y retailing unbecoming epigrams--and
for epigram he had a genuine gift--to the Society of the Temple. He
manufactured odes with skill in the mechanism of verse, and carefully
secured the fine disorder required in that form of art by factitious
enthusiasm and the abuse of mythology and allegory. When Rousseau
died, Lefranc de Pompignan mourned for "le premier chantre du monde,"
reborn as the Orpheus of France, in a poem which alone of Lefranc's
numerous productions--and by virtue of two stanzas--has not that
sanctity ascribed to them by Voltaire, the sanctity which forbids
any one to touch them. Why name their fellows and successors in the
eighteenth-century art of writing poems without poetry?

Louis Racine (1692-1763), son of the author of _Athalie_, in his
versified discourses on _La Grace_ and _La Religion_ was devout and
edifying, but with an edification which promotes slumber. If a poet
in sympathy with the philosophers desired to edify, he described the
phenomena of nature as Saint-Lambert (1716-1803) did in his
_Saisons_--"the only work of our century," Voltaire assured the
author, "which will reach posterity." To describe meant to draw out
the inventory of nature's charms with an eye not on the object but
on the page of the Encyclopaedia, and to avoid the indecency of naming
anything in direct and simple speech. The _Seasons_ of Saint-Lambert
were followed by the _Months_ (_Mois_) of Roucher (1745-94)--"the
most beautiful poetic shipwreck of the century," said the malicious
Rivarol--and by the _Jardins_ of Delille (1738-1813). When Delille
translated the _Georgics_ he was saluted by Voltaire as the Abbe
Virgil.[1] The _salons_ heard him with rapture recite his verses as
from the tripod of inspiration. He was the favourite of
Marie-Antoinette. Aged and blind, he was a third with Homer and Milton.
In death they crowned his forehead, and for three days the mourning
crowd gazed on all that remained of their great poet. And yet Delille's
_Jardins_ is no better than a patchwork of carpet-gardening, in which
the flowers are theatrical paper-flowers. If anything lives from the
descriptive poetry of the eighteenth century, it is a few detached
lines from the writings of Lemierre.

[Footnote 1: Or was this Rivarol's ironical jest?]

The successor of J.-B. Rousseau in the grand ode was Ecouchard Lebrun
(1729-1807), rival of Pindar. All he wanted to equal Pindar was some
forgetfulness of self, some warmth, some genuine e