Certainly it detracts nothing from the poet to be
the great servant. All the mysterious voices sing
within him none the less because upon occasion,
and impelled by duty, he has uttered the cry of a
race, because his bosom must needs swell with
the deep human sob. Speaking so loudly does
not prevent his speaking low. He is not less the
confidant, and sometimes the confessor, of hearts.
He is not less intimately connected with those who
love, with those who think, with those who sigh,
thrusting his head in the darkness between the
heads of lovers. Andre Chenier's love-verses are
deprived of none of their tender serenity by their
proximity to the wrathful iambic : " Weep thou,
O virtue, if I die ! " The poet is the only living
being to whom is given both the voice of thunder
and the whisper, having, like Nature, within himself
the rumbling of the cloud and the rustling of the
leaf This is a double function, individual and
public ; and it is for this reason that he needs, as
it were, two souls.

Ennius said, " I have three of them, — an Oscan



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 337

soul, a Greek soul, and a Latin soul." It is true
that he referred only to the place of his birth, to
the place of his education, and to the place where
he was a citizen ; and moreover Ennius was but a
rough cast of a poet, vast, but shapeless.

No poet can exist without that activity of soul
ivhich is the resultant of conscience. The primal
moral laws need to be confirmed; the new moral
laws need to be revealed : these two series do not
coincide without some effort. This effort is in-
cumbent on the poet. At every turn he performs
the function of the philosopher. He must defend,
according to the side attacked, now the liberty of
the human mind, now the liberty of the human
heart, — to love being no less holy than to think.
There is nothing in all that of " Art for art's sake."

Into the midst of those goers and comers that
we call the living, comes the poet, to tame, like
ancient Orpheus, the tiger in man, — his evil in-
stincts, — and, like legendary Amphion, to pull down
the walls of prejudice and superstition, to mount
the new blocks, to relay the foundations and the
corner-stones, and to build anew the city of human
society.

That such a service, — to co-operate in the work
of civilization, — should involve loss of beauty for
poetry and of dignity for the poet, is a propo-
sition which one cannot enunciate without smiling.
Useful art preserves and augments all its graces,
all its charms, all its prestige. In truth ^schylus
is not degraded by taking part with Prometheus,
the man progress crucified by force on Caucasus,
and gnawed alive by hate; Lucretius is no less



338 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

great for having loosened the grave-clothes of
idolatry and disentangled human thought from the
knotted bonds of religions {arctis nodis religiomirn) ;
the branding of tyrants with the red-hot iron of
prophecy does not lessen Isaiah ; the defence of
his country does not taint Tyrtaeus. The beautiful
is not degraded by serving the ends of freedom
and the amelioration of the human multitudes.
The words, " a people liberated," would fitly end
a strophe. No, patriotic or revolutionary useful-
ness robs poetry of nothing. For having screened
under its cliffs the three peasants who took the
terrible oath from which sprang Switzerland free,
the huge Griitli is none the less at nightfall a lofty
mass of serene shadow alive with herds, whence
falls afar the soft tintinnabulation of innumera-
ble little bells tinkling unseen through the clear
twilight air.




PART III.



CONCLUSION.



PART THIRD.

CONCLUSION.



BOOK I.

AFTER DEATH. - SHAKESPEARE. — ENGLAND.



CHAPTER I.

IN 1784, Bonaparte, then fifteen years old, arrived
at the military school of Paris from Brienne,
being one among four under the conduct of a
minim priest. He mounted one hundred and
seventy-three steps, carrying his small valise, and
reached, in the attic, the barrack chamber he was
to occupy. This chamber had two beds, and a
small window opening on the great yard of the
school. The young predecessors of Bonaparte had
bescrawled the whitewashed wall with charcoal, and
the new-comer could read in this little cell these
four inscriptions, which we ourselves read there
thirty-five years ago : " An epaulet is very long to
win." — De Montgivray. "The finest day in life
is that of a battle." — Vicomte de Tintiniac. " Life
is but a prolonged lie." — Le Chevalier Adolphe
Delmas. " The end of all is six feet of earth." —



342 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Le Comte de la Villette. With the trifling substitu-
tion of the word " empire " for " epaulet," these
four sentences contained the whole destiny of
Bonaparte, and formed a kind of " Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin," written in advance upon that wall.
Desmazis, junior, who accompanied Bonaparte,
being his room-mate, and about to occupy one of
the two beds, saw him take a pencil — Desmazis
himself has related the incident — and draw, under
the inscriptions that he had just read, a rough
sketch of his house at Ajaccio ; then, by the side
of that house, — without suspecting that he was
thus bringing near the Island of Corsica another
mysterious island then hid in the far future, — he
wrote the last of the four sentences : " The end of
all is six feet of earth."

