I. A LE BRUN ET AU MARQUIS DE BRAZAIS.
L. 3.Brazais. André Chénier, at the time he wrote this epistle, was serving as cadet gentilhomme in a regiment of infantry quartered at Strasbourg, and the Marquis de Brazais was a cavalry officer in the same garrison. The piece, elegant and delicate as it is, is therefore to be ranked among the poet's juvenilia.
L. 5. Pandore. The fable of Pandora's box is too well known to need relating.
L. 6. trésor de misère. A Biblical expression. Cf. Prov. x. 2 and Jas. v. 3. In the latter passage the French translation by de Saci has: 'C'est là le trésor de colère que vous amassez pour les derniers jours,' where the English Bible has: 'Ye have heaped treasure together.'
L. 13 ff. Imitated from Horace, Od. I. v.
L. 15. d'un pouvoir... dominé, i.e. dominé par un pouvoir. Haase, § 113.
L. 18. A cette mer trompeuse et se livre et s'engage. The preposition à required by se livrer, is an archaism after s'engager. For à=sur see Haase, § 130 B, and cf. note to p. 97, l. 383. It would seem, at first sight, that s'engager sur says less than se livrer à, but it makes the step more irretrievable.
Ll. 25 ff. heureux dont le zèle... Elliptical for 'heureux celui dont le zèle,' on the analogy of 'heureux qui...'
L. 27. ses flancs. The shipwrecked man's sides.
Ll. 28. Réchauffer dans son sein. The rescuer's bosom.
L. 29. Et de soit fol amour. The shipwrecked man's love. There is throughout these lines a sad confusion due to a loose use of the possessive, besides which le zèle (l. 25) is awkwardly made the subject of the whole sentence.--Étouffer la semence. The same metaphor occurs in La Fontaine, Ode pour la paix: 'Étouffe tous ces travaux et leurs semences mortelles,' and in Racine, Alexandre, VI. iii: 'Étouffe dans mon sang ces semences de guerre.'
L. 33. Plaindre... l'occasion ravie. Plaindre = 'to lament, regret,' as in 'Ce triste et fier honneur m'émeut sans m'ébranler; J'aime ce qu'il me donne et je plains ce qu'il m'ôte,' Corneille, Hor. II. iii.
Ll. 35 ff. Tibullus, III. iii.
L. 38. l'or du Pactole. The river Pactolus, in Lydia, was famed for its golden sands.
L. 40. mon coeur... prosterné. An incoherent metaphor.
L. 60. See Horace, Od. I. xxxiii.
Ll. 61. Lesbie, Lesbia, Catullus' mistress.
L. 62. Cynthie, Cynthia, Propertius' mistress.
L. 64. See Virgil, Ecl. x.
L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his Tristia.
L. 73. un tel foudre. According to French grammars, foudre is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: La foudre a éclaté. C'est un foudre de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where foudre, poetic for 'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (Hor. IV. v. and Héracl. I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, Mar.-Thér.
L. 93. Castor, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.
Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see Aen. ix.
L. 99. Le Brun. 'Son of the author of the poem La Religion, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.' (Note of A. Chénier.)
L. 102. leçons d'Ascra, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem Ascraeum carmen, Georg. ii. 176.
L. 103. Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais. Chénier, in another epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans les douze palais où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next paleys to abyde,' Compl. Mars, 53. See N.E.D. Brazais had written a poem, L'Année, which never appeared in print.
L. 105. A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge, qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.
L. 111. tableaux fardés. Counterfeit, spurious. See the obs. verb fard in N.E.D.
L. 128. L'ami religieux. The following quotation (from the N.E.D.) may serve for an explanation: 'A man devoted to a man, Loyal, religious in love's hallowed vows.' Porter, Angry wom. Abingd. (Percy Soc.), 37.
L. 130. Bavius, a Latin poetaster; see Virgil, Ecl. iii, 90. Zoilus, the detractor of Homer. Gacou, a French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the libellous detractor of Boileau and J.-B. Rousseau. Linière, another French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the declared enemy of Chapelain. (See Boileau, Sat. ix. 237.)
L. 147. Plutarch relates that Scipio would always take Lelius' advice, which made him say that Lelius was the poet and Scipio the actor. Plutarch, An seni sit ger. resp. xxvii.
L. 148. When Phocion, sentenced to death, was on the point of drinking the hemlock, Nicocles besought the favour of drinking first, which request his friend granted. Plutarch, Phoc. xxxvi.
L. 168. faisceaux, the fasces.
L. 201. âme mutuelle. A new alliance of words, on the analogy of affection mutuelle.
L. 202. Cf. Theocritus, Idyll. xii. 18.
Ll. 207, 208. ils s'attendent... d'être. S'attendre de is now of rarer occurrence than s'attendre à, but it was not so formerly. 'On ne s'attendait guère De voir Ulysse en cette affaire.' La Fontaine, Fab. X. iii. See LITTRÉ.
