Poésies choisies de André Chénier

L. 6. son antique pâture. Antique here means 'former' as in: 'Dieu de Sion, rappelle, Rappelle en sa faveur tes antiques bontés,'—Racine, Athalie, III. vii. The same use of antique occurs in Chénier's prose.

Ll. 11. Si peut-être... Virgil's 'Si qua forte ferant oculis sese obvia nostris Errabunda bovis vestigia' (Ecl. vi. 57)—i.e., that we may see whether scattered traces will not meet our eyes.

Ll. 13-22. Ovid, De Arte Am. i. 313 ff.

L. 15. superbe amant. Virgil's 'superbos amantes,' Georg. iii. 217, 218.

L. 21. à la flamme lustrale. By the lustral or purificatory flame.

IX. PANNYCHIS.

This idyll is imitated from Gessner's Clymene and Damon (or Daphne and Micon in some editions): 'Tell me, love, what wilt thou do with this little altar?... Dost thou not remember that in the days of our childhood it was our favourite resort? Then were we no taller than this young columbine. About the altar will I plant myrtle and rose bushes. If Pan protect them, their branches will soon overarch the altar and form a small temple of verdure.... Dost thou see these bushes? they still grow in the shape of an arbour, though untrimmed now; they were our bower. We built the vault as high as we could reach.... Had I not planted a little garden before the bower? Had we not hedged it in with rush? A sheep might have browsed off the hedge in a moment, it was so large.... Thou wast lucky to find a small mutilated image of Cupid. As a fond mother, thou wouldst lavish care and caresses on him; a nutshell was his cradle, where, lulled by thy songs, he would lie on rose leaves.' A cicada is also mentioned, which gets hurt in flying away. Then Damon: 'Thus passed the days of our childhood, when in our games thou wast my wife and I was thy husband.'

L. 5. As in Ovid, Met. xiii. 841, the giant Polyphemus compares himself to Jupiter, so here the child compares himself to his young goat.

Ll. 19-24. A translation of the fourteenth epigram of Anytus, p. 200, vol. i. [of the Anthology]. See also the twenty-ninth of Argentarius, vol. ii, p. 273. (Note of A. Chénier.) Anytus of Tegea lived 300 years before the Christian era.

L. 20. verte cigale. The cicada is brown. Chénier is here thinking of the large green grasshopper (Locusta viridissima).

L. 21. les honneurs. The honours of this tomb, that is, this tomb and its adjuncts destined to honour thy memory.

X. DRYAS.

André Chénier had purposed to write sea-bucolics or idylls, which his notes, in which he indicates the genre of his poems by Greek abbreviations, designate as [Greek: Bouk. enal.] (that is, [Greek: Boukolika enalia]), [Greek: Eid. enal.] (i.e. [Greek: Eidullia enalia]). Dryas is one of them. It appeared for the first time in G. de Chénier's edition, 1874.

L. 4. aux mains. See note to p. 16, l. 308.

L. 6. tout se jette. Tout, i.e. tout le monde, as in 'Femmes, moines, vieillards, tout était descendu.'—La Fontaine, Fables, VIII. ix. 4. The verb agrees with tout, which sums up the enumeration. Ayer, §217, 3 b.

L. 8. Il remplit et couronne. Not of course in the sense in which Milton writes: 'Eve... their flowing cups With pleasant liquors crown'd' (Paradise Lost, v. 444). This sense is unknown in French. But see Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq., s.v. 'coronatus.'

L. 19. dieux humides, water-gods. Thus Boileau: 'Il [le Rhin] voit fuir à grands pas ses naïades craintives Qui toutes accourant vers leur humide roi...'—Ep. iv. This invocation is taken from Propertius, III. vii. 57.

L. 23. les ondes avares. The greedy waves.

Ll. 29. et ses efforts nombreux... The sentence has been left unfinished.

L. 36. Virgil, Aen. iv. 304.

XI. BACCHUS.

This piece is imitated from Ovid, Met. iv. II ff. It also contains reminiscences of Ovid, De Arte Am. i. 541; Catullus, lxiv. 225.

L. 1. Thyonée Thyoneus, i.e. son of Thyone, another name of Semele.

L. 2. Dionysius, Evan, Iacchus, Lenaeus, names of Bacchus. The origin of the first three is obscure, while Lenaeus is from [Greek: lêmos], a wine-press.

L. 9. étoilé. The fur of the lynx is spotted.

L. 11. aux axes de tes chars. Lat. axis (Fr. axe) is properly Fr. essieu (from Lat. axiculus), Eng. axle which has also been sometimes replaced by axis. (The O. E. word was ax (æx), related to Lat. axis.) But here axe is used, as in Latin, for roue, i.e. 'wheel.' See also note p. 65, XI, l. 2.

L. 17. Et le rauque tambour. Et does duty for ainsi que.

L. 18. Les hautbois tortueux—'tibia curva' Tibul, ii. I. 86.—les doubles crotales:, crotals, or crotala, are a sort of castanets. They are called doubles because they consisted of two little brass plates, or rods.

XII. LE CHÈNE DE CÉRÈS.

This short fragment is taken from Ovid, Met. viii. 743.

L. 3. porte un immense ombrage. I am under the impression that this happy use of porter has been suggested to Chénier by the term used in painting of ombre portée, defined by Littré (s.v. porté), 'ombre qu'un corps projette sur une surface.' Chénier frequented painters, and himself painted.

L. 5. bandeaux, fillets. See vittae in Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq.

XIII. HERCULE.

Ll. 2-4. Imprudent in being too credulous, Dejanira became the innocent cause of Hercules' death; for, fearing his infidelity, she sent her husband a robe or shirt that the Centaur Nessas had given her, and which he had said would preserve her husband's love to her. No sooner had Hercules put on the garment his wife gave him than he suffered terrible agony, under which he ordered a funeral pile to be kindled, and placed himself in its flames, thus falling a victim to the Centaur, Nessus, whom he had slain. Hercules killed Nessus because, carrying Dejanira over a river, he attempted to run away with her.

Ll. 5, 6. ta cime... amoncelle. Literally, 'thy top heaps up,' for 'thy top is heaped up with.'

L. 9. du vieux lion, the Nemean lion.

XIV. ÉRICHTHON.

L. 2. Érichthon. Erichtonius, fourth king of Athens, son of Vulcan and the Earth, was a cripple, invented chariots, and, after his death, became the constellation of Auriga, or the Waggoner.

L. 5. axe, for char. See note to p. 65, XI, l. 2. For this line and the following see Virgil, Georg. iii. 113 ff.

Ll. 11-14. Virgil, Georg. iii. 191, 192.

L. 14. Agiter... leurs pas. Hurry (cf. agitato, in music=hurried) their pace, in opposition to mesurer, 'compose, moderate.'

XV. NÉÈRE.

L. 1.... Mais... This beginning shows that the piece is only a fragment. For this comparison see Ovid, Heroid. vii. 1, 2.

L. 7. Sébéthus. The river Sebetus runs through Campania. It is often mentioned by Sannazaro in his elegies, from which Chénier has borrowed the idea.

Ll. 9, 10. moi, celle qui te plus, moi, celle qui t'aimai. In this instance the agreement of the verbs with moi is condemned by modern grammarians. It would occur in the older language, and Bossuet himself has said, speaking of God, 'Je suis celui qui suis' (Lat. sum qui sum, Eng. 'I am that am,' Wyclif, Ex. iii. 14). See Littré, s.v. 'celui,' Rem. 4.

L. 16. A reminiscence of Catullus, lxiv. 117 ff.

L. 19. l'astre pur des deux frères d'Hélène. It is the 'fratres Helenae, lucida sidera' of Horace (Od. i. 3), namely Castor and Pollux. The constellation was said to be propitious to seafarers.

L. 21. Pæstum. A town in Lucania famous for its roses. See Virgil, Georg. iv. 118, 119.

L. 29. du sein de la mer. Il. i. 359-361. Thetis 'instantly appeared up from the grey sea like a cloud.'—CHAPMAN.

L. 30. comme un songe. In the Odyssey (xi. 207) the soul of Ulysses' mother vanishes (like a dream). Also Aen. vi. 702.

XVII.

L. 1. Song of Solomon, i. 6.

Ll. 7-10. Song of Solomon, i. 7.

XVIII.

L. 8. le mol et doux coton. Cf., in N.E.D., Cotton. 'Down or soft hair growing on the body.' Obs. rare [so F. coton=poil, 1615, Crooke, Body of man, 65: 'Pubes doeth more properly signifie the Downe or cotton when it ariseth about those parts.'

L. 11. Ovid, Heroid. xv. 93-95.

L. 22. ce jeune Troyen, Ganymede.

L. 23. Adonis, whose mother, Myrrha, had before his birth been turned into a tree that distilled myrrh.

XIX.

Ll. 1-8. Shakespeare, I Henry IV. iii. l. 214-222. That Chénier was sensible to the magic of this passage argues that, in spite of prejudices, he would recognize beauty wherever he found it.

L. 11. Car le... Becq de Fouquières conjectures that the poet would have written 'car le bel Endymion...,' or rather 'car le dieu d'amour...,' but was prevented by the metre.

L. 13. The song at the beginning of the fourth act of Measure for Measure gave Chénier the idea of these lines.

XX.

Ll. 11-20. An imitation of Bion, Idyll iv.

L. 15. et sa voix... Et here introduces a consequence, as in: 'Plus je vous envisage, Et moins je me remets, monsieur, votre visage,' Racine, Plaideurs, II, iv; or in 'give him an inch, and he take an ell.' Cf. p. 63, IX, l. 1.

