Var

Où, lorsque le pied coule, on tombe dans du sang. (MS.)

1. 40. la brute humaine suggests Zola's phrase and title La Bête humaine.

Page 27. 1. 60. Cf. (for the whole pièce) La Mort du Loup written in 1843 by Alfred de Vigny.

Les Victimes.

Page 28. 1. 1 6. Chantant la belle Liberté : a new évocation of Roucher and André Ghénier, the two poets who, in full manhood, perished on the scaffold, singing Liberty and reciting lines of Racine and Corneille.

1. 22. taureaux d'airain: as it was donc in Carthage. Cf. in this séries Salammbô, pp. 202-10 and notes.

1. 28. en se touchant le front. So did Chénier saying: * Et pourtant, il y avait quelque chose là.*

1. 29. des couples d'amants : perhaps in memory of Camille Desmoulins and his wife who died on the scafFold in April, 1794, at a few days' interval.

La Reine du Monde.

Page 29. 11. 29-76. This, the central part of the poem, is the most félicitons. Allegory is again lending a helpful hand to the writer.

notes. pages 24-37 iiç

La Machine.

Page 31. This poem was composed under the impression caused throughout France by the terrible railway accident in the fiâmes of which Admirai Dumont d'Urville perished with ail his family on May 8, 1842. This accident, as much as the pessimistic vein the poet had been indulging in for at least twelve months, accounts for the view, hère taken, of la machine.

De Vigny wrote portions of his famous Maison du Berger whilst under the painful impression left on his mind by the catastrophe.

Les Homicides.

Page 33. 1. 6. r ouvrier. This is probably the first time in French poetry that this word is found personifying the whole working class. To Barbier's eyes political questions recède more and more into the background, and he is more and more open to the problems of the day, to social matters, if we may already use a word which had not long to wait to be launched forth by Pierre Leroux. The Révolution of 1848 was drawing near.

Le Progrès.

Page 36. 1. 9. le front ceint de chêne^ like so many welldeserving Roman citizens.

Page 36. 1. 26. Le sang humain. Apart,from the riot of February, 1831, referred to in the note on P Emeute, and a ten days' victorious rising at Lyons (April, 18 31), there were, in Louis-Philippe's reign, two well-known barricade days: the first on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral (sth and 6th June, 1832 ; cf. le Cloître Saint-Merry in Victor Hugo's Misérables) ; and the second, headed by Barbes and Blanqui, on May 12, 1839.

1. 29. régicide. There were no less than seven murderous attempts on the life of the king, the best known of which is Fieschi's, July 2 8, 1 8 3 5 . Many people were killed or wounded, and among the former was Marshal Mortier.

Page 37. This, the second part of the book, deals with Italian subjects and motives, as the first does with French and the third with English thèmes. We saw that the title of the first set of poems, ïambes, is accounted for by the mètre used

in about half of them. In the présent case, // Pianto, * the complaint,' suggests the moaning of Italy, l'être plaintif, as Barbier calls her in his last pièce, the Italy of the thirties, before the upheaval of 1848 had roused her from her deadly sleep and impeiled her to shake oflF the foreign yoke.

1. 13. en de folles chansons. Later on in life, the poet yielded to the softer breeze of inspiration, and either to save himself from the stigma of inconsistency, or ont of shyness in so new and unexpected a departure, he at first anonymously pubhshed his Chansons et Odelettes, 1851.

I. 28. sur toutes les blessures : this, as we shall see, is perhaps still more true of Lazare, and of his way of dealing vvith England. In // Pianio the beauty of Italy still radiâtes through her shroud and moves the poet to joy (cf. Raphaël) as vvell as to stern pity.

Le Campo Santo.

Page 38. Apart from the gênerai meaning of churchyard, // campo santo, * holy field,' * God's acre,' is in Italy more particularly applied to certain tombs sacred to the memory of worthies. Many are surrounded with porticoes, the walls of which are adomed with frescoes. The Campo Santo meant hère is that of Pisa.