The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-03-07
N. DE LAMARTINE-A CASE OF CAPRI
CIOUs FAME.

The cable telegraph announced a few days
ago, in three words, the death of Alphonse
de Lamartine. This curt, cold disp itch is,
suggestively, a sermon more eloquent than
ever fell from the lips of preacher on the
vanity of contemporary fame. About twenty
years ago, the world resounded with the name
of Lamsrtine, as the demigod of a political
revolution. About twenty years before that,
he dazzled and captivated both the critical
and the popular mind in France, as the an
| gel and the young father of literary regen-
Grafton. At the latter date he had challenged
fame with those fragmentary frstlings of his
| poetic genius, entitled I" MfditdtiOns Poet
| iques." Then come, SUCCESSFULLY "HdrmO-
nies PO6iigues ct Religieuses," sort of inflated
and transcendental paraphrase of the "Medi-
tations La MOTte de SOcrate;" the last
canto tin French) of the Pilgrimage of
Child Harold which partakes about as
much of the;Byronic flavor as eau de s,scre
partakes of the qualities of champagne and
"JOcelyn," long romance in Alexandrine
verse. Chasteness and delicacy of thought
and style elaborated to exquisitism charac-
terize all these poems while most of them
are pervaded by refinement of
sentimental piety, frequently rising in fervor
and in ideality to the height of mystical
ecstacy. The time was ripe for the reception
of these illusions. There was just then a re-
action in the French mind against immoral
and skephcal literature. All imaginations
were prepared and longing for this poetry
of the SOUL" as it soon became the fashion to
call NJ. de Lamartine's metrical co Compositions.
For the moment psychological tendencies and
tastes we're in the ascendant, and writer's of
the subjective school, into whatever extrava-
gances of mystical revery or morbid senti-
mentality they might run, were almost sure
to be greeted by admiring if not comprehend
ing readers. For N. de Lamartine, the aris-
tarch of this school, the admiration swept
over France like an epidemic frenzy. The
soberest critics caught the infection, and
were as prodigal of hyperbolical commenda-
tons in this instance as they had been in all
previous instances scrupulous and chary of
their praise. This "pensive poet of beau
tiful melancholy" was idolized more espe-
guage he was called angel and prophet The
word genius was rejected as too poor to mea.
sure the prevailing appreciation. Vocabu-
laries we're ransacked and sifted for phrases
adequate to express the superhuman flights |
of such an intellect the celestial emotions of
such heart.
No military hero whose arms had saved or
aggrandized his country, was ever hailed with
more enthusiasm by his countrymen; not Ma |
poleon after Austerlitz, not Wellington after
Waterloo, not Grant after Richmond. This |
adulation was too much for the |
modesty and the equilibrium of its object, /
constitutionally prone as he was to excessive
selfesteem. Dazed and giddy with the I'M
exaltation, he fell but too easily into |
a devout though amiable rapture of self-wor-
ship from which he never afterwards emerged.
This appeared not only in his writings, but in
his manner, to the pain and sorrow of some,
10 the disgust and resentment of others. From
this moment the glorious illusion which had
him as author began to fade
Fame was subsiding and the circle of his fer
vent admirers was contracting, when he passed
abruptly from poetry and general literature to
politics, by entering the French Chamber in
which he took his seat in 1884. Here, having
declined from his first apotheosis, he COM
nenced his ascent into a second. Practical
to be sure, shook their heads
when they saw him in the tribune with his
ustrous eyes and lofty forehead so expressive
If ethereal intellectually and refined senti-
and when they heard his oratory SO
flowing and so ornate in style and yet so in
ense in conception and argument.
The point from which he looked at public
fairs was too high to enable him to obtain a
orrect survey and to arrive at safe conclu-
ions. So thought those mole-eyed critics,
s though it were possible to obtain anything
ut an imperfect survey from low point
7ithin narrow circle of vision.
Well in spite Of their skeptical suspicious
nd surmises, it was not long before he dis
layed an ability to grapple with the most
rgent and critical of the practical questions
# the day that would have done credit TO
D veteran politician or diplomat. So effec-
i've was he especially in treating problems
sociology that he at length became the
cad of formidable party, le part social,
ased on principles aiming at the solution
those problems. Thus he stood up to
S4S when events made him, prominently,
ne hero of the third French revolution.
Though foreign minister, and not the {
resident, of the provisional government ex-
'mporized by the revoiutionists, he was
the mastersspirit in France
ON the 4th of February, 1913, to the 4th of
lay of the same year, when the National =
ssembly convened and he was invested by
10 voters Of that body along with four {
ihers, with temporary executive power In L
sconciling the conservatism and the radical O
m represented in the revolution he exhibited C
tact, and by his holiness.
and presence of mind in DEALING L
18th seditious movements in Paris, he twice
rested civil war, and twice saved the new