Gueuser. Cf. La Curée j

1. 45. Ici ce n^est qu'en assemblée, i. e. at charity meetings.

1. 60. Comme le plus bas échelon. * L'échelle sociale ' has since then become a set phrase used by stump orators and in revolutionary pamphlets.

Page 78. 1. 66. Comme un 'vieux chêne sans écorce: read 1. 67 first, and the rather strong ellipsis stands out clearly, i. e. * as it does old barkless oaks.'

Page 79. 1. 103. Que le malheur frappe sans nombre, Another ellipsis : read de coups sans nombre.

1. 112. Le faible et pâle matelot. This and the two following verses irresistibly recall the last poem of William Gowper, T^he Castaivay: the description is equally graphie, and in both cases the allegory illustrâtes the agony of a soûl.

1. 121. Point de bouée et point de câble. Cf. Cowper : * The cask, the coop, the floated cord.' In spite of this chance meeting of similar words, the main motives of the poems are wide apart, as in Cowper the ship strives to help the castaway, whereas in Barbier we read of a pitiless vessel ; moreover, in the English poem the sailor sinks *by toil subdued,' and in the French version the wretch résolves * à devancer l'instant suprême.'

Les Mineurs de Newcastle.

Page 83. 1. 68. le tumulte des choses : a new phrase, meaning the upsetting and confusion of things. This and the next stanza may be supposed to express the humane and well-poised solutions of the difficulty by Barbier.

Le Joujou du Sultan, (p. 84.)

In the copy of the ïambes M. Anatole France has been kind enough to lend me, together with three other documents, I hâve found the wood engraving of the * Sultan's toy.* It is a scrap eut from an old number of the Magasin Pittoresque^ in the days of its splendour, that is, about forty years ago. The article runs thus : ' The Music Tiger of Seringapatam. After the defeat and death of Tippoo-Sahib in 1799, i" ^ hall of the palace at Seringapatam several musical instruments were found. Among them there was the group, the accurate drawing of which we print to-day. The English soldiers took possession of it and presented it to the Company (i. e. the East India Company).

' As one may easily judge from our engraving, this instrument is the production of a rather coarse art. Outside it is a rude pièce of wood-carving representing a tiger which has sprung on a man and begins to devour him. The dress of the man is much like the old uniform of the Dutch soldiers. This toy is likely to hâve been in the possession of Indian princes for one or perhaps two centuries, and we may rather ascribe it to the work of some poor European traveller than to native invention.

*The soldier is nothing but a poor puppet, and his right arm which is too long is glued, as it were, to his body. His boots are shining, his stockings yellow, his breeches green and his coat scarlet; his position and looks are ridiculous. The tiger is rather better treated. In short, it would be quite unworthy of note if attention was not claimed by the inside mechanism.

* Just over one of the tiger's paws is a handle, which when turned sets in motion tiger and man, who seem to be carrying on a kind of dialogue. The hand set on the soldier's mouth is lifted up as if to entreat the pitiless brute. The victim utters twelve distressed groans, which a full-throated roar interrupts. This goes on again and again in the same way.

* A still more ingénions mechanism is hidden in the tiger's body : one of the sides being opened, one can see eighteen ivory keys, copper pipes and bellows. Although the music is not over-harmonious, one cannot deny that the contrivance possesses a certain amount of merit.

* The two Works are distinct and quite apart. When the Music Tiger was used as an organ it left otf roaring. It is

supposed to hâve been looked upon as a symbol of the Indian power in close fight with the European invaders, and, after mimicking the natives* victory, it used to celebrate it with music'

1. I. en l'un de ses musées. Now in the Indian section of South Kensington Muséum, Room X, in the centre.

1. 15. du sultan de Meissour, or Mysore as we spell it now. Seringapatam is a few hours' drive from Mysore.

1. 21. remontait sa haine. An aptly coined phrase : wound up like clock-work.

Page 85. 1. 53. // tint parole ; en roi tombé sur son domaine '. i.e. in May, 1799 ; Tippoo met his death at the hands of a British private.

Page 86. 1. 92. raout^ the French spelling of * rout,' a vvord which was much in vogue in the thirties and forties, cf. Balzac, but has since completely passed out of fashion.

Westminster.

Page 87. l. 26. soulèveront les cœurs : tfindignation is implied. Still this half-line lacks clearness and mars the effect of a stave otherwise éloquent and impassioned. In the last eight lines of the poem Barbier refers to the geniuses who hâve not been able to secure a mémorial in the Abbey. One of them, Byron, named only 1. 107, has been sung in France by ail the leading poets of romanticism, Hugo, Lamartine, and others, such as Musset and Barbier. Lines 27-86 contain Byron's lamentations.

1. 27. sur cette terre -vaine, the field of vain battles. 1. 29. From this Une we may infer that Barbier imagines the poet's soûl to be, for the time being, in a kind of transitory limbo.

Page 88. 1. 39. J'ai 'vu la calomnie. Barbier takes up Byron's own assertion that mischief had been made between his wife and himself by her attendant.

