Cf. Masaccio

1. 6. Vart fut ton seul amour. Cf. Romain Rolland, i, p. 25 : * Il fut seul. — Il haït : il fut haï. II aima : il ne fut pas aimé.*

1. 7. A rather obscure Une to hint at the three arts practised by Michael Angelo.

1. 8. Cf. Romain Rolland, i, p. 25 : ' Mais jamais il n*est deux. Jamais il n^a le repos, la douceur accordée au plus humble des êtres : pouvoir, une minute de sa vie, s'endormir dans l'affection d'un autre.'

1. II. Cf. Romain Rolland, loc. cit. : ' Beethoven fut triste par la faute du monde ; il était gai de nature, il aspirait à la joie. Michel-Ange avait en lui la tristesse, qui fait peur aux hommes, et que tous fuient d'instinct. Il faisait le vide autour de lui.'

1. 14. Tu mourus longuement: a powerful écho of Michael Angelo's moaning : —

* c' a' miseri la morte è pigra e tardi,' Poems, Ixxiii, 30 ;

so deeply poetical too, as blending the actual fact with the moral truth of the aged artist's fate.

Plein de gloire et d! ennui. Ennui is hère used in the classical sensé of * torment of the soûl.'

Allegri.

Page 46. This sonnet is selected chiefly for the light it throws on the creed of the poet.

Gregorio Allegri, born in Rome, composed sacred music, and, first of ail, the Miserere, which was forbidden to be played anywhere but in the Sistine Chapel. After hearing it twice, Mozart could write it down to a note.

Le Campo Vaccino.

Page 48. 1. 32. Ses pans de murs croules. A grammarian would frown at this past participle of a neuter verb used transitively. Barbier is partial to the word. Cf. same poem,

11. 74 and 106. Crouler is transitive only when meaning io shakâf now an obsolète sensé.

1. 34. Cf., in Sully-Prudhomme's Croquis italiens, a terse and vivid sketch of the * Coliseum,' . . . le colossal cratère.

1. 50. enfoui is generally counted as three syllables. Cp. Bianca, 1. 198.

Page 48. 11. 59-75. A fine period with remarkable unity of poetical design.

/ Page 49. 1. 82. Du plus lourd des enfants. This refers to /the Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda, in the Roman Forum. ^ It is an ugly structure, only remarkable as occupying the cella of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. The magnificent portico in front of the church consists of Corinthian columns each composed of a single block of stone about fifty feet high with bases and capitals of white marble. The cupola— or rather a structure resembling one — is considered as having been miraculously raised and reared by the cross which the Church, by the hands of some monks, had fixed on the fine pagan temple.

1. 87. roi des belles journées-, a rather ambitions phrase for the purpose of recalling the mildness and clemency which won Titus the title of amor et deliciae generis humani. The Arch of Titus was erected in hishonour, to commemorate the conquest of Jérusalem. Its ruins stand on the summit of the Via Sacra. As a record of Scripture history it is a very interesting ruin. Mutilated figures of Victories are still plainly seen on the arch. The side facing the Coliseum is in a very good state of préservation. The sculptures on the frieze represent a procession of warriors leading oxen to a sacrifice. The following inscription is still plainly read on it :

SENATVS . POPVLVSQVE . ROMANVS — DiVO . TiTO .

Divi . Vespasiani . F . — Vespasiano . Avgvsto . The word Divo plainly shows that it was erected after the death of Titus, probably by his successor Domitian.

On the bas-reliefs on the piers is seen the représentation of a procession bearing spoils from the Temple of Jérusalem, among which are the seven-branched candlesticks, the golden table, the silver trumpets, &c.

Page 50. 1. 103. 0 Gœthel... Barbier was in Rome when he received the news of Goethe's death, 1832.

1. 109. amis de la forme. This alludes to the long passage which we hâve omitted, and in which Barbier sang la forme, ce riche 'vêtement . . , que Dieu fia lui-même et . . . qu'il déploya pour

couvrir la nudité du monde ; and the poet bemoaned the cold indifférence of men nowadays to form and art.

