No age has presented a more interesting epoch in the history of the human mind. Casting over it a hasty glance, we observe at Pavia Jerome Cardanus, who was extending the limits of algebra; and at Brescia, Tartaglia, who was resolving for the first time equations of the second degree, and subjecting the path of bombs to the laws of theory. At Mantua, Castiglione was composing his popular work the Cortegiano; and at Verona, Fracastorius was excelling as a physician, and as a Latin poet. Ariosto, whose songs are so seductive of every heart, was preparing the inspiration of Tasso, and the celebrity of the court of Ferrara, which was destined to possess them both. Florence, in the midst of Italy, recalled Athens to memory. Patronized by its merchant-princes, it nursed Aretin, Jovius Guicciardini, and Machiavel the great preceptor of kings. At Rome, the historian Bembo was secretary to Leo X.; Trissino was reviving the sublime art of Euripides and of Sophocles ; and the annals of Tacitus, discovered in Westphalia by the exertions of Beroald, were restored to light, and destined again to instruct the world. Michel Angelo, in obedience to pontifical mandates, was elevating the cupola of St. Peter; which Raphael, yet a boy, was preparing to adorn. Adventurous navigators, in imitation of Amerigo Vespucci, were exploring regions unknown, and conferring vast empires on petty sovereigns; and the architects Sansovino, Palladio, and Bramante, were building palaces for all the princes of Italy. Charles V. was adding celebrity to the pencil of Titian, which was destined to render both of them illustrious; while Leonardo da Vinci was expiring in the arms of Francis I.; and Raphael among the Cardinals of Rome:a spectacle glorious alike to the power which bestowed and to the tadents which received such homage; in which princes are seen, by giving the signal for public admiration, to excite a general taste for the arts, and in which the glory of one age is preparing for that of its successor!' The tenth book treats much of French interference in Italy, and carries on the history to 1570. The eleventh proceeds to 1618, and includes the conspiracy of Bedmar.-The twelfth and concluding book conducts the history to the year 1797. This part of the work is very meagre in its details, and exhibits a scantiness of materials which is indeed to be referred to the paucity of native historians, but is not thus entirely to be excused. The hundredth doge acceded in 1654, which gives an average reign of about ten years to each doge. A concise enumeration of the subsequent sovereigns continues the chronicle, not the narrative, to the period at which the French, by the aid of a democratic party, obtained footing in Venice. The treaty of Campo-formio gave the town to Austria; and a subsequent treaty restored it to France. How changed from the Venice of Sannazarius! "Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis Venice has long ceased to be the centre of an active com merce. During the last century, it subsisted as the metropolis of a vast portion of Lombardy: but this source of income and expenditure is now dry. As a military station, it has no value; and it is probably destined to crumble slowly back into a silent mausoleum of departed opulence. The talismanic ring is broken, which made Venice the queen of the Adriatic. It may perhaps assemble, during its henceforth melancholy carnivals, the fugitives from conquest, the victims of confiscation, the wanderers of disgrace, the starvelings of bankruptcy, and the pseudonymous refugees of political persecution. It may open to the various patients of disappointment a quiet hospital of cheap and stately lodgings, adapted at once to hide and to console the misery of privation and the pangs of remembered affluence. It may also become the darling monastery of those, whom revolution has harshly sentenced to retirement. It may thus resemble those islands of Madrepore, which industrious insects built out of the the deep, whose weeds were coral, and whose pebbles were pearl: but which, under the tread of armed men, soon crumble into sterile shoals, and serve only to harbour the famishing despondence of such as escape shipwreck. ART. X. Œuvres de PONCE DENIS (ECOUCHARD) LE BRUN; &c. &c.; i. e. The Works of PONCE DENIS (ECOUCHARD) LE BRUN; Member of the Institute of France, and of the Legion of Honour. Arranged and published by P. L. Ginguené, Member of the Institute; with a preliminary Account of the Life and Works of the Author, by his Editor. 4 Vols. 8vo. Paris. 1811. Imported by De Boffe. Price 21. 8s. A VERY striking frontispiece, from a bust of LE BRUN, in troduces these volumes; and the reader, if he be tinctured with the slightest belief in physiognomy, is prepossessed in favour of an author whose countenance unites the firmness of the patriot with the contemplation of the philosopher. Yet it is not either as patriot or philosopher that this publication professes to exhibit M. LE BRUN. It is here intended to shew him to the reader as a satirical, an amorous, and a sublime poet-in the words of the editor's motto from Chaussard, “Malin, tendre, sublime, à l'immortalité M. LE BRUN has been mistakenly supposed by the careless and superficial observers of the literature of their own times, to be one of those poets whom the Revolution made known to the world. 3 world. The general tendency of his poetical pieces on public matters gave strength to this erroneous notion; and the curious circumstance of his never publishing any collection of his works, during a long life, still farther propagated the error:- but M. Ponce Denis (Ecouchard) LE BRUN was born at Paris so far back as the year 1729. His father was attached to the service of the Prince of Conti. Whatever the nature of his employment may have been, (which little affects the fame of his son,) he was greatly esteemed by this Prince; and it was at the antient Hotel Conti, which occupied, on the Key of the Quatres Nations, the site of the present Hotel des Monnaies, that LE BRUN received his birth. His poetical turn, and the penetration and sprightliness of his genius, manifested themselves at a very early periods and being sent to the College Mazarin, he there passed through his studies in the most brilliant manner. Some of the principal events of his life, and the chief features of his poetical character, may be clearly and briefly collected from the following free translation of the funeral