FRENCH EPIC POETRY. 633 



retrospective accounts of travels, everything exactly as we can 

 find it in the ancient epics. In his Lettre a I'Acadcmie, Fenelon 

 had been the first to emphasise the wish that poets should devote 

 greater interest to the manners and customs of the nations they 

 are dealing with, as well as to what he calls " le costume;" and by 

 which he means local colour. It has been Chateaubriand's privi- 

 lege to fulfil that wish, which had remained a pitim votum for 

 so long a time, and in doing so, to render a signal service to 

 French literature, by presenting it with his Martyrs, which is, 

 in the first place, a true and gloriously coloured picture of the 

 reign of Diocletian. Its almost perfect truthfulness is one of 

 the main reasons why the literary world will never get tired of 

 studying this admirable production, in which' ' the most exact 

 erudition is found side by side with the most refined and gor- 

 geous poetry. 



We have observed that the romanticists' were comparatively 

 slow in giving their attention to the epic. In the beginning, they 

 were mainly interested in lyrical poetry, in the novel, and the 

 drama. This partiality was quite natural because these genres, 

 by virtue of their greater popularity, especially the drama, were 

 more suitable to the furtherance of their aims and the spreading 

 of their doctrines. 



In 183 1, however, Alphonse de Lamartine, whose Medita- 

 tions and Harmonics had already crowned him with fame, hap- 

 pened to be travelling from Naples to Rome. In the course of 

 jiis peregrinations in these classical regions, he conceived the 

 idea of a huge epic poem that was to embrace nothing less than 

 ihe history of mankind. The scheme before his mind's eye was 

 about as follows: In the final stage of time, an angel, who, 

 through his own fault, had formerly been doomed to become 

 human, was to relate what he had seen and witnessed on earth 

 during his successive incarnations. As each of these successive 

 existences of the angel coincided with a famous epoch in the 

 historv of mankind, there was to be evolved a string of poems 

 on the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, the Patriarchs. Pythagoras 

 or Socrates, the Redemption, the Hermits of the Thebais, the 

 Aee of Chivalry, the Revolution, the Antichrist, and the Last 

 Judgment. Each of these fDoems was to be a unit in one great 

 ap^g-rep"ate, comprehensively entitled Les Visions. It appeared, 

 however, to be quite impracticable to carry a plan like this into 

 execution, and finally Lamartine gave it up. What it has come to 

 are two maenificcnt. fullv-linished parts : La Chute d'lin Ange 

 (11,000 verses), and Joeelyn. alono- with some disjecta membra, 

 nmong which Lc Chant des Chez'aliers is remarkable. La Chute 

 d'un Angc was published in 1S38. It was to have been the 

 second in the series of 12 Visions. Renunciation is its theme. It 

 is a specimen of the '' Seraphic School," as opposed to the 

 " Satanic School" of the Byronians. As a biblical epic it has 

 fine passages, but it is too unequal, too crude in some i)laces, to 

 bpar close scrutiny, and its story of an angel, who becomes a 

 human being through love of a mortal ' woman, appreciably 



