DELILLE, Jacques, early acquired deserved celebrity as the founder of a new school in French poetry, but unfortunately his ambition extended with his fame, till he left behind him as many didactic poems as Sir Richard Blackmore has epics, and we suspect the greater number of them are already almost as little known. The author of the Jardins, indeed, will always hold his rank among poets; but it would have been no great misfortune to his memory if he had written little more.

He was born on the 22d of June 1738, in the neighbourhood of Clermont, in Auvergne. His father was a man of neither fortune nor family; but he was connected by his mother with that of the Chancellor de l’Hôpital. With very slender means of support, he was educated at Paris, and made such progress in his studies as augured well for his future distinction. When his education was completed, he was forced to accept of a very low situation as teacher in the College of Beauvais; but this was soon exchanged for the more honourable station of professor of humanity at Amiens. After returning to Paris, where he likewise obtained a professorship, be speedily acquired a considerable poetical name, and was encouraged, by the younger Racine, to give to the world a translation of the Georgies of Virgil, which he had begun at Amiens. This translation was a bold attempt for a French poet. The muses of that nation were but little conversant with a country life. They had been reared in courts, and seemed incapable of assuming any other tone than that declamatory one in which kings and princesses might be supposed, however erroneously, to give utterance to their tragic woes, or that elegant and complimentary style in which the interests, the intrigues, and the morality of polite life, find a much truer and more adequate expression. Racine and Boileau, in a word, had fixed the poetry of their nation within the limits which they had prescribed for it; it was perfect in its kind, and this made it appear still more hopeless to attempt to extend it further. Voltaire, indeed, had given a wider compass to the language of tragedy; in his spirit of universal dominion, he had attempted the epic, but had failed. He was more successful in transfusing into the guarded regularity of French poetry some of the wilder graces and eccentricities of the Italian; but even he would have shrunk from the unprecedented audacity of walking his courtly muse over a ploughed field, or bringing her within the steam of a dunghill. We are told, accordingly, that he was greatly struck with the enterprise and the success of Delille; and that, without any personal acquaintance with the poet, he, of his own accord, recommended him and his work to the good graces of the academy. It was not, however, till some years afterwards that Delille became a member of that celebrated body. He now aimed at a higher distinction than even a finished translation of the most finished poem in the world could confer upon him; and in the Jardins, which he published a few years after his reception into the academy, he made good his pretensions as an original poet. The mantle of the Roman bard still, indeed, seemed to enfold him; and, if we can pardon a few French prettinesses, there is no didactic poem in any language, we believe, which approaches so closely to the polish, the grace, and the tenderness of Virgil, as the Jardins of Delille.

It is an unfortunate thing for a poet to become too ambitious, especially if his former success renders him inattentive to the steps by which he was conducted to fame. After his Georgies had put him at the head of the poets of his country, Virgil, in obedience to the calls of gratitude and of patriotism, rather than of ambition, ventured upon his grand national epic; an arduous effort even for him. Yet by never losing sight for a moment of his own strength and his own weakness, he has been enabled (although his heart never seems to have gone along with it, and he was at last, as is well known, quite dissatisfied with his own work) to complete an undertaking which, in the judgment of posterity, has for ever encircled his modest brows with a glory, second only to that which beams from the divinity of Homer. His French disciple, who seemed for a time to be humbly treading in his steps, wanted, however, the composure of a Roman head. After the success of his Jardins, Delille appears to have forgotten where the strength of his own genius lay; that he was nothing at all if he was not cautious, select, elegant, and pathetic; that the world did not expect to be deluged by his poetry, but to be refreshed by its gentle and winding streams; that there was no necessity, in a word, for his writing a great deal, but the very greatest for his continuing to write inimitably well. The subject upon which he next laboured was an unhappy one. Without any great portion of Imagination of his own, he projected a poem on that vague and indeterminate theme. He sets out, accordingly, at a [7:7:687]pitch which he cannot keep up; he then loses himself in indistinct metaphysics; and the want of any limit to his subject tempts him into a wandering and interminable style of composition, which is at complete variance with every thing like point, polish, and elegance. Before he had gone far in the composition of this poem, which was not, indeed, published till after many of his other works, he made a voyage to Constantinople in the train of the ambassador Μ. de Choiseul Gouffier. He did not lose this opportunity of visiting Attica and the Troad, and we might have hoped that some glowing sketches of scenes so inspiring to a poet would have relieved the heaviness of his Imagination. But the following is the only passage in all that long poem which pretends to catch any portion of their divine influence.