I. 113. sublime temple : a bold simile as applied to a man, and most fit for Goethe.

II. 133-4. désert . . .passer : a loose, nay, a bad rime, unsatisfactory to the ear and not redeemed by traditional use.

Page 52. 1. 178. ba'ioqucy It. baiocco ; a small copper coin of the Papal States, worth a little less than a halfpenny.

Raphaël.

Page 62. 1. 4. After reading this quatrain, one may wonder whether Barbier had in his mind the first five lines of Endymion.

1. II. This central image of the sonnet seems to hâve been suggested to the poet by the picture of St. Michael overpocjuering the angel of darkness (now in the Louvre). 1. 14. Archange f i. e. St. Michael.

Le Gorrège.

Page 52. 1. i . Nourrice d^Allegri, Parme ... ; not exactly of the painter's person, for he bears the name of his birth-place Correggio, but of his infant famé, as he rose to distinction at Parma about 15 18.

I. 6. La pourpre encor flottant sur son lit déserté', a strange pre-* parnassienne * note rings through this line.

II. lo-i I. aux timides vertus ^ à la pudeur. This impression of virtuous purity is ail the more interesting as it is at variance with the gênerai opinion. Cf. Taine, De P idéal dans Vart : — *Un tableau du Gorrège est une sorte de jardin enchanté d'Alcine, où la séduction de la lumière mariée à la lumière, la grâce capricieuse et caressante des lignes ondoyantes ou cassées, la blancheur éblouissante et les rondeurs molles des corps féminins, l'irrégularité piquante des figures, la vivacité, la tendresse, l'abandon des expressions et des gestes, s'unissent pour former le rêve de félicité délicieuse et délicate que la magie d'une fée et l'amour d'une femme arrangerait pour son amant.'

1. 1 3. Qui secoua sa tige et sa divine odeur : another félicitons line much prized by connoisseurs.

GlMAROSA.

Page 53. Gimarosa (Domenico), a composer born at Aversa, near Naples (i 754-1 801). Very early several sovereigns called him to their courts. He composed more than 120 opéras, some in the serious line, such as The Sacrifice of

Abraham, Pénélope, others in the comic style, the best of which are The Italian Girl in London, ^Imprésario in angustie* The Secret Wedding, &.C. To the latter manner he ovves his famé.

i 1. 1 1. Un cœur toujours sensible et plein de dignité ;

( 1. 14. Et chanta dans les fers V hymne de liberté. Cimarosa had joined the revolutionary party in Naples at the time of the French invasion. It has been asserted, but not ascertained, that after the restoration Queen Caroline threw him into prison, where he is supposed to hâve been subjected to ill-treatment, and finally poisoned.

DOMINIQUIN

Page 53. Domenico Zampieri, commonly called Domenichino (Bologna, 1581-Naples, 1641), the son of a shoemaker, studied as a boy in the school of Denis Calvaert and then with the Carracci. At Rome he became for a time the assistant of Annibale Carracci. Both at Rome and at Naples he was much persecuted by his rivais, especially by the triumvirate known as the Cabal of Naples. He is suspected of having been poisoned by their agents.

Page 54. 1. 10. Bœuf sublime -, so his contemporaries had dubbed him, on account of his slow, stubborn labour.

LÉONARD DE ViNCI (1452-1519).

Page 54. 1. i. Florentin adoré du Lombard. About 1485 Leonardo removed to Milan, where he founded the celebrated Vincian Academy of Arts.

1. 1 1 , deux pouvoirs : the twofold power of the artist who can unité reason, i.e. intellectual beauty expressed with the full knowledge of its principles, with the wealth of fancy, * fantaisie ' hère having much of the Énglish sensé.

Titien.

Page 55. 1. 13. // le roulait un siècle: no less indeed was Titian's span of life (1477-1576).

BlANCA.

Page 56. 1. 41. toujours l'on ne peut voir: a bold use of toujours with a négation, accounted for by the répétition of the word.

Page 57. 1. 7 1 . vers la Brenta : a river flowing from near Trent into the Gulf of Venice and feeding two canals, la Brenta morte and la Brentella,

Page 58. I. 93. dénaturé-, stripped of their own true nature.