XXII

L. 20. tu fais mes amours. Faire here is synonymous with être as in 'faire l'admiration de tous.'

L. 28. Te bêler mes amours. For another instance of this transitive use of bêler see p. 46, XXXIII, l. 10.

L. 32, Plutôt que te laisser. After que following a comparative, modern visage prefers de before the infinitive. See Haase, § 88.

XXIII. LE SATYRE ET LA FLÛTE.

L. 1. Toi, de Mopsus ami! Ironical. 'That thou never wast!' This beginning shows that these lines were meant as part of an eclogue: the subject to be two shepherds disputing the prize of singing. Mopsus is an excellent singer and poet mentioned in Virgil, Ecl. v. Berecynthus is a mountain in Phrygia on which the mysteries of Cybele were celebrated.

L. 3. Hyagnis. According to Apuleius, Flor. iii, Hyagnis was the father and teacher of Marsyas, the flute-player.

L. 4. énervé, emasculate. 'Semiviro Cybeles cum grege iunxit iter,' Martial, iii. 91.

L. 7. dans ce bui. Bui is spelt thus in order to rhyme for the eye with lui. 'Buis' for 'flute'; a metonymy.

L. 15. des chiens même. In poetry the adjective même often remains uninflected. 'Les immortels eux-même en sont persécutés,' Malherbe, i. 279, 26, Éd. des Grands Écrivains. 'Un éclat qui le rend respectable aux dieux même,' Racine, Esther, II. vii. 678, same edition. Haase, § 53, C.

XXIV.

This fragment is taken from the twenty-third idyll of Gessner.

L. 1. errante à travers. This inflected present participle is an archaism. See Haase, § 91. See also note to p. 25, l. 70, as well as p. 24, l. 61; p. 56, l. 8; p. 62, l. 19.

L. 4. Le pied-de-chèvre. The poets of the Pléiade used the compound chèvre-pied.

L. 6. leur risée. But only one nymph has been mentioned. It is understood that she meant to provide sport for her companions.

XXV.

L. 1. L'impur et fier époux. Becq de Fouquières remarks that the he-goat is frequently designated by a periphrasis in Greek and Latin literature.

L. 3. averti de, aware of.

XXVI.

This fragment is a translation of the first idyll of Gessner.

XXVII.

L. 6. La source aux pieds d'argent. Cf. 'La nymphe aux pieds d'argent,' p. 59, l. 47. Cf. also Milton's 'silver-buskined Nymphs,' Arcades, 33.

XXIX. A L'HIRONDELLE.

These lines are imitated from an epigram of Evenus of Paras.

L. 1. Fille de Pandion. Pandion, son of and king of Athens, had two daughters, Procne and Philomela. Procne was ultimately turned into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale. See Ovid, Met. vi. 412 ff.

L. 10. A ton nid. Nid for nichée: 'Et portant à son bec son modeste butin, De son nid babillard revient calmer la faim.'—Delille, En. xii (in LITTRÉ). In the same way 'nest,' in English, is used for 'brood.' Cf. Virgil, Georg. iv. 17, and La Font., Fables, X. vii. 17.

XXX.

These lines are imitated from Thomson, Autumn, 167-174.

XXXI.

Becq de Fouquières observes that when André Chénier composed this short bucolic fragment the revolutionary storm was raging. Chénier, a suspect, threatened with arrest, was sick in body and mind, and had gone to the waters at Forges for a few days' rest.

L. 8. lent. Lent, in the sense of 'supple, flexible,' is a Latinism twice or thrice used by Chénier, and perhaps nowhere else to be found in French literature. The second instance occurs in his Art d'aimer, the third (doubtful) on p. 75, l. 17. 'Un cuir souple et lent thus forms a pleonasm which mars this piece otherwise so neat.

XXXII.

L. 10. The subject might tempt a sculptor.

XXXIII. MNAÏS.

A translation of the ninety-eighth epitaph of Leonidas of Tarentum, Anal. t. i, p. 246 (note of André Chénier). The abbreviation means: Analecta veterum poetarum, published by Brunck, in three vols.

L. 4. rendez, grant. E. render once had this sense. N.E.D., s.v. 7.

L. 5. Par Cérès. Only women swore by Ceres. Spanheim in Callimachus,p. 655 (note of André Chénier).

L. 6. légère, slight.

L. 10. Me bêler les accents.... Cf. note to p. 41, l. 28.

L. 16. le sein. Sein is said of a woman, mamelle of an animal. The word pis (Lat. pectus, E. dug) would be the proper word here.

L. 17. Et sera.... This inversion following the conjunction et was very frequent in the older language. In the seventeenth century it is to be met with only, and but seldom, in Malherbe and La Fontaine. See Haase, § 153 B. André Chénier is right in reviving old forms of expression when they come in handy. And here it cannot be denied that there is a gain in solemnity. Cf. note to p. 64, IX, l. 17.

XXXIV. LES JARDINS.

L. 1. Secrets observateurs. Prying into the secrets of nature.

L. 7. les plaintives dryades. Is this mere poetic diction, as when Byron writes: 'the palm, the loftiest dryad of the woods,' Island, II, xi. 17. Though the garden described is one seen by a Frenchman of the eighteenth century, yet it is viewed with the eyes of a Greek pantheist.

L. 11. fidèle. True to nature.

L. 12. Loin du bois, comme si.... The uninverted order would be: 'Comme si Philomèle allait, loin du bois, chercher.'

l. 15. dont le printemps s'honore, which Spring boasts.

XXXV. INVOCATION A LA POÉSIE.

L. 5. Où te faut-il chercher? Understand 'Où faut-il te chercher?' The construction is ambiguous, and the sentence might be misunderstood as: 'where is it necessary for thee to seek?'

L. 5. la saison nouvelle. The renouveau, as our Old poets used to say, i. e. 'Spring.' So, in English, the 'new moon' (= F. la nouvelle lune), and Tennyson speaks of 'the new sun' (Geraint, 70).

Ll. 6-10. Petrarch, The Return of Spring, cclxix.

L. 11. gracieux. Not 'graceful' but 'gracious'—in my opini on at least.

L. 14. liquides. A very felicitous qualificative, apposite to both water and verse. Was Chénier the first of French poets to employ the phrase 'vers liquides'? Littré at least does not exemplify the use. It will hardly seem a novelty to the English student who has read of 'liquid notes, cadences,' &c.

Ll. 15, 16. Des vers... sont ce peuple de fleurs. An inversion in which the verb agrees with the predicate. See Ayer, § 212, 2.

XXXVI. A LA SANTÉ.

Ll. 1-3. Compare these opening lines with the envoy or concluding part of Hylas, p. 28, l. 43.

L. 9. jeunesse prudente. In the sense of Latin prudens, 'wise.' Prudence is generally considered as an attribute of old age. 'La prudence est le fruit de la longue vie,' says the French (Sacy's) translation of the Bible, where the English Bible has: 'In length of days (is) understanding,' Job xii. 12.

L. 10. Pâlit. Pâlir sur des livres is a French idiom whose English equivalent would be 'to pore over books.'

L. 23. caresses d'amours. The s in amours is for the rime.

ÉLÉGIES.

I.

Ll. 1-4. Horace, Od. iii, 12.

Ll. 7, 8. Tibulius, I. viii. 7.

L. 20. Le suit encor. This hyperbole, frequent in poetry, Chénier seems to have been particularly fond of. Cf. note to p. 62, l. 39.

L. 22. nymphes. Nymphe, as well as coursier (l. 24), belonging to the poetic diction of those days, strike us as blemishes. But if we were to demur at such details we could hardly read anything written in the now accepted style.

II.

Ll. 1-8. Imitated from Horace, Od. iii. 4.

L. 13. Seul Elliptical: 'when I am alone.'

L. 19. distraits, diverted from their uneasy, anxious thoughts.

Ll. 21-28. Imitated from Horace, Od. III. iv.

Ll. 23. Catile. Catilus and Tibur are one and the same place, now Tivoli (l. 26): Moenia Catile in Horace.

L. 24. Blandusie. Horace, Od. iii. 13, celebrates its fountain.

L. 26. Tivoli, i.e. Tibur, where Horace's villa stood.

L. 27. Horace, Od. II. xix.

L. 35. Theocritus, Id. iii. 12. Bruyante abeille is of course a nominative in apposition to Je. So with rose, &c.

L. 36. les délices, the sweets.

Ll. 37. Anthol. v. 84.

L. 38. étamine. A. Chénier seems to have used étamine, properly the stamen or male organ of flowers, for the pollen or fecundating dust which is secreted by the stamen. Cf. note to p. 27, l. 30.

L. 47. Anacreon, Od. xx. The thought, as a lover's wish, is hackneyed.

L. 61. périsse l'amant que satisfait la crainte! The meaning, not very obvious, but explained by the following lines, is: Beshrew that lover who is content to frighten his mistress into fidelity.

III. AUX FRÈRES DE PANGE.

The following desponding lines were written by Chénier just before undertaking a journey to Switzerland and Italy. His friends, finding him in a very bad state of health, prevailed upon him to accompany them. His spirits seem to have been very low at that time, as appears from the thoughts of death he gives expression to, and numerous are the passages in which the melancholy mind of Chénier gloats upon death.

L. 1. je suis prêt à descendre. Grammarians have long distinguished between près de and prêt à, but writers never did, until lately, when prêt à was restricted to expressing 'ready to' and près de 'on the point of.'

L. 3. linceul. In the Dictionnaire des rimes françaises, by Jean Le Febvre, Paris, 1587, linceuil and linceul are given. Littré observes that both pronunciations are heard.

