Scott carrying away in triumph the wine-glass out of which his Majesty George the Fourth had drunk, and Laprade carrying away the nail from the bolted door of Victor Hugo, might form capital companion pictures.
His subsequent publications are an essay on the sentiment of nature in Homer, 'Poèmes Evangéliques' in 1852, 'Les Symphonies' in 1855, and, last of all, a satire on the times, in which he abandons his old vein, and handles the weapon of Juvenal. The 'Poèmes Evangéliques' and the 'Symphonies' were both 'crowned' by the French Academy; and although the former has not been very popular, it is an excellent work. 'One would love,' says his French critic, 'to follow with the poet these holy figures painted with pious art, and that recall the frescoes of Flandrin.' The 'Symphonies' had been liked better by the public. It consists of three poems, one of which, 'Rosa Mystica,' shines 'comme une rosace au soleil couchant,' and another, 'Herman,' rings out with the power and sustention 'of an Alpine horn.' The views which Laprade puts forth in 'Herman' are not popular views, such as find favour with readers of newspapers,—for he does not believe in the progress, the moral progress of the world, but they are the decided views of a deliberate, sober, and deep thinker to whom the Bible 'is as a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path.' In the dedication to his father he says—
'Je n'ai vu de progrès que dans l'ignominie,
Et n'attends rien, pour fruit des âges qui naîtront,
Que des hontes de plus à porter sur le front.'
Laprade and Lamartine are the only great modern poets of France whose works are essentially and eminently pure and religious, and it is remarkable that they both are deeply indebted for the tone of their minds to their mothers, women of prayer, large-minded and self-denying.
Page 203.
The Dream of Lucretia. M. François Ponsard, born at Vienna in the Dauphiné, is the author of the tragedy of 'Lucrèce' which was acted for the first time at the Odéon in 1842, and which made his name at once famous. He has written comedies as well as tragedies subsequently. His dramas are: 'Agnès de Méranie (1846), 'Charlotte Corday' (1850), 'Horace et Lydie' (1850), 'Ulysse' (1852), 'L'Honneur et l'Argent' (1853), 'Ce qui Plait aux Femmes' (1860), 'Le Lion Amoureux' (1866), 'Galilée' (1867).
Page 206.
A Flame. Charles Coran, born 1814, a friend of Auguste Brizeux, noticed in note to p. 125, is the author of two volumes of poems named respectively 'Onyx' (1841) and 'Rimes Galantes' (1847). He has not written anything during the last fifteen years, and leads the quiet and delicious life of a dilettante. The last of his two published poems is superior to the first, in which he had been, to some extent, groping about to find out his vocation. He cannot by any means be called a poet of a high order. Love verses, unless very superior, appear ridiculous now-a-days. One can read a chanson by