Lorsque de l’univers l’aimable enchanteresse, L’imagination, me porta dans la Grèce,

Je ne m’attendais pas qu’un jour mes propres yeux Verraient ces belles mers, ces beaux champs, ces beaux cieux; Je les ai vus! Mon coeur a tressailli de joic:

Homère m’a guidé dans les champs où fut Troie. Pour moi, ses vers divins peuplaient ces lieux deserts, Et ces lieux, à leur tour, m’embellissaient ses vers.

Un délire charmant, qu’il m’inspirait sans doute, D’enchantements sans nombre avait semé ma route; Je ne demandais plus, pour traverser les flots Ni les secours des vents, ni l’art des matelots; Je disais aux Tritons, aux jeunes Néréides, De pousser mon vaisseau sur les plaines humides. Tout à coup sur ces mers, à mes yeux s’est montré Un stupide Pacha, d’esclaves entouré;

Tout s’est désenchanté, &c.

In spite of this tremendous pasha, whose stupidity appears to have been somewhat infectious, our poet, whilst he resided at Constantinople, was almost in the daily habit of passing over to the coast of Asia, and studying his poem amidst the inspirations of its splendid scenery. Yet we cannot be persuaded that his enthusiasm, amidst these classical regions, was very profound or genuine, if it be true that he stated it as one of his greatest enjoyments, while resident amongst them, that he could go every day to breakfast in Asia, and come back again to dine in Europe.

On his return to Paris he prelected, in his capacity of professor, on the Latin poets, and was attended by a numerous audience, who were delighted, not only with his critical observations, but with his beautiful recitation. He indulged them, too, with his own verses; and in this way, we believe, the choice morceaux of his poem on Imagination were familiar to the public long before it came into their hands. Delille continued to advance in fame and fortune, though without hazarding any more publications, till the period of the Revolution, when he was reduced to poverty, and sheltered himself in retreat from the disasters which surrounded him. He quitted Paris, and retired to St Diez, the native place of Madame Delille; and here he completed, in deep Solitude, his translation of the Aeneid, which he had begun many years before. A residence in France, however, soon became very undesirable, and he emigrated first to Bale, and then to Glairesse in Switzerland, a charming village on the lake of Bienne, opposite Rousseau’s island of St Pierre. Much delighted with this enchanting country, and with the reception which he met from its inhabitants, he occupied himself constantly in the composition of poetry, and here finished his Homme des Champs, and his poem on the Trois Règnes de la Nature. We have censured Delille for writing too much; but an excuse may be found for him in the horrors of the times, and the necessity of some object to interest his mind, and relieve it from the oppression of his misfortunes. He would probably have adopted a course more favourable to his fame, had not the revolution sent him adrift upon the world. His next place of refuge was in Germany, where he composed his La Pitié; and finally, he passed two years in London, chiefly employed in translating Paradise Lost. In 1801, finding that he might return safely to Paris, he did so, carrying with him his immense Poetical Encyclopaedia, and from that time he sent poem after poem into the world, till at last he himself quitted it on the first of May 1813, at the age of seventy-five. In his latter years he had lost, in a great degree, his sight, which gave him an opportunity of opening one of the cantos of his Imagination with an imitation of that noble passage in which our sublime poet laments a similar misfortune.

Voilà que le printemps reverdit les coteaux, Des chaines de Thiver dégage les ruisseaux, Rend leur feuillage aux bois, ses rayons à l’aurore; Tout renait; pour moi seul rien ne renait encore.