1. iio. La famille écroulée', same bold use of the past participle of a neuter verb as croulé^ aiready noted. Cf. Le Campo Faccino, 1. 32.

1. 113. faisant usage de leurs pies '. long and prosy for s\n allant.

Page 59. 1. 139. Le Goth as truly depicts the German of Austria, then political mistress of Venice, as the Hun of P Idole (cp. 1. 45) represents the modem Cossack.

Page 60. 1. 177. Insulte aux plus beaux dons. Thèse gifts are expressly named on 11. 183, 209, and 229 as amour 2inà poésie. 1. 180. le grand poète, i. e. God.

1. 194. sur leurs tristes penchants. Penchant is hère used in the concrète sensé oï pente.

Page 61. 1. 225. V ennui! l'ennui prendra. Cf. Baudelaire, Spleen et Idéal, Ixxvii, Ixxviii, Ixxix, Ixxx, and Les Fleurs du Mal ; La Mort, where the world is said to be * Une oasis d'horreur dans un désert d'ennui ! '

L'Adieu.

Page 62. 1. 2. Qui par deux fois du monde ... : first by ruling the world in the name of Rome and then in the name of Christ.

1. 14. A remarkable example, the only one we know of, apart from récent verse translations, of a French sonnet on the Shakespearean model. Barbier's sonnet has the one peculiarity of keeping two rimes common to the two Quatrains, and likewise two rimes common to the two Tercets.

Vers sans titre.

Page 62. 1. i. Divine Juliette. AUegory has again well served the poet in this second farewell pièce.

Page 63. 1. 20. Alors à V étranger-, i.e. the English and French nations and others who were ail through the thirties and forties called to the rescue of Italy by the voice of the writers Pellico, Mazzini, and numerous exiles.

1. 27. V étranger corrompu happened to be Napoléon III, who, without quite fulfiUing the enthusiastic expectation of Italy and Elizabeth Browning, yet was far from realising Barbier's field of anticipated horrors. Cf. Elizabeth Browning, Casa Guidi, Windoius, and Poems before Congress ; also George Meredith, Emilia in England, and especially Vittoria, where we see how at last Italy found her Romeo in her united people.

LAZARE (p. 64).

Hère begins the third part of the volume, a poetical wail ^on industrial England, very much in the same way as // Pianto was a poet's lament on the political and moral condition of contemporary Italy.

Lazare is the impersonation of the English working man, considered as the prisoner of the very machine he créâtes or builds, the slave of the engine he drives or works, the convict of the mine he excavates, the gênerai victim of industry, the représentative and scapegoat of a then nevv type of civilization which, masking the sky with smoke and coating flowers with coal-dust, wages against nature a fiercer war than ever. This will suffice to suggest the several claims of Lazare to stand ont as a noteworthy production in the history of French and, we may say, of European literature. In French poetry it has the rare merit of bearing on English topics. Hère again we can trace the influence of André Ghënier, who clothed in poetic diction thoughts or expériences suggested by a stay in England, not only in his poems ' To Fanny ', but also in detached pièces (cf. Londres, décembre 1782), and in his very hymn Jî la France. Voltaire had been intellectually influenced by England, not poetically, however. Chateaubriand and Mme de Staël got more insight into the poetic capabilities of England for a French writer ; but they wrote no poems, so that Auguste Barbier was the first great French poet taking, not exactly English subjects (for we see then, among a score of them, Victor Hugo's Cronmuell and de Vigny 's Chatterton), but England herself, and social aspects of English life, as a thème for his poetical muse. We may regret that de Vigny, who wrote his Colère de Samson at Shavington, has not expressed his feelings on England and England's prophet Milton in some of his powerful poems. In more récent years, if we look solely for direct impressions, we find but few scattered stanzas or stray lines in Verlaine 's Sagesse.

From a more gênerai standpoint it is remarkable how clearly, for his time. Barbier analysed the main éléments of the industrial évolution and embodied his own views and conclusions in this séries of poems. Soon after, Thomas Hood and Elizabeth Barrett rose to higher excellence in this field of social pity ; but we hâve every reason to claim that Barbier opened this new territory in the republic of poets with the added circumstance that he bemoaned the woes of a people not his own.