L. 13. reliques. The English student is likely to overlook this word, as English 'relics' means both (1) what remains as a memorial of a departed saint, martyr, or other holy person, and (2) the remains of a person, the body of one deceased. But this latter sense is of very rare occurrence in French, and Chénier uses it because, being seldom used, it is still all but novel. He thinks it 'fine and sonorous,' and proceeds to observe that Racine has it twice. Alfred de Musset, after him, employed reliques figuratively in; 'Les morts dorment en paix dans le sein de la terre; Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints; Ces reliques du coeur ont aussi leur poussière; Sur leurs restes sacrés ne portons pas les mains.' Yet it is easy to see that in this instance both senses are implied.

L. 24. qu'il dut vivre longtemps. All editions, and our present selection after them, print dut without a circumflex accent. Dût is in fact the imperfect of the subjunctive used, as was usual in the older language and is still occasional in seventeenth-century French, for the pluperfect of the subjunctive, as in: 'Mais puisque son dédain, au lieu de le guérir, Ranime ton amour qu'il dût faire mourir. Sers-toi de mon pouvoir,' Corneille, Clit. II. iv. 484. So here dût stands for eût dû = aurait dû. See Haase, § 66 B.

L. 25. le meurtre jamais n'a souillé mon courage. Tibullus, iii. 5. 5 ff. When Chénier speaks of murder he has duelling in his mind, which he deprecated in his prose works. He also takes courage in its older sense, frequent in the great French classics, and the oldest sense, recorded in English, of 'the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, &c.; spirit, mind, disposition, nature.'—N.E.D.

L. 44. et voilà que je meurs, and behold I die: a Biblical term.

L. 49. mes feux. An instance of the conventional language of love, now exploded, like F. flamme and E. flame.

L. 52. L'ennui. Ennui here says something more than its adoption into English would suggest. The English student, in order to realize its force, should refer to its earlier adoption represented by the form annoy. The word originated, according to Diez, in the Latin phrase est mihi in odio. For the weakened sense of ennui, see p. 57, l. 41.

L. 53. à, for.

L. 56. N'allument... un... trépas. A bold phrase. The passage is from 'allumer une fièvre,' through 'allumer une fièvre mortelle,' to 'allumer une mort.'

L. 61. amour... mutuelle. Amour in the feminine is an archaism. Amour, Lat. amor, was feminine in Old French, as all such derivatives were and still are: douleur, peur, &c. Littré, s.v., Rem. 2; cf. p. 61, l. 18.

IV. AU CHEVALIER DE PANGE.

L. 27. Tibullus, ii. 1. 67.

L. 28. Becq de Fouquières, in his notes, gives an epigram of Julianus (with the reference Anth., Pl. 588), which he observes has inspired this thought.

L. 35. Tout, mais surtout les champs sont restés. Tout and les champs really belong to different propositions and the verb agrees with les champs. Cf. 'Somewhat, and in many cases a great deal, is put upon us.'—Butler, Analogy, Part I.

L. 44. L'astre, the sun, or Phoebus Apollo.

L. 92. De leur voix argentine. 'The silvery voice of glasses' is pretty. André Chénier is depicting a true heathenish paradise.

L. 98. ingrat à. We should rather say now ingrat envers. Many adjectives, Haase observes (§ 125 B), now followed by envers, pour, avec, de, &c., were constructed with à, e.g. 'A moins que d'être ingrate à mon libérateur.'—Corneille, Andr. v. 2, 1573.

L. 97. Qu'à ton tour... May, in return for thy ingratitude, the fair one...

L. 102. Ne t'ait vu de sa vie. May she pretend that she never saw you before.

V.

M. Dezeimeris (Leçons diverses et remarques sur le texte de divers auteurs) has shown that Chénier, in this elegy, had borrowed not a few hints from Ausonius, Epistola X.

L. 1. solitaires divines. Which is the noun, which the adjective? Solitaire must be the noun (though certain critics have expressed the opinion that it is divine which is the noun). Firstly, there is the masculine noun 'un solitaire,' and it is hard to see why there should not be a feminine, 'une solitaire.' Secondly, the subsequent lines show that Chénier addresses the Muses as lovers of solitude, and it is more logical that the predominant idea should be embodied in the noun, not in the epithet.

L. 3. Nîme. Nîmes (earlier Nismes), in the dep. Gard. The final s has been dropped to admit the elision of the e. 'Nîmes égare' would have sounded most unnatural.

L. 5. aux bords de Loire. The omission of the definite article before Loire and Garonne is archaic. It was the current practice in the sixteenth century, and still occurs occasionally in the seventeenth.—Haase, § 3 B. It is to be noticed that in the next line Chénier writes 'ces nymphes du Rhône,' and, in fact, the omission of le before Rhône seems hardly possible. It is difficult to account for such anomalies. A few individual relics of former usage have thus survived. One of these is the phrase 'entre Sambre et Meuse.'

L. 7. son flambeau vous luit. Such constructions, where à followed by an indirect object, or implicitly contained in the dative of the unstressed personal pronoun, where the present language uses pour, were quite current formerly, and, though uncommon, may still be used.—Haase, § 125 B.

L. 8. Dansantes. The predilection of Chénier for the inflected present participle has now been illustrated by many instances. See p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89; p. 42, XXIV, l. 1.

Ll. 9-12. Cf. Cowley (Essays: Of Agriculture): 'One might as well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the midst of noise and tumult.'

L. 15. les rapides chars. Conventionally poetical for carrosses, which, in those days, would have been the proper word. In the same way airain should have been fer (cercles = tires).

L. 17. ne me soient point avares. See note to p. 56, l. 7.

L. 21. Dormir. The more modern construction would be de dormir. See Hasse, § 87. An echo of La Fontaine, who divided his life into two parts, spent 'L'une à dormir, et l'autre à ne rien faire.'

L. 22. le doux oubli d'une vie. Horace's Oblivia vitae.

L. 31. dans Sichem. This is the wording of the older translation of the Bible. Ostervald's translation has 'à Sichem.'

L. 33. un amoureux courage. We here touch the point where courage = 'l'ensemble des passions qu'on rapporte au coeur' merges into courage = 'fermeté qui fait supporter ou braver le péril, la souffrance,' as Littré defines the two meanings.

L. 35. Horace's well-known wish (Sat. II. vi).

L. 42. aux champs. For the substitution of à for dans see note to p. 16, l. 308.

L. 45. Avoir amis, enfants, épouse. The omission of the indefinite article before épouse is quite normal in an enumeration. It is a feature of the old language. Besides 'avoir femme et enfant,' which is also an enumeration, we still say 'prendre femme.'

L. 49. aimable mensongère. Chénier avails himself of a source of derivation always open. He turns the adjective mensonger into a noun. This had already been done by Marot: 'De moi n'aura mensonger ne buveur Bien ne faveur,' iv. 308, in Littré, Hist.

Ll. 49-62. In this passage, a critic observes, we have, as it were, an earnest of the Lamartinian melancholy reverie.

L. 66. Julie. The heroine of Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse.

L. 67. Clarisse. Clarissa Harlowe in Richardson's novel of this name.

L. 70. Clémentine. The Lady Clementina in Richardson's novel, Sir Charles Grandison.

VI. O JOURS DE MON PRINTEMPS...

L. 1. couronnés de rose; rose for roses, for the sake of the rhyme.

L. 16. Montigny. An estate belonging to the brothers Trudaine, situated in Brie, eighteen leagues from Paris.

L. 17. où la Marne. At Maroeuil, where the family of his friend de Pange had an estate.

Ll. 19, 20. A reminiscence of an epigram in the Greek Anthology (Analecta, t. ii. p. 429, C. viii).

L. 22. Qu'il... les ménage. Let him humour them.

Ll. 23, 24. Qu'il plie... sa tête à la prière, et son âme aux affronts, is slovenly written, the preposition à having a different meaning in à la prière (for which see note to p. 1, l. 18) and in aux affronts.

Ll. 41-44. Amphis in Stobaeus, Florilegium, lx.

4L. 42. On pleure. This on where we should expect je must have been attracted by the on in the sentence immediately preceding, and there is a fine effect in its use instead of the invidious I. The avowal, in this generalized shape, gains in discretion.

L. 51. mon pinceau. Chénier tried his hand at painting.

L. 57. à, by. See note to p. 7, l. 211. Here is a thirteenth-century instance of à in the sense of by: 'Me gardez que ne soie prise à beste cuiverte,' Berte (in LITTRÉ). Also this: 'à tous se fit aimer,' Berte, where we find à constructed with a passive infinitive connected with se laisser or se faire, a feature still extant in the seventeenth century: 'Je me laissai conduire à cet aimable guide,' Racine, Iphig. II. i. 501. See Haase, § 125, Rem. ii. à = par has lived on in such phrases as: faire faire un habit à un tailleur, voir dire, voir faire, entendre dire à quelqu'un.

L. 71. lecteur. It was, in fact, with difficulty that Chénier was prevailed upon to read out his poems. See below, l. 80, and p. 85, ll. 64-74.

L. 73. Abel. Abel-Louis-François de Malartic, Chevalier de Fondat, 1760-1804.

L. 76. nous présentions la main. Juvenal, Sat. i. 15.

L. 77. Et mon frère et Lebrun. Marie-Joseph Chénier, 1764-1811, adopted, like André, the military career, which he left after two years, and wrote tragedies, lyrical poems, epistles and satires, and also a few prose works, the most esteemed of which is his Tableau de la littérature française depuis 1789, a posthumous work, published in 1815. He was but an indifferent poet.

Pierre-Denis-Écouchard Lebrun, called the French Pindar by his admirers, 1729-1807, a versifier of talent, wrote odes (in which he successively sang Louis XVI, the Republic, and the Empire), elegies, epistles, epigrams (in which he really excelled), and a poem on Nature.