1. 41. En disperser la cendre. Cf. Byron of himself : * standing alone on my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me.'

1. 45. Barbier seems to hâve known a good deal about the estrangements between Byron and his wife, this being written about ten years after Byron's death, and we read in a letter of Lady Byron to Moore that she was a/raid to live with Lord Byron and thought him mad.

1. 56. Passer la nier immense avec son onde amère. Cf. Byron, Epistle to AugustOj 1. 3 :—

*Mountains and seas divide us.'

Page 89. 1, 74. Que le fenouil sauvage. Fenouil marin^ one of the common names of the Crithmum maritimum.

1. 84. Wai-je pas expié les fautes de ma vie. Cf. loc, cit., 1. 25 :—

*Mine were my faults and mine be their reward.'

Page 90. 11. 1 15-16. An interesting prophecy which proved true up to the end of the nineteenth century.

1. 119. et cette longue injure : in the Latin sensé, which has been kept by the English * injury.'

1. 135. Note the pause after the second foot, unusual with Barbier ; in this case there is a second pause after the fourth foot. Cf. p. 72, 1. 65.

1. 136. Faire attendre à tes os : they still wait, and England sets the question afresh before every génération.

Page 91. 1. 140. Aux Apollons . . . This ApoUoacts much like St. Michael.

1. 151. la vieille aux longs voiles rigides, Society in her stifF garb of laws and préjudices.

Le Pilote.

Page 92. 1. i. Un four un homme, le. William Pitt. Note the mètre of this poem, a kind of lighter iambic, the first Une numbering five instead of six feet ; the second four feet, like in former pièces.

Page 93. 1. 28. Plante elle-même un coup de hache : the Bill for Parliamentary reform which became law on June i, 1832. 1. 31. ton cornet d'airain, thy brass speaking-trumpet. 1. 35. le sourd travail

De la grande onde populaire.

If poets were expected to write history and not to give utterance to the thought and feeling of the human group they belonged to, there would be several objections to raise, as Pitt was * terribly disappointed ' (Wilberforce) by the rejection of his own constitutional reform, and as it appears now certain that he yielded to the growing cry of the nation for war, whilst stubbornly clinging to the hope of peace.

Shakspeare.

Page 93. For other appréciations of Shakespeare in Barbier, see his préface to Julius Caesar in French verse, and his posthumous Etudes littéraires et artistiques (1888).

1. 5. aujourd'hui refers to 1835 or so. True it is that just then one great actor kept up the traditions of Garrick, the Kembles and Kean, drawing large crowds, but it is a pity Auguste Barbier could not see him.

Page 94. 1. 14. Alluma comme lui plus de limons divers: a somewhat obscure line meaning 'touched with heavenly flame more lumps of mortal clay — than Shakespeare did.*

1. 3 3, 0 toi qui fus V enfant de la grande nature. The last four verses, with little characterization except perhaps in this line, ring with overstrung émotion : hère and there we catch something like a distant écho of a Shakesperian quatrain in the sonnets.

For Barbier's knowledge of Shakespeare, cf. Introduction, pp. xxxi, xxxii.

Le Spleen.

Page 95. 1. i. Cest moi. With thèse words rightly begins this royal speech from the throne.

Page 96. 1. 55. Sur son rouge établi le sombre menuisier^ the executioner and the guillotine.

Page 97. 1. 71. Nouer de longs détours y like a fox which doubles before the hounds.

I. 81. Nos en'vahis sèment s sur le temps et Vespace^ ail that, through modem devices, we gain on time and space.

II. 89-110. Note the ample period, equal to the best pages in the ïambes.

La Nature.

Page 99. 1. 13. Hérisse sur ton front tes cheveux souverains. Cf. Prologue to Lazare, 1. 3, * Hérisse les crins verts.'

1. 23. Nul peuple comme nous: we, pioneers, and, first among them, the English.

1. 26. et de r antique loij by which God gave the earth in fee to man.

1. 37. jusqu'au centre divin: of the Earth. A subdued pantheism pervades this poem.

Page 100. 1. 60. Si mille pieds impurs : the paddles of the early steam-packets.

1. 62. et s^ abaissent jamais ^ because hollowed out and wasted by the mining shafts.

1. 77. Est-il possible^ 6 toi dont le genou puissant. Compare the whole of this passage with Alfred de Vigny, Les Destinées : La Maison du Berger, especially Part III.

Page 101. 1. m. balayés par la houle^ swept by the swell and surge of the breezes.

Page 102. 1. 136. inondant la surface ^ i.e. by spreading and teeming.

I. 138. Ou de perfection. Barbier is less arbitrary than de Vigny, and more considerate to nature and to man.

Page 103. 1. 154. frissonner dans les airs

De grands bois renaissants.

Cf. Virgil, Georgics, i. 140 : —

* Et magnos canibus circumdare saltus.*

II. 157-8. After beginning like a dirge over the decay of natural beauty and poetry in man, the poem winds up with a Credo addressed both to perennial nature — the summit and the eagle — and to human dignity exalted by love of liberty.