The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-01 00:00:00

Nittraturt.

Memoirs of Celebrated Characters. By Alphonse
de Lamartine. Three Vols. Vol. 111.
London: Bentley.
UPON a former occasion (Pastas, vol. ii., p. 615)
the character of Lamartine was elucidated at
such length in our columns that there can be
no occasion for prefacing our review of this
volume. Yet we must say that we have been
affected strongly with some of the personal
traits of the author revealed in many of its
eloquent pages. That particular blending of
moral aspiration and rhetorical faculty, com-
bined with versatile literary power, which
constitutes the essence of Lamartine's genius,
are repeatedly manifested here. Some parts
of the composition arc rather hurried, and
the translator has not done his author full
justice ; the construction of his sentences is
in many places too loose and tangled, and
the harmony of the original iswanted.
The present and concluding Volume of this
series contains five literary characters—
" William Tell," " Madame de
Sevigne,"
" John Milton," "Antal.," " Bossuet." All
these papers have the stamp of Lamartine's
mind, but they are of unequal value. One of
them, however, is of surpassing merit.
Lamartine has never written better, or
thought more justly, than in his masterly
portrait of Bossuet, which is the finest literary
picture of that renowned divine with which
we are acquainted. That one essay is enough
to show that the author, if he chose, could
rival Mr. Macaulay as an essay-reviewer,—a
class of writer which, as Lamartine truly
states, is quite peculiar to our times. In his
sketch (for it is little more) of " Milton" the
author observes :

It is a characteristic of the age in which we live, to take
more interest in the writer than in his works; we turn to
the page for a history of the man. What would Tasso be
without his fatal attachment, and his dungeon? What
would Jean-Jacques Rousseau be without his" Confessions"?
What would Voltaire himself be without his " Correspon-
dence " ? Human nature seems to have become entirely
historical ; it studies, analyses, and contemplates itself in
all the prominent indiv.duals who collectively constitute
the age. The book falsifies, but the man cannot; his life
reveals him in spite of himself. For this reason, biogra-
phies in the style of Plutarch have become, in our estima-
tion, the most valuable portion of historic records : one
remarkable character lights up to us an entire age. A pre-
sentiment of this bias of the public mind in the present
day impressed on the author the idea of the series he is
now writing, under the title of the " ;:iviliser," in which he
purposes to depict universal history from the single lives
of illustrious men.

That passage was not written without a
reference to our " Quarterlies " ; but we must
enforce attention to the fact that this particu-
lar style of writing has dangerous vices. It
creates popular rather than profound his-
torians ; matter is sacrificed to manner ; for
the essayist cares to interest more than in-
struct. We mist also express our dissent
from the notion that history can be properly
seen in the lives of particular men. The
great charm of all these modern biographies
lies rather in the exhibition of human nature,
and in the easy, colloquial tone of the
writers.

Jn the essay on Madame de Sevigne the
author gives us some interesting anecdotes of
his own life; and nothing can be more artistic
than the way in which he takes us to " Les
Rochers," so well known (on paper) to all the
readers of the great female letter-writer :

It was in this identical book that we irst learned to read.
A mother, educated amidst the elegant refinements of a
Court, but banished after early youth by mediocrity
of fortune into a country retirement similar to the
" Rochers" of ➢ladame de Sevigne, found in that authoress,
besides many analogies of thought and feeling, all the
recollections of the aristocratic world she had frequented,
—a fund of contemplation applicable to the rural solitude
she inhabited with her children, and to all the pious emo-
tions of her own maternal heart seeking to shelter its nest
tram the storms of life. This volume, every page of which
was so continually studied, always reposed upon the time-
worn stone mantelpiece; and when our attention to the
lessons which we studied beneath the shade of our garden-
trees and repeated at our mother's knee merited approba-
tion, we were rewarded by haying read aloud to us a few of
the letters most suited to our age and comprehension.
The chief favourites were those in which he mother speaks
to Ler daughter of her woods, her avenue, her dog, her
nightingale, her religion, her pious meditations upon the
sunset beheld from the terrace of Livry, of her kind uncle
the Abbe de Coulanges, and of her friends and neighbours,

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