L. 78. fugitif de. Becq de Fouquières sees a Latinism here, while quoting two instances from Rousseau and Lebrun. But as Descartes, Bossuet, and Voltaire might be adduced too (see LITTRÉ), it is difficult to accept his statement.

VII. L'ART, DES TRANSPORTS DE L'ÂME...

L. 2. Cf. Boileau: 'C'est peu d'être poète; il faut être amoureux'; and Musset: 'Tu te frappais le front en lisant Lamartine. Ah! frappe-toi le coeur; c'est là qu'est le génie.' Cf. also Milton: 'Poetry should be simple, sensuous, and passionate.'

L. 18. une amour. See note to p. 53, l. 61.

L. 19. De sables douloureux... Chénier suffered from gravel. Cf. p. 66, l. 34.

Ll. 21, 22. Theognis in Stobaeus, Florilegium, cxx.

VIII. RESTE, RESTE AVEC NOUS...

This elegy is imitated from Tibullus, III. vi, with perhaps a few reminiscences of Propertius, III. xvii.

L. 15. ne trouve plus des armes. Why des armes instead of ne... plus d'armes? Because, says Ayer (p. 407), the negation does not bear on the verb, while Haase (§ 119 B., Rem. 1) will have it that it is in order to mark that the negation falls more on the verb than on the object. The latter explanation seems to us to be the correct one. The idea here is: Camille no longer finds in my heart what she was wont to find there, namely, 'des armes.'

L. 19. Pleurante. One of those inflected present participles for using which Chénier was censured by his early critics. Were they aware that this particular one occurs twice in Racine? 'Pleurante, après son char voulez-vous qu'on me voie,' Androm. IV. v. 54; 'Que la veuve d'Hector pleurante à vos genoux,' ibid. III. iv. 3. Cf. p. 24, l. 61; p. 25, ll. 70, 89;p. 42, XXIV, l. 1; p. 56, l. 8.

L. 26. le liège tenace. One of those periphrases so much in vogue in the eighteenth century. Yet, here, there might be an excuse in the playful tone adopted by the poet. And certainly what follows is in the same humorously dignified diction.

L. 30. aux pressoirs. See note to p. 16, l. 308.

L. 37. je la voi. See note to p. 17, l. 317.

L. 39. Son nom, sa voix absente errent dans mon oreille. Chénier had put the verb in the singular, as is his constant practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74), and the correction was not necessary. This metaphor Chénier seems to have delighted in. He repeats it in Hermès: 'Autour du demi-dieu, les princes immobiles Aux accents de sa voix demeuraient suspendus, Et l'écoutaient encore quand il ne chantait plus.' Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, viii, 1-3.

L. 48, à ses lèvres saisie, snatched from her lips.

L. 58. longtemps. Longuement would be clearer, or lentement, as below, l. 74.

L. 66. n'aimer plus. With an infinitive, the expletives pas, point, and plus come immediately after ne: ne plus aimer. Yet the construction we find here is also to be met with, though not so frequent: 'ils s'enveloppaient là-dedans, bien décidés à ne penser plus.'—MICHELET. Ayer, p. 563; Haase, § 156, Rem, ii.

L. 71. en riant, deriding me.

IX. TEL J'ÉTAIS AUTREFOIS...

L. 1. et tel... See note to p. 40, l. 15.

L. 2. Quand ma main... A quaint periphrasis for 'When I am out of cash.'

L. 4. m'a fermé le seuil. Chénier had first written, 'Je vois qu'on m'a fermé la porte inexorable.' On reconsidering it, he must have thought fermer le seuil a more novel alliance of words, giving more force to the whole group fermer le seuil inexorable. Cf. élever sa langue for élever la voix, p. 14, l. 203.

L. 7. O soins... Persius, Sat. i. 'O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane.'

Ll. 11-14. Persius, Sat. iii. 109-111; Horace, Od. i. 9. 21.

L. 15. les grands discours. Big words.

L. 16. Et le sage Lycée, et l'auguste Portique: the Lyceum, i.e. the Aristotelian philosophy; the Porticus, i.e. the Stoic school.

L. 17. Et reviennent... See note to p. 46, l. 17.

L. 17. et soupirs et billets... This departure from current usage in omitting the definite article, which gives more rapidity to an enumeration, cannot be imitated in English. It is a feature of the older syntax which has been most fortunately preserved. The use of the definite article in Old and Middle French was much the same as in modern English. It was often omitted (as also the indefinite article) before homme, chose, femme, before nouns taken in a general sense and abstract nouns. The English student knows that Old English said se mann for man (in general), tha godan menn for good men (in general), seo gesceadwisnes for wisdom (even when personified). Is it not likely that the present usage in English, established in the Middle English period, was much influenced by contemporary French usage?

X. FUMANT DANS LE CRISTAL...

'The idea of this long fragment,' Chénier says, 'has been supplied me by a fine piece of Propertius, book iv, elegy 3;' and he proceeds to state that he has not servilely copied it, but, 'according to his wont,' mixed in it passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and everything that came to his hand, and frequently, too, 'following only himself.' He then criticizes his own achievement, and we shall, in our notes, avail ourselves of some of his remarks.

The first sketch of this piece was written on April 23, 1782, as appears from a mention in the MS.

L. 3. Reine de mes banquets... Chénier had first ended this line thus, 'que ma déesse y vienne.' He observes, 'I know not whether the arrangement of this line will be approved. To me it appears precise, natural, and full of freedom.'

L. 4. Que des fleurs de sa tête elle pare la mienne. 'The pleasant image offered by this line, Chénier observes, is drawn from a distich of Propertius in an... elegy which is the third of the first book.' Here it is: 'Et modo solvebam nostra de fronte corollas, Ponebamque tuis, Cynthia, temporibus.'

L. 9. l'heure fuit, 'hora fugit.' No thought has been more hackneyed. Chénier himself observes: 'The meaning of this piece is that of a thousand passages in Ovid and Horace.'

L. 11. Un jour, tel est... This line and the following, Chénier observes, are perhaps not, altogether, equal to the two lines of Propertius: 'Atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, Sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas.'

Ll. 15, 16. Chénier says on these two lines: 'Voluptueux is not good. There was needed an epithet to depict that fine palpitation which causes a youthful breast to heave. Des lèvres demi-closes is scarcely better. Unfortunately it is almost the only rhyme. The second line I think happy on account of the breath ascribed to the palpitations of the breast. The second hemistich of the first line makes this pass, for in poetry one word will pass under favour of another.'

L. 17. Phryné. A Greek courtesan who sat to Praxiteles for his statues of Venus.

Ll. 31, 32. 'I have,' Chénier observes, 'imitated as best I could these divine lines of Ovid: "... nee brachia longo... margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite" ' (Met. lib. i).

L. 31. sur soi. See note to p. 19, l. 38.

Ll. 37-42. Virgil, Georg. i. 204-207, 252, Chénier, mentioning these sources, exclaims, 'What verses! and how does one dare write any after these! Mine, so petty and so inferior, have yet perhaps the advantage of mentioning Euripus and Malea, places celebrated for shipwrecks.'

L. 40. Euripe... Malée. Euripus separates Euboea from the mainland; Malea is a promontory in Laconia.

L. 46. jeune homme. It is the Latin puer (cf. obs. Eng. boy), a servant.

XI. SOUFFRE UN MOMENT ENCOR...

L. 2. L'axe, the wheel. Thus Homer, Il. xvi. 378, uses [Greek: axôn] for [Greek: trochos], Chénier was particularly fond of this word, and a note of his lets us into the secret of his affection for it. Having written, in a sketch of another piece, 'Si d'un axe brûlant le soleil nous éclaire,' he observes, 'I like axe better than char. It is less trivial. The Latins say it everywhere: "Volat vi fervidus axis," Virg. (Georg. iii. 107); "Spoliis onerato Caesaris axe" Propert. (ii. 3. 13).' Anacreon, Od. iv, compares human life to a wheel. Cf. BUCOLICS, XIV, p. 35, l. 5.

L. 4. Horace, Od. ii. 9: a reminiscence already met with, see p. 14, l. 209.

Ll. 17, 18. Moi qui...mon réveil. Cf. this other instance occurring in Chénier, 'Moi, l'espérance amie est bien loin de mon coeur.' As we say, 'mon coeur à moi,' for the sake of emphasis, we can also, somewhat more disconnectedly; say 'moi, mon coeur est sans espoir,' 'elle, son coeur est libre.' The thought expressed here is a reminiscence of La Fontaine, Fabl. VII. xii.

L. 20. Le nocher... Nocher (from Lat. nauclerus, Greek [Greek: nauklêros]), formerly a master's mate or a skipper, is, with nautonier, a poetic word for pilote.

L. 21. d'esclaves abondant. Abondant en esclaves would be more accordant with modern usage. La Bruyère writes, 'Si les hommes abondent de biens' (in LITTRÉ), and Haase, § 114, illustrates the construction with a quotation from a letter of La Fontaine.

L. 23. du Potose. Cerro de Potosi, a mountain of Bolivia, rich in metallic ores.

L. 28. libre de chaîne. Chaîne ought to have taken an s. But then it would not have rhymed for the eye.

L. 34, les sables brûlants. See note to p. 61 l. 19.

L. 37. nonchalant du terme. This use of nonchalant de shows Chénier to have been familiar with Montaigne, in whose writings it occurs frequently, e.g. 'Je veux... que la mort me trouve plantant mes choulx, mais nonchalant d'elle,' I. xix. Nonchalant = non + chalant, pres. part. of chaloir (Lat. calere, to be hot, hence, desire ardently), an obsolescent verb now only used impersonally in the third person singular of the present indicative: 'Il ne me chaut de cela.'

