwrecks and conventional miracles, 

 without lengthy descriptions of bucklers and swords, that the 

 French had epic genius and were capable of writing an epic. 



The literary revolution known as " Romanticism," which 

 either renovated or overthrew all literary genre, was bound to 

 lenovate the epic as well. Its influence on epic poetry, however, 

 makes itself felt at a comparatively late stage. The first note- 

 worthy epic we come across in the loth century is Les Martyrs, 

 Oil Triomphe de la Religion Chrctienne, by Chateaubriand 

 1809). It can hardly be said to represent the romantic school; 

 it is rather a work of transition ; for although Chateaubriand 

 may in some respects be called the father of romanticism, he 

 had lived in too frequent contact with men like Parny, the French 

 Tibullus, and Fontanes, the dispenser of Napoleon's literary 

 favours, not to have some very classical facets left in his mind. 

 The poem is important as an attempt to carry into effect the 

 literary principles which the author had laid down in his previous 

 ^vork, Le genie dii Christ ianisme, a counterblast to the Encyclope- 

 distes, and a panegyric of the moral and poetic beauties of 

 Christianity. But in Chateaubriand's religion there is little of 

 profundity. He proves that Christianity is beautiful, but he is 

 not concerned, like Pascal, to prove that it is essential, or like 

 Bossuet, that it is real. He rejects ancient mythology as a degra- 

 dation of nature ; he admires the poetry of Homer and Virgil, 

 but maintains that it is inferior to the poetry of the Bible ; in his 

 opinion the stoic virtue of the Cornehan heroes pales before 

 the humility of Christian martyrs. The marvellous is, as we 

 know, an integral part of the pagan epic. Chateaubriand 

 holds that the mysteries of the Christian religion can more than 

 supply the place of heathen mythology. The influence of Milton 

 i- strongly marked. As an epic Les Martyrs is a failure. It is 

 the last poem we possess that is composed in accordance with 

 thie old sacred and conventional formulje. All the old machinery 

 is brought into play: tempests, battles, single fights between 

 heroes, who insult each other before dealing the final blow, roll- 

 calls of troops, love episodes, descriptions of Stygian regions, 