Bonaparte was right. For the conqueror, for
the soldier, for the man of material fact, the end of
all is six feet of earth ; for the man of thought, all
begins there.

Death is a power.

For him who has had no activity but that of the
mind, the tomb is the elimination of the obstacle.
To be dead is to be all-powerful.

The man of war is formidable while alive; he
stands erect; the earth is silent, siluit ; he has
extermination in his gesture ; millions of haggard
men rush after him, a fierce horde, sometimes a
ruffianly one ; it is no longer a human head, it is a
conqueror, it is a captain, it is a king of kings, it is
an emperor, it is a dazzling crown of laurels which
passes, throwing out lightning flashes, and showing,
in a starry light beneath, a vague profile of Caesar.



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 343

This vision is splendid and astounding; but a little
gravel in the liver, or an abrasion of the pylorus,
— six feet of earth, and all is over. This solar
spectrum vanishes. This tumultuous life falls into
a hole; the human race pursues its way, leaving
behind this emptiness. If this man-hurricane has
made some lucky rupture, — like Alexander in
India, Charlemagne in Scandinavia, and Bonaparte
in old Europe, — that is all that remains of him.
But let some passer-by who has in him the ideal ;
let a poor wretch like Homer throw out a word
in the darkness, and die, — that word lights up
the gloom, and becomes a star.

This defeated man, driven from town to town, is
called Dante Alighieri, — take care ! This exile is
called iEschylus, this prisoner is called Ezekiel, —
beware ! This one-handed man is winged, — it
is Miguel Cervantes. Do you know whom you see
wayfaring there before you? It is a sick man,
Tyrtaeus; it is a slave, Plautus; it is a laborer,
Spinoza; it is a valet, Rousseau. Well, that
abasement, that labor, that servitude, that infirm-
ity, is power, — the supreme power, mind.

On the dunghill like Job, under the stick like
Epictetus, under contempt like Moli^re, mind re-
mains mind. It is destined to have the last word.
The Caliph Almanzor makes the people spit on
Averroes at the door of the mosque of Cordova;
the Duke of York himself spits on Milton; a
Rohan, almost a prince, " Due ne daigne, Rohan
suis," ^ attempts to cudgel Voltaire to death ;
Descartes is driven from France in the name of

1 " I would not stoop to be a duke ; I am Rohan." — Tr.



344 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Aristotle ; Tasso pays for a kiss given a princess
by twenty years in a prison cell ; Louis XV. sends
Diderot to Vincennes : these are mere incidents ;
must there not be some clouds? Those appear-
ances that were taken for realities, those princes,
those kings, melt away ; there remains only what
should remain, — the human mind on the one side,
the divine minds on the other ; the true work and
the true workers ; society to be perfected and made
fruitful, science seeking the true, art creating the
beautiful, the thirst of thought, — the torment and
the happiness of man ; the lower life aspiring to
the higher. Real questions are to be dealt with ;
progress in intelligence and by intelligence is to be
secured. The aid of the poets, the prophets, the
philosophers, the inspired thinkers is invoked. It
is perceived that philosophy is a nourishment, and
poetry a need. Man cannot live by bread alone.
Give up the poets, and you give up civilization.
There comes an hour when the human race is com-
pelled to reckon with Shakespeare the actor, and
with Isaiah the beggar.

They are the more present when they are no
longer seen. Once dead, these beings live.

What hfe did they lead? What kind of men
were they? What do we know of them? Some-
times but little, as of Shakespeare ; often nothing,
as of those of ancient days. Did Job exist? Is
Homer one, or several ? Meziriac makes .^sop
straight, and Planudes makes him a hunchback.
Is it true that the prophet Hosea, in order to show
his love for his country, even when she was fallen
into opprobrium and infamy, espoused a harlot.



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 345

and named his children Mourning, Famine, Shame,
Pestilence, and Misery? Is it true that Hesiod
must be divided between Cyme in ^olis, where
he was born, and Ascra in Boeotia, where he is
said to have been brought up? Velleius Paterculus
places him one hundred and twenty years after
Homer, with whom Quintilian makes him con-
temporary. Which of the two is right? What
matters it? The poets being dead, their thought
reigns. Having been, they are.