eulogy which was pronounced on him (in the year 1807.) by M. Chenier, a distinguished member of the National Institute: "We have lost a justly celebrated poet. LE BRUN is no more. Various labours have distinguished his long career: but, although he has been eminently successful in several classes of verse, which would appear to be of the most opposite nature, yet it is on lyric poetry, the principal object of his studies, that his reputation will rest. The son of the great Racine (whose éleve LE BRUN had the happiness to become) transmitted to him the heir-loom of classical composition, and the language of that memorable æra in which Frenchmen boasted at once of genius and of taste. It was LE BRUN who, while yet a young man, interested Voltaire in favour of the descendant of Corneille. The lyric poet did not appear unworthy to be the bond of connection between two great men. He dared to give the powers of speech to the classical shade of the father of the French drama; and the author of Merope listened to the voice of the author of the Cid.- An imitator of Pindar, LE BRUN sang of "Enthusiasm" in inspired numbers. When the envious enemies of Buffon endeavoured to tarnish his renown, LE BRUN avenged the eloquent philosopher, in an ode which will remain in our poetry as a monument of superior genius and of courageous friendship. Thus the name of this accomplished poet associated itself with the names of his illustrious contemporaries. Often elevated and sometimes ambitious in his style, searching for strong and not rejecting bold expressions, he sang of every subject that suggested sublime ideas-God-Nature-Liberty-Genius --Victory. "Those numerous exploits, which for the last ten years have come manded the admiration of the world, re-animated the age of LE BRUN. Just ready to expire, his melodious voice was yet equal to celebrate these wonders, the last and the greatest which it recorded. Posterity, that inflexible judge, will mark the qualities which distinguished LE M m 3 BRUN, BRUN, and will not conceal his defects. For us, at the sight of this tomb, in which his remains repose, but in which his glory is not buried, what have we to do, in paying these last solemn duties to the worthy succcessor of Malherbe and of Rousseau, but to register our grief for his loss, and our respect for his genius?" To this sketch, we have only to add that LE BRUN experienced more than the ordinary vicissitudes of a poetical life;that, besides his unfortunate quarrel with his wife, after fourteen years of nuptial happiness, he became a beggar in the year 1782, by intrusting all his little property to the noble house of Rohan; that, even in the society of the great before the Revolution, he maintained a steady independence and love of liberty; that he continued to raise the voice of poetry throughout the scene of horrors which ensued, (a proof, at all events, of considerable carelessness of temper, if not of versatility of principle); and, finally, that Bonaparte, after several handsome gratuities, settled on him a pension of six thousand francs per annum, for the last few years of his life +. We now enter on a review of the “Chef's &'Œuvre” of Le BRUN, his lyrical compositions. To these we shall devote our chief attention; since the funeral eulogy, above translated, appears very justly to fix the pillar of the author's reputation on this basis. The odes are published in the order (or rather disorder) which was advised by LE BRUN himself. Variety seems to have been the sole object of this arrangement; and it is the best object which an editor of detached copies of verses can have in view. That the praises of wine should follow the praises of love, and that both should be interspersed with the record of heroic ac tion; that the valley, in a word, whether pastural or agricul tural, should be intersected by the range of hills, seems to We are not disposed, nor have we room, to enter into the details of this lamentable affair. LE BRUN seems to have been very ill used: but he resents it too furiously. See his "Lines to Vengeance." + This annuity was announced to the poet by Duroc, Grand Mareschal du Palais to Bonaparte. In the year 1786, a similar annuity (of 2,000 livres) had been conferred on him by Louis the XVIth, through the medium of M. de Calonne, Controleur Général des Finances. On the occasion of this pension, namely, the convocation of "Les Notables," LE BRUN was accused of selling his principles to the court: but he seems to have written in favour of that measure con amore; (see vol. 2d. p. 234.) and if we may credit his editor and advocate, who tells us that the claims of friendship were no longer operative on him at LE BRUN's death, he by no means deserves such an accusation. have been the author's happy design. The consequence is that we scarcely know any modern "corpus" of lyric poetry which can vie with that before us, which is indeed "animi plenum.” Here are the grave and gay, the lively and severe, most pleasantly intermixed, yet carefully discriminated. The collection, in a word, (if we may venture so to express ourselves,) resembles that union of beauties which nature only presents; where, decided as she is in contrast, she is equally effective in the general harmony of colour. This is high commendation; and we proceed to substantiate its justice. Our first selection shall be from the ode to Buffon*; of which the intention was to console the great subject of it under the calumnious attacks of his numerous enemies. The two concluding stanzas ever appeared to us singularly beautiful, We make no apology for now citing, or rather reciting, them : Buffon, dès que rompant ses voiles, Et fugitive du cercueil, De ces palais peuplés d'étoiles Cette Lyre qui t'a su plaire, We are sorry to take notice of the lamentable specimen of the bathos, which is exhibited at the conclusion of the Ode on the Earthquake at Lisbon, in 1755. The general ideas and the * This and several others of the pieces here printed have been long known to the world: yet many of LE BRUN's published works are here omitted; and the greater portion of each of the present volumes is entirely new. They might have been largely increased, had not the editor deemed it his duty (a duty in the farther exercise of which he was restrained by the bookseller) to omit ode, elegy, epigram, or poem of any description, of which the public principles, or private personalities, appeared to him to require suppression. |