XII. NON, JE NE L'AIME PLUS...

Ll. 5-8. Tibullus, II. iv. 13 ff.

L. 9. Voilà donc comme on aime! This use of the indefinite on, at the same time familiar and poetical, occurs in Corneille, Pol. II. i: 'Est-ce là comme on aime?' And in Molière, Tart. II. iv: 'C'est donc ainsi qu'on aime?' The nuance cannot pass into English.

L. 13. Tibullus, I. v. 21.

Ll. 14, 15. Ignorés et contents... notre asile.... This abridged construction, with the past participle or the adjective before which étant is understood, is neat when not equivocal, that is, when the past participle or the adjective are clearly connected with a noun or pronoun in the principal clause (notre, in the present case). Ayer, § 278, 3.

L. 30. Le vent.... Tibul. I. v. 36. A frequent image in Latin writers. In French many are the variations on this original theme: 'Autant en emporte le vent' (= so much breath is wasted). 'Ses paroles miellées S'en étant aux vents envolées,' writes La Fontaine, Fab. X. xi, and Bertin, Am. II. i, imitating the passage of Tibullus, has 'Les vents, hélas! en tourbillons fougueux Sur l'océan ont emporté mes voeux' (a sentence, by the bye, in which it is difficult to see the logic of 'en tourbillons fougueux' and 'sur l'océan').

Ll. 33-54. Tibullus, i. 9. 17.

L. 33. Garde d'être. For garde-toi d'être. In the older language the pronoun object of reflexive verbs was frequently omitted. A trace of this ellipsis is still extant with faire followed by a reflexive verb in the infinitive (faire taire = faire se taire). Haase, § 61. We still say dépêchons, arrêtez, for dépêchons-nous, arrêtez-vous.

L. 38. J'allais couvrant. See note to p. 27, l. 29.

L. 42. Qui font jeu de..., a simplification of the phrase 'se faire un jeu de.'

L. 48. avec le lin. Mouchoir would have appeared too prosaic in those days.

Ll. 52. a monté ma lyre avec ma voix. Another instance of 'one word passing under favour of another,' for a voice can hardly be said to be strung. See note to p. 64, X, ll. 15, 16.

Ll. 53, 54. Vulcan, the god of fire, for 'fire'. L'onde où tout s'oublie is misleading as suggesting Lethe. Consumer, though representing chiefly the action of fire, originally means 'to use up destructively,' and so can apply to the action of water. (Cf. this English instance: 'The horses were partly (the ships being broken) consumed in the sea.'—Usher, Aun. vi. 424, in N.E.D.) The verb is moreover in the singular according to Chénier's practice (see note to p. 25, l. 74).

XIII. O NÉCESSITÉ DURE!...

L. 3. tissus. See note to p. 15, l. 260.

L. 7. Voltaire, Mérope, II. ii: 'Il souffre le mépris qui suit la pauvreté.'

Ll. 14, 15. Mes parents,... Mes écrits imparfaits. Elliptically expressed, the thought understood being obviously: 'such are the objections raised by my heart.' Imparfaits, of course, means unfinished.'

Ll. 21. aveugle d'espérance, blinded by hope.

XIV. AUX DEUX FRÈRES TRUDAINE.

Ll. 7, 8. Autant que l'univers... autant il a.... Autant que... autant... was displaced by autant... autant... only lately. See Haase, § 139, 4°, and Littré. s.v., 4°.

L. 9. sais-je voir. Sais-je is here more expressive than puis-je would be.

Ll. 15, 16. Qu'une bouche... peut cacher un serpent à l'ombre d'un sourire. An incoherent metaphor.

L. 26. vague. Vague, in the sense of Lat. vagus, 'wandering,' seems to have been of rare occurrence in French. There is only one instance of it in Littré: '[Moïse] qui, sage, commanda au vague peuple hébreu.'—RONSARD.

Ll. 37. ce lac enchanté. The Lake of Lucerne or the Vierwaldstättersee (the lake of the four forest cantons).

L. 38. trois pâtres—Stauffacher, Walther Fürst, and Arnold von Melchthal.

L. 39. leurs neveux. Their descendants a sense which the English 'nephew' retained till the end of the seventeenth century.

L. 43. Hasly. A valley in Switzerland, to the S.E. of the canton of Berne, through which the Aar runs.

L. 49. ce trésor indulgent, i.e. which she indulges them with: a Latinism.

L. 52. presser l'herbe. One would vainly look for another instance of the phrase in Littré, whereas the English 'press a couch, a bed,' is very common (cf. bed-presser), which illustrates the difficulty of realizing what is novel and invented in a foreign writer.

L. 53. Virgil, Ecl. i. 83.

L. 54. Ma conque. A wrong extension of the sense of 'conch,' the shell given by mythology to the Tritons as a trumpet, to that of 'horn.'

L. 55. cet air, the Ranz-des-Vaches.

L. 62 ff. Cf. Horace, Epod. ii. 39 ff.

l. 73. aux lieux amers. England; where Chénier made a stay as Secretary to the French Embassy. For aux = en les see note to p. 16, l. 308.

L. 79. Arve. The Arve (noisy water), a river in Haute-Savoie, waters the valley of Chamouni and falls into the Rhône near Geneva. For the omission of the article see note to p. 56, l. 5.

L. 80. la cime. Engelberg; in Unterwalden.

L. 85. monts chevelus. Dubellay has 'forêts chevelues' and J.-B. Rousseau 'monts chevelus,' Cf. Virgil, Ecl. v. 63.

Ll. 86. Qui contenez. In the sense which E. contain formerly had, of 'to confine.'

L. 93. grotte.... The Trou de Saint Béat or Saint Bat by the Lake of Thun, famous for its stalactites, where an English gentleman is said to have ended his days in abstinence.

XV. O DÉLICES D'AMOUR!...

In the editions by G. de Chénier and Moland this piece appears among the Élégies italiennes, under the title Éloge de la vieillesse. A. Chénier had marked it [Greek: Eleg. ital]. His design is here, as we are told in one of his notes, to 'contredire pied à pied l'élégie contre la vieillesse.' The poem has been left unfinished.

L. 5. Rome d'amours.... If we are to take this as a genuine confession, A. Chénier would have been as sensible to the charms of the Roman beauties as he is known to have been to those of the Parisian belles.

XVI. SOUVENT LE MALHEUREUX SOURIT....

L. 3. L'Allobroge, the country of the Allobroges, now Savoy.

XVII. JE T'INDIQUE LE FRUIT....

This fragment Becq de Fouquières thought was meant as part of the Art d'aimer, but G. de Chénier says that it is, in the MS., marked with the sign El. (elegy).

L. 6. qui ne font qu'un. These words are struck out in the MS. No doubt Chénier thought the phrase too hackneyed.

L. 14. infidèles. Not to be trusted, treacherous, perfidious, as in this line: 'Je n'ai que trop connu leurs larmes infidèles,' Voltaire, Orph. III. i.

XVIII. TOUT HOMME A SES DOULEURS....

L. 3. ennui. See note to p. 52, l. 52.

L. 10 ff. Cf. La Fontaine, Fables, VI. xi.

XIX. AINSI, LORSQUE SOUVENT....

L. 1. Ainsi.... This beginning shows that the fragment was meant as a comparison to be used in some future piece.

Ll. 2. Douvre. Dover is, in French, Douvres, with an s, which has been left out for the requirements of the metre.

L. 3. noir, dark.

L. 12. This periphrastic line is a blemish amidst the precision of the rest. Tapis did very well as a Latinism in the BUCOLICS. It is quite out of place here.

L. 17. sa main faible et lente.... I should take lente here as meaning 'limp' in the same Latin sense in which we found it before. See note to p. 45, XXXI, l. 8.

XX. SANS PARENTS, SANS AMIS....

L. 4. sur ma bouche.... The current phrase is à la bouche, sometimes dans la bouche. Sur is used in sur les lèvres, sur la langue, and in avoir le sourire sur la bouche.

L. 5. noir, dark, melancholy.

XXII. SUR LA MORT D'UN ENFANT.

L. 1. L'innocente victime. A child of Mme Laurent Lecoulteux, who, living at Lucienne, was often visited by André Chénier during his stay at Versailles in 1793, and sung by him under the name of Fanny; only a fragment of the elegy is here given.

L. 6. Adieu, dans la maison d'où l'on ne revient pas. There is here a bold ellipsis: 'Adieu, toi qui es dans la maison....' Maison is Biblical; John xiv. 2. D'où l'on ne revient pas, cf. Job vii, 9.

L. 13. L'axe de l'humble char. For axe see note to p. 65, xi, l. 2. The phrasing now seems very old-fashioned indeed.

L. 22. Où ta mère... She died, in fact, an untimely death, after having lost her children.

XXIII. LE COURROUX D'UN AMANT...

Becq de Fouquières' edition places this piece in the Art d'aimer.

XXIV. ALLEZ, MES VERS, ALLEZ..

This fragment, given by G. de Chénier and Moland under the heading Élégie italienne, was meant for the concluding lines of a poem.

L. 1. je me confie en vous. Se confier is constructed with en, dans, à, sur.

L. 4. vous admette... à sa présence. En sa présence is generally said.

XXV. EH BIEN! JE LE VOULAIS...

L. 6. Hier, a dissyllable. It was a monosyllable in the older language, as indeed, etymologically, it should be.

ÉPITRES.

I. A LE BRUN ET AU MARQUIS DE BRAZAIS.

L. 3. Brazais. André Chénier, at the time he wrote this epistle, was serving as cadet gentilhomme in a regiment of infantry quartered at Strasbourg, and the Marquis de Brazais was a cavalry officer in the same garrison. The piece, elegant and delicate as it is, is therefore to be ranked among the poet's juvenilia.