They do more work among us to-day than when
they were alive. Others who have departed this
life rest from their labors : dead men of genius
work.

They work upon what? Upon minds. They
make civilization.

The end of all is six feet of earth ? No ; there all
begins, germinates, flowers, grows, issues, streams
forth. Such maxims are very well for you, O men
of the sword !

Lay yourselves down, disappear, lie in the grave,
rot. So be it.

While life lasts, gilding, caparisons, drums and
trumpets, panoplies, banners in the wind, tumults,
delude the senses. The crowd gazes with admi-
ration on these things. It imagines that it sees
something grand. Who wears the casque? Who
the cuirass? Who the sword-belt? Who is spurred,
helmeted, plumed, armed? Hurrah for that one!
At death the difference becomes plain. Juvenal
takes Hannibal in the hollow of his hand.

It is not Caesar, it is the thinker, who can say
when he expires, " Deus fio." So long as he



346 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

remains a man, his flesh interposes between other
men and him. The flesh is a cloud upon genius.
Death, that immense light, comes and penetrates
the man with its aurora. No more flesh, no more
matter, no more shadow. The unknown which was
within him manifests itself and beams forth. In
order that a mind may give all its light, death is
required. When that which was a genius becomes
a soul, the human race begins to be dazzled. A
book within which there is something of the phan-
tom is irresistible.

He who is still living does not appear disinter-
ested. People mistrust him. People dispute him
because they jostle against him. Both to be alive
and to be a genius is too much. This being goes
and comes as you do ; it walks the earth ; it has
weight; it casts a shadow; it obstructs. There
seems a kind of importunity in the presence of too
great a man; men find him not sufficiently like
themselves. As we have said before, they owe
him a grudge. Who is this privileged person?
This functionary cannot be dismissed. Persecu-
tion makes him greater, decapitation crowns him.
Nothing can be done against him, nothing for him,
nothing with him. He is responsible, but not to
you. He has his instructions. What he executes
may be discussed, not modified. It seems as
though he had a mission to accomplish from
some one who is not a man. Such an exception
displeases ; hence more hisses than applause.

Once dead, he is out of the way. The useless
hiss dies out. Living, he was a rival ; dead, he is
a benefactor. He becomes, in the beautiful ex-



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 347

pression of Lebrun, " the irreparable man." Lebrun
says this of Montesquieu ; Boileau says the same
thing of Moliere. " Avant qu'un peu de terre,"
etc.^ This handful of earth has equally exalted
Voltaire. Voltaire, so great in the eighteenth cen-
tury, is still greater in the nineteenth. The grave
is a crucible. The earth thrown on a man cleanses
his name, and allows it not to pass forth till puri-
fied. Voltaire has lost his false glory and retained
the true. To lose the false is gain. Voltaire is
neither a lyric poet, nor a comic poet, nor a tragic
poet ; he is the indignant yet tender critic of the
Old World ; he is the mild reformer of manners ;
he is the man who softens men. Voltaire, having
lost ground as a poet, has risen as an apostle. He
has done what is good rather than what is beautiful.
The good being included in the beautiful, those
who, like Dante and Shakespeare, have produced
the beautiful, surpass Voltaire ; but below the poet,
the place of the philosopher is still very high, and
Voltaire is the philosopher. Voltaire is good-sense
in a continual stream. Excepting literature, he is a
good judge of everything. In spite of his insulters,
Voltaire was almost adored during his lifetime;
to-day he is, on thoroughly valid grounds, admired.
The eighteenth century saw his mind ; we see his
soul. Frederick II., who liked to banter him, wrote

1 Part of the nineteenth line of Boileau's seventh epistle, which
is dedicated to Racine. The whole sentence may be roughly ren-
dered as follows : —

" Before a little earth, obtained by intercession,
Had forever hidden Moliere from human sight,
A thousand of those beauties, so highly praised to-day,
Were by silly people rejected before our very eyes."

— Tr.



34^ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

to D'Alembert: "Voltaire plays the buffoon. This
century resembles the old courts ; it has its fool^
and Arouet is he." This fool of the century was
its sage.

Such, for great minds, are the issues of the tomb.
That mysterious entrance otherwhere leaves light
behind. Their setting is resplendent. Death makes
their authority free and effective.



CHAPTER II.