Delille appears to have been a person of a very amiable and simple character; his conversation full of a child-like gaiety; his writings always moral and pious. He was a man, too, of courage and firmness. In his voyage to Attica his little vessel was pursued by pirates, and very nearly overtaken. All on board were in consternation. The poet very coolly observed, “These rascals are not aware that I shall make them very ridiculous in an epigram.” A finer instance of his resolution occurred during the tyranny of Robespierre. That wretch ordered him to compose a hymn on occasion of an impious fête, which Delille refused to do, and replied to the threats which were made him, Que la guillotine était fort commode, et fort expéditive. Being still urged to comply, he did write an ode, in which he took occasion to paint (a theme we may believe not very agreeable to the heroes of the Revolution) the terrors which immortality held out to the guilty, and its consolations to the virtuous under misfortune. This was very noble; but, wearied out afterwards by his long banishment, he does not appear to have been equally sturdy when he put forth his poem of La Pitié, on his return to Paris. Unfortunately he had already given it to the London booksellers; and, in their edition, there were various attacks on the proceedings of Napoleon, and expressions of great devotion to the exiled family. But when he found himself under the consular government, he made considerable alterations on his poem. It was published in Paris about the same time that it appeared in London; and, like the statue with two faces, it was quite a different thing, according to the side of the channel on which it was contemplated. On a general estimate of the genius of Delille, we must consider him as a poet of much refinement and delicacy, but of no great power or stamina. Upon the pleasing subject of rural life he dilates with great beauty and felicity. There are, too, throughout his poems, very splendid descriptions of all kinds; but he weakens them constantly by diffusion; and there is very little art or elegance in his connections or transitions. He set out well, but he afterwards attempted more than he could accomplish. It is a pity that he was able to read any language but French and Latin, or that he should have ever wandered beyond the precincts of nature and of Virgil. It has occurred to us in reading Delille, that, with all his beauty of versification, and occasional felicity of expression, he yet shows, in his latter works especially, a great ignorance of the line of distinction between prose and poetry. This is a curious subject of discussion; and we know not that it has ever been accurately examined. There may be very eloquent and very animated prose, which yet, if versified, would make but indifferent poetry. Delille very nearly versifies some of the pathetic passages in Rosseau’s Heloiseς but in his hands they are any thing but poetical. On the other hand, there are poems and subjects[7:7:688] which are more naturally treated in prose, but which, by the art of the poet, acquire the character of poetry. The satires of Horace, which he himself calls sermoni propiora, Dryden’s Religio Laid, and still more the Epistles of Pope and Boileau, have all, doubtless, a poetical character, although there is in them no passion, and very little imagery. Didactic poetry, in general, is an invasion upon the precincts of prose composition; but how wonderfully have some poets invested it with the attributes of the highest inspiration! One half of Lucretius is mere reasoning, yet even in his reasonings we discern the poet. There is the animation, the diction, the rapidity of poetry; and that overflowing of mind with which he is constantly breaking out of his reasonings, and running into the most brilliant conceptions and pictures, is its very soul. Virgil, too, in his Georgies, is poetical from beginning to end. No man who ever wrote seems to have seen more distinctly than this great master what it is that peculiarly constitutes poetry, or to have been so capable of diffusing it over the most unpromising parts of his subject. Perhaps the charm consists very much in selection. A prose writer accumulates image upon image when he wishes to make a forcible impression; but translate these intoverse,and some of them will appear insignificant, some of them low, and the quantity of them tedious. This is often the effect of Delille’s descriptions. A poet like Virgil, again, fixes upon some one striking feature of the conception which he wishes to impress—some thought that breathes, and word that burns; and giving us these, he not only gives us the image which he expresses, but the full force of many kindred images which are kept behind, yet which our imaginations, when thus seized, can easily body out for themselves.

Delille has left behind him little prose. His preface to the translation of the Georgies is an able essay, and contains many excellent hints on the art and the difficulties of translation. He wrote the article La Bruyère in the Biographie Universelle. The following is the list of his poetical works: 1. Les Georgiques de Virgile, traduites en vers Françaises, Paris, 1769, 1782, 1785, 1809. 2. Les Jardins, en quatre chants, 1780; nouvelle edition, Londres, 1800; Paris, 1802. 3. L’ Hommes des Champs, ou les Georgiques Françaises, 1800. 4. Poesies Fugitives, 1802. A collection given under the title of Poesies Diverses, 180 J, was disavowed by Delille. 5. Dithyrambe sur l ’ Immortalité de l’Ame, suivi du passage du Saint Gothard ; poème traduit de l’Anglais de Madame la Duchesse de Devonshire, 1802. 6. La Pitié; poëme en quatre chants. Londres et Paris, 1803. 7. L'Enéide de Virgile, traduite en vers Françaises, 1805. 9. EImagination, poème en huit chants, 1806. 10. Les Trois Règnes de la Nature, 1809.

11. La Conversation, 1812.