L. 5. Pandore. The fable of Pandora's box is too well known to need relating.

L. 6. trésor de misère. A Biblical expression. Cf. Prov. x. 2 and Jas. v. 3. In the latter passage the French translation by de Saci has: 'C'est là le trésor de colère que vous amassez pour les derniers jours,' where the English Bible has: 'Ye have heaped treasure together.'

L. 13 ff. Imitated from Horace, Od. I. v.

L. 15. d'un pouvoir... dominé, i.e. dominé par un pouvoir. Haase, § 113.

L. 18. A cette mer trompeuse et se livre et s'engage. The preposition à required by se livrer, is an archaism after s'engager. For à=sur see Haase, § 130 B, and cf. note to p. 97, l. 383. It would seem, at first sight, that s'engager sur says less than se livrer à, but it makes the step more irretrievable.

Ll. 25 ff. heureux dont le zèle... Elliptical for 'heureux celui dont le zèle,' on the analogy of 'heureux qui...'

L. 27. ses flancs. The shipwrecked man's sides.

Ll. 28. Réchauffer dans son sein. The rescuer's bosom.

L. 29. Et de soit fol amour. The shipwrecked man's love. There is throughout these lines a sad confusion due to a loose use of the possessive, besides which le zèle (l. 25) is awkwardly made the subject of the whole sentence.—Étouffer la semence. The same metaphor occurs in La Fontaine, Ode pour la paix: 'Étouffe tous ces travaux et leurs semences mortelles,' and in Racine, Alexandre, VI. iii: 'Étouffe dans mon sang ces semences de guerre.'

L. 33. Plaindre... l'occasion ravie. Plaindre = 'to lament, regret,' as in 'Ce triste et fier honneur m'émeut sans m'ébranler; J'aime ce qu'il me donne et je plains ce qu'il m'ôte,' Corneille, Hor. II. iii.

Ll. 35 ff. Tibullus, III. iii.

L. 38. l'or du Pactole. The river Pactolus, in Lydia, was famed for its golden sands.

L. 40. mon coeur... prosterné. An incoherent metaphor.

L. 60. See Horace, Od. I. xxxiii.

Ll. 61. Lesbie, Lesbia, Catullus' mistress.

L. 62. Cynthie, Cynthia, Propertius' mistress.

L. 64. See Virgil, Ecl. x.

L. 66. Ovid was an exile at Tomi, in Scythia, whence he addressed much base flattery to the emperor, and where he wrote his Tristia.

L. 73. un tel foudre. According to French grammars, foudre is generally feminine in its proper sense and masculine in its figurative sense, when it designates a man: La foudre a éclaté. C'est un foudre de guerre. Ayer, § 69. But see LITTRÉ, where foudre, poetic for 'catastrophe, destruction,' appears as a masculine noun in two quotations from Corneille (Hor. IV. v. and Héracl. I. iv.), and as a feminine noun in Bossuet, Mar.-Thér.

L. 93. Castor, son of Jupiter, was immortal. When his brother Pollux died, Castor prayed Jupiter that Pollux might be made immortal. As the prayer could not be granted entirely, immortality was divided among the two, so that they lived and died alternately.

Ll. 95, 96. Virgil has celebrated them in his Églogues. For the episode of Nisus see Aen. ix.

L. 99. Le Brun. 'Son of the author of the poem La Religion, and grandson of the great Racine; he died at Cadiz, at the time of the disaster which destroyed Lisbon and shook all the coast of Portugal and Spain.' (Note of A. Chénier.)

L. 102. leçons d'Ascra, Ascraean lessons. Hesiod was born at Ascra in Boeotia. Hence Virgil calls his poem Ascraeum carmen, Georg. ii. 176.

L. 103. Accompagnant l'année en ses douze palais. Chénier, in another epistle, has written 'Si je vis, le soleil aura passé deux fois Dans les douze palais où résident les mois.' The twelve mansions or houses into which astrologers divided the sky. Chaucer uses 'palace' in the same sense: 'Mars shal entre as fast as he may glyde In-to his next paleys to abyde,' Compl. Mars, 53. See N.E.D. Brazais had written a poem, L'Année, which never appeared in print.

L. 105. A paraphrase of a line of Brazais' unpublished poem: 'Vierge, qui t'embellis par les rides du temps.' Friendship, of course, is meant.

L. 111. tableaux fardés. Counterfeit, spurious. See the obs. verb fard in N.E.D.

L. 128. L'ami religieux. The following quotation (from the N.E.D.) may serve for an explanation: 'A man devoted to a man, Loyal, religious in love's hallowed vows.' Porter, Angry wom. Abingd. (Percy Soc.), 37.

L. 130. Bavius, a Latin poetaster; see Virgil, Ecl. iii, 90. Zoilus, the detractor of Homer. Gacou, a French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the libellous detractor of Boileau and J.-B. Rousseau. Linière, another French satiric poet of the seventeenth century, the declared enemy of Chapelain. (See Boileau, Sat. ix. 237.)

L. 147. Plutarch relates that Scipio would always take Lelius' advice, which made him say that Lelius was the poet and Scipio the actor. Plutarch, An seni sit ger. resp. xxvii.

L. 148. When Phocion, sentenced to death, was on the point of drinking the hemlock, Nicocles besought the favour of drinking first, which request his friend granted. Plutarch, Phoc. xxxvi.

L. 168. faisceaux, the fasces.

L. 201. âme mutuelle. A new alliance of words, on the analogy of affection mutuelle.

L. 202. Cf. Theocritus, Idyll. xii. 18.

Ll. 207, 208. ils s'attendent... d'être. S'attendre de is now of rarer occurrence than s'attendre à, but it was not so formerly. 'On ne s'attendait guère De voir Ulysse en cette affaire.' La Fontaine, Fab. X. iii. See LITTRÉ.

II. AMI, CHEZ NOS FRANÇAIS.

L. 16. Sans aller refers to me, the object in the principal clause. Sans que j'aille would be better syntax. But the prepositional infinitive was used in older French in a still more disconnected manner. 'Rends-le-moi sans te fouiller,' writes Molière, L'Avare I. iii., could easily be more explicit, with: 'without me or my searching you,' See Haase, § 85 D.

Ll. 16-19. See Boileau, Sat. ix. 221-5, who is here excellently satirized.

L. 28. An allusion to the fable of the Fox and the Grapes. La Fontaine, Fab. III. xi.

L. 41. Non d'aller. An abrupt change in the construction. The meaning is: 'But it is not useful to go...'

Ll. 47-60. The germ of all this development is in a letter of Chénier to his friend de Pange: 'Tu sais combien mes muses sont vagabondes. Elles ne peuvent achever promptement un seul projet; elles en font marcher cent à la fois (a general marshalling his troops, ll. 49, 50). Elles font un pied à ce poème et une épaule à celui-là. Ils boitent tous et ils seront sur pieds tous ensemble (The image of the sculptor, ll. 51-6). Elles les couvent tous à la fois; ils sortiront tous à la fois' (the simile of incubation, ll. 57-60).

L. 59. Sauront. This use of savoir, as also that of pouvoir, so frequent in French, in sentences where the English translation is fain to omit them, is a French idiom, especially noticeable in the language of the seventeenth century. An Englishman cannot help being made aware of this feature when reading Molière, for instance.

L. 71. des traits. Whatever there is that is salient, striking, brilliant, in a literary composition, LITTRÉ says, s.v. 31°: fine touches.

Ll. 73. inspire. For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.

Ll. 79-92. Here the simile of the founder has displaced that of the potter in the letter quoted above: 'L'argile que j'avais amollie et humectée pour en faire un pot à l'eau, sous mon doigt capricieux, devient une tasse ou une théière.'

L. 94. Cf. La Fontaine, Épître à Mgr de Soissons.

L. 96. et je crée avec eux. Thus happily does Chénier characterize his attempt at original imitation. Another important declaration will be found at ll. 117-9.

L. 105. une pourpre.... The purpureus pannus or purple patch of Horace, Ars Poet. 15.

L. 109. brave, bold.

L. 124. fuit mes poétiques doigts. Once transformed by the poet's hand, prose goes and dances and sings. An easy improvement would be to delete the ';' after doigts and the ',' after dansante.

L. 130. Les attache, i.e. les greffe, grafts them.

L. 140. Montaigne.... 'Je veulx qu'ils donnent une nazarde à Plutarque sur mon nez,' Ess. I. x. 'I will have them wound Plutarch through my sides,' Cotton's translation.

POÈMES.

I. L'INVENTION.

L. 1. fis du Mincius: Virgil, born at Mantua, on the banks of the river Mincius (now Mincio).

L. 2. peuple-roi, Latin populus-rex, people-king.

L. 4. l'onde Égée. Tibullus' Aegeas undas, i. 3.

L. 7. A most happy line. Cf. Horace, Ep. ad Pis., 323.

L. 9. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 181.

Ll. 20, 21. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 715.

Ll. 25-34. Horace, Ep. ad Pis., 1 ff.

L. 37. D'Ormus et d'Ariman. Ahriman, the spirit of darkness or evil genius; Ormuzd, the spirit of light or good demon in Persian mythology.

L. 46. Cf. Boileau: 'Une pensée neuve est une pensée qui a dû venir à tout le monde et que quelqu'un s'avise le premier d'exprimer.'

L. 56. Xénophon, Memorab. iii. 10, makes Socrates set forth the same theory.

L. 62. Marot. Clément Marot, a French poet of the sixteenth century, who excelled in badinage.

Ll. 69. Sophocle et Eschyle—and Euripides, whom Chénier forgets.