Shakespeare is the chief glory of England.
England has in politics, Cromwell ; in philosophy.
Bacon; in science, Newton: three lofty men of
genius. But Cromwell is stained with cruelty, and
Bacon with meanness ; as to Newton, his edifice
ts at this moment tottering, Shakespeare is pure,
as Cromwell and Bacon are not, and unshaken, as
Newton is not Moreover, his genius is loftier.
Above Newton are Copernicus and Galileo ; above
Bacon are Descartes and Kant; above Cromwell
are Danton and Bonaparte ; above Shakespeare
there is no one. Shakespeare has equals, but no
superior. It is a singular honor for a land to have
borne such a man. One may say to that land,
Alma parens ! The native town of Shakespeare is
a chosen city ; an eternal light falls on that cradle ;
Stratford-on-Avon has a security that Smyrna,
Rhodes, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, and



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 349

Athens, the seven towns which dispute the birth-
place of Homer, do not possess.

Shakespeare is a human mind; he is also an
English mind. He is very English — too English;
he is English so far as to subdue the horror sur-
rounding the abominable kings whom he places
on the stage, — when they are kings of England ;
so far as to depreciate Philip Augustus in com-
parison with John Lackland ; so far as to make a
scapegoat, Falstaff, expressly in order to load him
with the princely misdeeds of the young Henry V. ;
so far as in a certain measure to share the hypoc-
risies of a history alleged to be national. Lastly,
he is English so far as to attempt to exculpate
Henry VHL ; it is true that the eye of Elizabeth is
fixed upon him. But at the same time we insist,
— for therein consists his greatness, — this English
poet is a humane genius. Art, like religion, has
its Ecce Homo. Shakespeare is one of those to
whom may be applied the noble name of Man.

England is selfish : selfishness is an island. This
Albion, who minds her own business and is apt to
be eyed askance by other nations, is a little lacking
in disinterested greatness; of this, Shakespeare
gives her some portion. With that purple robe
he drapes his country's shoulders. By his fame
he is universal and cosmopolitan. He overflows
island and egotism on every side. Deprive Eng-
land of Shakespeare, and consider how soon this
nation's far-shining light would fade. Shakespeare
modifies the English countenance and makes it
beautiful. He lessens the resemblance of England
to Carthage.



35© WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Strange meaning of the apparition of men of
genius ! No great poet is borne at Sparta, no
great poet at Carthage. This condemns these two
cities. Search, and you shall find this : Sparta is
but the city of logic ; Carthage is but the city of
matter ; love is wanting to both. Carthage immo-
lates her children by the sword, and Sparta sacri-
fices her virgins by nudity; here innocence is
killed, and there modesty. Carthage knows only
her crates and bales ; Sparta blends herself wholly
with the law, — there is her true territory : it is for
the laws that her men die at Thermopylae. Carth-
age is hard, Sparta is cold. They are two republics
based on stone. Therefore no books. The eter-
nal sower, who is never deceived, has scattered
none of the seed of genius on their thankless soil.
Such wheat is not to be confided to the rock.

Heroism, however, is not denied to them; they
will have, if necessary, either the martyr or the
captain. Leonidas is possible for Sparta, Han-
nibal for Carthage ; but neither Sparta nor Carthage
is capable of Homer. They are devoid of a certain
sublime tenderness which makes the poet spring
from the loins of a people. This latent tenderness,
this flebile nescio quid, England possesses, — wit-
ness Shakespeare; one might also add, witness
Wilberforce.

England, mercantile like Carthage, legal like
Sparta, is better than Sparta and Carthage. She
is honored by that august exception, a poet; to
have given birth to Shakespeare makes England
great.

Shakespeare's place is among the most sublime



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 35 I

in that select company of absolute intelligences
who, ever and anon reinforced by some noble
newcomer, form the crown of civilization, lighting
the human race with a wide radiance. Shake-
speare is legion. Alone, he forms the counter-
poise to our grand French seventeenth century,
and almost to the eighteenth.

When one arrives in England, the first thing the
eye seeks is the statue of Shakespeare; it falls
upon the statue of Wellington.

Wellington is a general who, in collaboration
with chance, gained a battle.

If you insist, you are taken to a place called
Westminster, where there are kings, — a crowd
of kings ; there is also a nook called " The Poets*
Corner." There, in the shade of four or five mag-
nificent monuments where some royal nobodies
shine in marble and bronze, you are shown a
statuette upon a little bracket, and beneath this
statuette the name, " William Shakespeare."

