Monsieur,--You were a popular poet,and an honourable,over-educated,upright gentleman.Of the latter character you can never be deprived,and I doubt not it stands you in better stead where you are,than the laurels which flourished so gaily,and faded so soon.
Laurel is green for a season,and Love is fair for a day,But Love grows bitter with treason,and laurel outlives not May.
I know not if Mr.Swinburne is correct in his botany,but YOURlaurel certainly outlived not May,nor can we hope that you dwell where Orpheus and where Homer are.Some other crown,some other Paradise,we cannot doubt it,awaited un si bon homme.But the moral excellence that even Boileau admitted,la foi,l'honneur,la probite,do not in Parnassus avail the popular poet,and some luckless Glatigny or Theophile,Regnier or Gilbert,attains a kind of immortality denied to the man of many contemporary editions,and of a great commercial success.
If ever,for the confusion of Horace,any Poet was Made,you,Sir,should have been that fortunately manufactured article.You were,in matters of the Muses,the child of many prayers.Never,since Adam's day,have any parents but yours prayed for a poet-child.
Then Destiny,that mocks the desires of men in general,and fathers in particular,heard the appeal,and presented M.Chapelain and Jeanne Corbiere his wife with the future author of "La Pucelle."Oh futile hopes of men,O pectora caeca!All was done that education could do for a genius which,among other qualities,"especially lacked fire and imagination,"and an ear for verse--sad defects these in a child of the Muses.Your training in all the mechanics and metaphysics of criticism might have made you exclaim,like Rasselas,"Enough!Thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a Poet."Unhappily,you succeeded in convincing Cardinal Richelieu that to be a Poet was well within your powers,you received a pension of one thousand crowns,and were made Captain of the Cardinal's Minstrels,as M.de Treville was Captain of the King's Musketeers.
Ah,pleasant age to live in,when good intentions in poetry were more richly endowed than ever is Research,even Research in Prehistoric English,among us niggard moderns!How I wish I knew a Cardinal,or even,as you did,a Prime Minister,who would praise and pension ME;but envy be still!Your existence was made happy indeed;you constructed odes,corrected sonnets,presided at the Hotel Rambouillet,while the learned ladies were still young and fair,and you enjoyed a prodigious celebrity on the score of your yet unpublished Epic."Who,indeed,"says a sympathetic author,M.
Theophile Gautier,"who could expect less than a miracle from a man so deeply learned in the laws of art--a perfect Turk in the science of poetry,a person so well pensioned,and so favoured by the great?"Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good faith to advertise your merits.Hard must have been the heart that could resist the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc de Montausier,and the learned Huet,Bishop of Avranches,and Monseigneur Godeau,Bishop of Vence,and M.Colbert,who had such a genius for finance.
If bishops and politicians and Prime Ministers skilled in finance,and some critics (Menage and Sarrazin and Vaugelas),if ladies of birth and taste,if all the world in fact,combined to tell you that you were a great poet,how can we blame you for taking yourself seriously,and appraising yourself at the public estimate?
It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops especially,and when every minor poet believes in himself on the testimony of his own conceit,you may be acquitted of vanity if you listened to the plaudits of your friends.Nay,you ventured to pronounce judgment on contemporaries--whom Posterity has preferred to your perfections."Moliere,"said you,"understands the genius of comedy,and presents it in a natural style.The plot of his best pieces is borrowed,but not without judgment;his morale is fair,and he has only to avoid scurrility."Excellent,unconscious,popular Chapelain!
Of yourself you observed,in a Report on contemporary literature,that your "courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work not absolutely good."And yet you regarded "La Pucelle"with some complacency.
On the "Pucelle"you were occupied during a generation of mortal men.I marvel not at the length of your labours,as you received a yearly pension till the Epic was finished,but your Muse was no Alcmena,and no Hercules was the result of that prolonged night of creation.First you gravely wrote out all the composition in prose:the task occupied you for five whole years.Ah,why did you not leave it in that commonplace but appropriate medium?What says the Precieuse about you in Boileau's satire?
In Chapelain,for all his foes have said,She finds but one defect,he can't be read;Yet thinks the world might taste his Maiden's woes,If only he would turn his verse to prose!