L. 71. Des hommes immortels, Corneille and Racine.

L. 73. instruits. The s of instruits should be deleted.

L. 92. pour nord. Nord here stands for étoile du nord or étoile polaire. 'Perdre la tramontane (the Mediterranean name of the Pole Star), la boussole, le nord,' are familiar expressions, meaning 'to be puzzled, not to know which way to turn, to lose one's head.'

L. 95. du plus lointain Nérée. Poetical for Océan. Nereus, an ancient sea-god. Cf. une Cybèle neuve below, p. 91, l. 133.

L. 100. Horace, Ep. ad Pis., 156.

L. 130. Bailly, a French astronomer (1736-1793). He wrote an Histoire de l'Astronomie.

Ll. 133. Une Cybèle. Poetical for the earth, like Nérèe the sea, p. 90, l. 95.

L. 138. Cusco was once the capital of Peru. This shows that Chénier was then meditating the poem L'Amérique, of which he wrote only fragments.

L. 143. Négligeât. In colloquial French this would be, 'Pensez-vous que leur main négligerait...?' In the same way, 'je ne pense pas qu'il vienne' or 'pensez-vous qu'il vienne' would be '... qu'il viendra.'

L. 163. All the following passage is imitated from Petronius, Satyr, v.

L. 170. bassin pompeux. See A. Rich, Dict. of Roman and Greek Antiq., under Naumachia.

L. 178. Lucian, Quomod. hist. conser. sit, i, speaks of a kind of summer-madness which seized the inhabitants of Abdera. After witnessing the exciting performance of an actor, named Archelaüs, in Euripides' Andromede, they went about shouting out this line from the play, 'O Love, thou tyrant both of men and gods.'

L. 184. Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques, i.e. let us express modern, personal thoughts in a form worthy of antiquity.

L. 221. son vide, his empty mind.

L. 223. jette une rose. See note to p. 27, l. 15.

L. 243. Cf. Martial, VI. xv.

L. 248. ces larmes... Ovid, Met. ii. 584, explains the formation of amber by the tears the sisters of Phaeton shed.

L. 262. et dressent tes cheveux. G. de Chénier, in his edition, prints et dresser tes cheveux. But the correction is unnecessary, as the same transitive employment of the verb occurs in a fragment of Chénier: '[Il] verse une sueur froide et dresse ses cheveux.'

L. 272. le docte ciseau. Docte, meaning 'scholarly,' rather than 'skilful,' is, in my opinion at least, not very apposite here.

L. 277. flanes invaincus aux travaux, i.e. dans les travaux. See note to p. 16, l. 308. An allusion to Hercules.

L. 282. Apollo Belvedere.

L. 283. The Farnese Hercules.

L. 284. The Laocoon group.

L. 285. Michael Angelo's Moses.

L. 294. Ce qu'eux-même. See note to p. 42, l. 15.

L. 298. Bailly, Hist. de l'Astronomie: 'On ajoute qu'Épicure croyait que le soleil s'allumait le matin et s'éteignait le soir dans les eaux de l'Océan.'

Ll. 302. Bailly, Hist. de l'Astronomie: 'La poésie, que nous appelons le langage des Dieux, était jadis la langue consacrée aux merveilles de la nature.'

Is it not illustrative of the force of habit that Chénier should denounce the exploitation of Fable and gods by poets in the very conventional language he might be expected to object to? In reading l. 297 one would think that he purposed to drop Tethys for ever, but then come Apollo, Calliope, Urania!

L. 307. Ou si. A very quaint interrogative turn which one is surprised to see Voltaire condemn in this line of Corneille: 'Tombé-je dans l'erreur, ou si j'en vais sortir?' Heracl. IV. iv. See LITTRÉ Si, 17°.

L. 309. Il n'est sot traducteur... This is a feature of old syntax still extant in modern French. La Fontaine, in the seventeenth century, still writes, in accordance with older usage, 'Fille se coiffe volontiers,' Fabl. IV. i. 39. We still omit the definite article after jamais: 'Jamais homme ne reçut plus d'hommages.' Haase, § 57.

L. 311. ambré. Perfumed with ambergris—in a figurative sense, of course.... à la glace... 'Être à la glace, LITTRÉ (s.v. 5°), is said of such productions of the mind as the spectator or the reader, fail to move him.' 'Si Corneille avait dans le Cid le plan de l'Académie, le Cid était à la glace.' Voltaire, Lettre d'Argental, 4 oct. 1760.

L. 313. d'abord. Synonyms: au premier abord, de prime abord, dès l'abord. The original meaning is, 'as soon as you accost him or it, at the first contact.' D'abordée is thus explained by Cotgrave: 'At first, at first sight; as soon as they touched, incountred, or came, together.' A synonymous expression d'arrivée, somewhat archaic.

L. 320. contraint d'être. See note to p. 102, l. 146.

L. 322. abuser. Deceive, disappoint, baffle.

L. 323. infidèle, an unfaithful interpreter of their meaning.

L. 327. Creusant dans les détours. In a figurative sense, as in 'Les Anglais pensent profondément; Leur esprit, en cela, suit leur tempérament; Creusant dans les sujets et forts d'expériences, Ils étendent partout l'empire des sciences.' La Fontaine, Fabl. xii. 23.

L. 329. Cf. Horace, Ep. ad Pis., 40, 311; Boileau, Art poét., i. 147-154. voit partout un nuage. So Montaigne: 'Mes conceptions et mon jugement ne marchent qu'à tastons...; je veois encores du païs au delà, mais d'une veue trouble et en nuage, que je ne puis desmesler.'—Essais, I. xxv.

L. 338. l'embrasse. The whole thought is wrapped or clasped by the adequate expression.

L. 343. D'eux-même. See note to p. 42, l. 15.

L. 346. Io. The daughter of the river Inachus. Zeus, having fallen in no French reader of to-day would notice the word. It is a good old French word. We are thus made aware that it had been falling into disuse in the seventeenth century (when it occurs several times in La Fontaine and others), and especially in the eighteenth. E. reserene occurs in Temple.

FRAGMENT II

This was to be an episode. Alonzo d'Ercilla was a Spanish poet of the sixteenth century who, in a poem entitled Araucania, sang the conquest, achieved by the Spaniards, of the country south of Chili.

Ll. 24. aréneuse, an old, somewhat out-of-the-way word. It occurs in Rabelais.

L. 28. A climax inspired by Virgil, Aen. v. 319.

L. 52. le Dauphin. The Dolphin, a northern constellation, Delphinius.

L. 53. la Couronne. The crown, Corona borealis.

IV. L'ART D'AIMER.

Ll. 6, 7. Et qui pense... Il pense... This is a feature of old syntax. Instances of the construction occur in the seventeenth century: 'Qui dit prude, il dit laide,' LA FONTAINE. Sometimes the repetition may be made with a demonstrative pronoun: 'Qui ne mourrait pour conserver son honneur, celui-là serait infâme, PASCAL.

L. 8. un durable sillon. Cf. '... having driven his plough through a morass which must close again behind it.' Froude, Oceana, iii.

Ll. 29-34. Alpheus, in Elis (Peloponnesus), 'that renowned flood, so often sung, Divine Alpheus, who, by secret sluice, Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse.'—Milton, Arcades, 29 ff. The nymph Arethusa, one of Diana's nymphs, was by the goddess changed into a fountain, to save her from the pursuit of Alpheus, a hunter, while Alpheus himself became a river. Enna is a town in Sicily. The fact that the river Alpheus ran in a subterranean channel at several points in its course probably gave rise to the myth.

L. 34. amer, an obvious misprint for amère. Besides, with amer the line is deficient by one foot.

L. 44. ils s'écrivent des fleurs. This is as happy as it is bold. As much may be said of: 'Lit en bouquet la lettre...,' l. 50. All this fragment is gracefully ingenious.

L. 46. sa durée. The duration of the 'flame,' of course.

V. LA RÉPUBLIQUE DES LETTRES.

L. 1. Il n'est que de = le mieux est de... 'Il n'est que de jouer d'adresse en ce monde,' Molière, Mal. Imag., interm, l. sc. vi. être roi, king over oneself... as is explained at l. 4. Cf. Horace, Sat. 1. iii. 132, and Epist. I. i. 106.

L. 5. Mon Louvre. Racan, Stances: 'Roy de passions,... Sa cabane est son Louvre...'

L. 15. engagé, having engaged in (as Thackeray writes: 'Mr. B.,... engaging in a labyrinth of stables,' Newcomes, i. 127), i.e. having penetrated into.

POÉSIES DIVERSES.

I. HYMNE A LA JUSTICE.

L. 5. Virgil, Georg. ii. 150 ff.

L. 14. les hauts Pyrénées, generally feminine, e.g. 'Pyrénées Orientales.' But Chénier thinks of them as 'les Monts Pyrénées.'

L. 18. Respire, breathes (forth).

L. 19. couvrant, goes with la Provence.

L. 36. Incertaine. Because it shifts its channel.

L. 44. Que visite Phoebus le soir ou le matin. A poetic translation of Orient and Occident.

L. 47. l'une et l'autre Téthys. Catullus, 'Uterque Neptunus,' xxxi. 3. Cf. notes to Nérée, p. 90, l. 95, and Cybèle, p. 91, l. 133.

L. 50. Trudaine. The grandfather of Chénier's friend, who was Director of Public Works under Louis XV, and laid out the fine roads of France.

L. 54. impie. Not, of course, irreligious, but sacrilegious, as invading the (to a Frenchman) sacred territory of France—in the course of what Charles Lamb ironically calls 'the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations.'—Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist. See another use of impie, p. 112, l. 107.