Furthermore, there are statues everywhere, —
statues to the heart's content. Statue of Charles,
statue of Edward, statue of William, statues of
three or four Georges, of whom one was an idiot.
Statue of the Duke of Richmond at Huntley;
statue of Napier at Portsmouth ; statue of Father
Mathew at Cork ; statue of Herbert Ingram — I
forget where. A man has well drilled the rifle-
men, — a statue to him ; a man has commanded
a manoeuvre of the Horse Guards, — a statue to
him. Another has been a supporter of the past,
has squandered all the wealth of England in pay-
ing a coalition of kings against 1789, against



352 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

democracy, against light, against the upward move-
ment of the human race, — quick ! a pedestal for
that, a statue to Mr. Pitt Another has knowingly-
fought against truth, in the hope that it might be
vanquished ; but finding, one fine morning, that
truth is hard-lived, that it is strong, that it might
come to be intrusted with forming a cabinet, has
then passed abruptly over to its side, — one more
pedestal, a statue to Mr. Peel. Everywhere, in
every street, in every square, at every step, gigan-
tic notes of admiration in the shape of columns,
— a column to the Duke of York, which should
take the form of a point of interrogation ; a col-
umn to Nelson, with Caraccioli's ghost pointing
the finger at it; a column to Wellington, already
mentioned ; columns for everj'body : it is suffi-
cient to have trailed a sabre a little. At Guernsey,
by the seaside, on a promontor}-, there is a high
column — almost a tower — resembling a light-
house. This one is struck by lightning. ^Eschylus
would have contented himself with it. To whom
is this? To General Doyle. Who is General
Doyle? A general. What did this general do?
He constructed roads. At his own expense? No,
at the expense of the inhabitants. A column
to him. None to Shakespeare, none to Milton,
none to Newton; the name of Byron is obscene.
Such is England, that illustrious and powerful
nation.

It avails little that this nation has for pioneer
and guide the generous British press, which is
more than free, which is sovereign, and which
through innumerable excellent journals throws



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 353

light upon ever>- question, — that is where Eng-
land is ; and let not France laugh too loudly, with
her statue of Negrier; nor Belgium, with her
statue of Belliard ; nor Prussia, with her statue
of Bliicher; nor Austria, with the statue that she
probably has of Schwartzenberg ; nor Russia, with
the statue that she must have of Souwaroff. If it
is not Schwartzenberg, it is Windischgratz ; if it is
not Souwaroff, it is Kutusoff.

Be Paskiewitch or Jellachich, statue ; be Auge-
reau or Bessieres, statue; be an Arthur Welles-
ley, they will make you a colossus, and the ladies
will dedicate you to yourself, quite naked, with
this inscription : "Achilles." A young man, twent>'
years of age, performs the heroic action of marry-
ing a beautiful young girl ; they prepare for him
triumphal arches ; they come to see him out of
curiosity; the garter is sent to him as on the
morrow of a battle ; the public squares are bril-
liant with fireworks ; people who perhaps have
gray beards put on perukes to come and harangue
him almost on their knees ; they shoot into the
air millions sterling in squibs and rockets, amid
the applause of a multitude in tatters who w'ill
have no bread to-morrow; star\'ing Lancashire
forms a companion-piece to the wedding ; people
are in ecstasies, they fire guns, they ring the bells,
" Rule Britannia ! " " God save the prince." What !
this young man has the kindness to do this? What
a glory for the nation ! Universal admiration, —
a great people becomes frantic, a great city falls
into a swoon, a balcony looking upon the passage
of the young man is rented for five hundred

a3



354 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

guineas, people crowd themselves together, press
upon each other, thrust each other beneath the
wheels of his carriage, seven women are crushed
to death in the enthusiasm, their little children are
picked up dead under the trampling feet, a hun-
dred persons, partially stifled, are carried to the
hospital; the joy is inexpressible. While this
is going on in London, the cutting of the Isthmus
of Panama is postponed by a war ; the cutting of
the Isthmus of Suez depends on some Ismail
Pasha; a company (limited) undertakes the sale
of the water of Jordan at a guinea a bottle ; walls
are invented proof against any cannon-ball, after
which missiles are invented which will go through
any wall; an Armstrong cannon-shot costs fifty
pounds; Byzantium contemplates Abdul- Azis,
Rome goes to confession; the frogs, encouraged
by the stork, call for a heron, — Greece, after Otho,
again wants a king ; Mexico, after Iturbide, again
wants an emperor ; China wants two of them, the
Middle King, a Tartar, and the Celestial Emperor
(Tien Wang), a Chinaman. . . . O earth! throne
of stupidity.