L. 83. Le sel. An allusion to the gabelle or salt-tax imposed before the Revolution. This was written before 1789.

L. 85. Mille brigands, the partisans or men who constituted partis or societies for the levy of certain taxes.

L. 97. Malesherbes, Turgot. These Ministers retired in 1776, but Malesherbes resumed office, only for a few months, in 1787.

L. 105. armer d'injustes plaintes. Cf. note to p. 4, l. 100.

Ll. 107. impie. Offending honour, considered as a religion. Cf. p. 110, l. 54.

Ll. 131, 132. le libre encens d'une lyre au coeur chaste. An incoherent metaphor.

II. TERRE, TERRE CHÉRIE....

L. 3. Romans, a town in the department of Drôme where the States General of Dauphiné were held in 1788 as a prelude to the Revolution.

III. LE RAT DE VILLE ET LE RAT DES CHAMPS.

Translated from Horace, Sat. II. vi. 80. Compare the much freer imitation or rather adaptation of Pope, p. 444 of Globe edition.

L. 10. une dent dédaigneuse. Horace's 'Dente superbo.'

L. 16. ici près, a feature of colloquialism very much in place. In the same way does Molière use 'ici dessous, L'Êt., I. iv., 'ici dedans,' Pré. vii., 'ici autour,' D. Juan, III. ii.

L. 19. Les grands ni les petits. Grammarians find fault with sentences in which ni is not repeated before each of the subjects or objects, but usage is against them. Haase, § 140, Rem. iii. Ayer, § 263, 3. LITTRÉ, ni, 1°, observes that the instances he quotes are in verse, but that they might be imitated in prose.

L. 22. et d'aller. For the French historic infinitive see Meyer-Lübke, t, iii. p. 592, who does not think it a continuance of the Latin historic infinitive, but a new thing, as the various Romance languages follow in this sensibly different ways. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese using the infinitive with the preposition à (which occurs in quite isolated cases in French: 'et bon prestre à soy-retirer,' Cent Nouvelles nouvelles) Is the verb 'to begin' understood? Meyer-Lübke thinks that the infinitive with de is used only because it was more generally employed, at the time when this turn of phrase originated, than the simple infinitive.

L. 31. S'empresse de servir, ordonner, disposer. Observe the rapidity imparted to the sentence by the omission of de before the last two infinitives, a departure from the more common and regular practice.

L. 32. excuser. Used absolutely = 'be indulgent.'

L. 35. La tristesse.... This rapid review of the Country Rat's grievances—all nouns and no verb—reminds one of a similar turn in La Fontaine's La Mort et le Bûcheron, when the poor wood-cutter sees at a glance all his past life: 'Point de pain quelquefois, et jamais de repos.'

L. 38. et de rire. See note to l. 22.

IV. LA FRIVOLITÉ.

L. 5. la glace inquiète. The restless looking-glass, whose reflection flits about.

L. 10. fluide, evanescent.

V. LE POÈTE.

This short fragment was first published in the edition of G. de Chénier, 1874, among a few others under the general heading of 'Satires.'

ODES.

I. A VERSAILLES.

L. 9. Mes pénates secrets. Chénier, in 1792, after the death of the king, in whose defence he had written, almost despairing of the future of his country, fallen into the hands of Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois and Saint-Just, left Paris for Versailles, where his grief was somewhat alleviated by his love for Fanny, Mme Laurent Lecoulteux. See note to p. 75, Sur la mort d'un enfant, l. 1.

L. 11. Vont dirigeant. See note to p. 27, l. 29.

L. 13. Les chars. See note to p. 56, l. 15.

L. 37. rivage. Not in the precise sense 'shore,' but, more vaguely, 'country,' 'place.' Thus F. climat and E. climate (or clime) have had their meaning extended to that of 'region.'

L. 48. Langage d'amour si des dieux. Expressed archaically for langage de l'amour.

L. 60. An allusion to the massacres of prisoners at Versailles in September, 1792.

II. A MARIE-ANNE-CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

L. 6. hymne infâme. Many poems were written on the occasion of Marat's death, among which one by Audouin, a deputy.

L. 9. Dérobe... Robs, frustrates, glorious deeds of their due praise.

Ll. 27-30. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 667.

L. 32. Paros. One of the Cyclades, famed for its white marble (Parian marble).

L. 33. Harmodius... son ami. Harmodius and Aristogiton, who conspired with a few others to murder Hipparchus, younger brother of the tyrant Hippias, and Hipparchus himself, but succeeded in slaying Hipparchus alone. Harmodius was cut down on the spot by the guards, and Aristogiton was soon captured and tortured to death. When Hippias was expelled, Harmodius and Aristogiton became the most popular of Athenian heroes (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

L. 57. Like Dido, when she has resolved to die. Virgil, Aen. iv. 475.

III. LA JEUNE CAPTIVE.

This celebrated poem was written in the prison de Saint-Lazare. La Jeune Captive was a Mademoiselle de Coigny. She had, at the age of fifteen, married the Marquis de Rosset, later on Duc de Fleury. She was twenty-five at the time of her imprisonment. She was set free after the 9th of Thermidor. This poem first appeared in the Décade philosophique, hardly six months after the death of Chénier.

L. 11. Pindar, Nem. vii. 77.

Ll. 28-30. Cf. p. 52, ll. 43, 44.

Ll. 34, 35. Cf. p. 52, l. 42.

L. 36. Cf. p. 52, l. 41.

L. 39. dévore. For the verb in the singular see note to p. 25, l. 74.

L. 40. Palès. The goddess of shepherds. This mythological allusion strangely mars this fine poem.

L. 43. triste et captif. A kind of ablative absolute.

Ll. 53, 54. This madrigal winding up this pathetic lyric is in poor taste indeed.

ÏAMBES.

I. HYMNE SUR L'ENTRÉE TRIOMPHALE DES SUISSES DE CHATEAUVIEUX.

This poem first appeared in the Journal de Paris, on April 15, 1792, the day of the festival. In 1790 the Swiss Regiment of Chateauvieux at Nancy had mutinied, seized the military chest, and killed heroic young Desilles, captain of the Régiment du Roi, who was attempting to prevent fratricide bloodshed. For these misdeeds they were condemned to the galleys. In 1792 they were amnestied by a decree of the National Assembly, and Collot d'Herbois, at the Club des Jacobins, carried a motion that they should make a triumphal entry into Paris. See Carlyle, French Revol., pt. ii, bk. ii, ch. vi, and bk. vi, ch. x.

Against this disgraceful resolution Chénier rose indignantly in several letters to the editors of the Journal de Paris, in an address to the National Assembly, and in the present poem.

L. 3. Désille. See the above introductory notice.

L. 6. The body of Mirabeau was transferred to the Pantheon on April 5, 1791.

L. 10. Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, but as the clergy had not been called upon to assist him at his last moments his body was denied sepulture in Paris, and was buried at the Abbey of Scellières, of which a nephew of his was commendator. His remains, however, re-entered Paris solemnly on July 11 of the same year, where they lie in the crypt of the Pantheon.

L. 15. tu conduiras Jourdan. Tu refers to divin triomphe. Jourdan, nicknamed Coupe-tête, was at the head of the brigands of Vaucluse during the disturbances in the South of France in October, 1791.

L. 17. Coblentz. The general quarters of the Émigrés.

L. 27. An allusion to a meal taken in common by Pétion and his colleagues of the Commune of Paris at a tavern, at La Râpée-Bercy, which they had caused to be mentioned in newspapers belonging to their party as something to be proud of.

L. 34. Persans. The appellation Persans is generally reserved for the Persians of to-day, the ancient Persians being designated as les Perses.

L. 45. Eudoxus and Hipparchus, two celebrated ancient astronomers.

Ll. 46-8. Berenice's hair, a small northern constellation near the tail of Leo. Berenice was the wife of Ptolemy Energetes, king of Egypt, c. 248 B. C.

L. 49. Argo, a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere.

L. 55. en leur galère. 'The forty Swiss,' writes Carlyle, 'were mounted into a triumphal car resembling a ship,' Fr. Rev. II. iii, x.

II. QUAND AU MOUTON BÊLANT....

The two following pieces, dated from St.-Lazare, were written in the prison in a minute handwriting on small slips of paper concealed by Chénier in the linen that was fetched home to wash.

L. 23. Fouquier. A blank in the MS. Fouquier-Tinville, the president of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

III. COMME UN DERNIER RAYON....

Ll. 5-8. 'L'habitude est une seconde nature,' says a French proverb. This elaborate periphrasis verifies it. And no doubt but Chénier composed these lines in terrible earnest when he was daily expecting death. How can we say after this that the far-fetched conceits of Richard II in his prison (K. Rich. II, V. v.) are not what it was likely he should indulge in, in his desperate situation?

L. 15. In the first edition the poem here came to an abrupt end. In that of 1826 the fifteen lines were given as having been written by Chénier but few moments before being taken to execution. The following nine lines were altogether omitted, and the rest of the piece given as a separate poem.

L. 35. Var.: La bassesse, la feinte—le désespoir, la honte.

L. 58. Mourir...! The infinitive used absolutely as an exclamation (or interrogation) in order to express surprise or indignation: 'Moi, me taire!' 'A qui se fier à présent?' 'Offenser de la sorte une sainte personne!'—MOLIÈRE. See Ayer, § 209, 4: Mever-Lübke, § 528.

L. 81. noirs de leur ressemblance. Black with their likeness energetically expressed.

L. 83. fouet. A monosyllable, pronounced fouè, and not foi, as some will do.—LITTRÉ.

L. 85. cracher sur leurs noms. Chénier does not mince it in these ïambes.