from the Anthology. The Greece of Chenier's
imagination is the ideal Greece of his time, more finely outlined,
more delicately coloured, more exquisitely felt by him than was
possible with his contemporaries in an age of prose. "It is the
landscape-painter's Greece," writes M. Faguet, "the Greece of fair
river-banks, of gracious hill-slopes, of comely groups around a
well-head or a stream, of harmonious theories beside the voiceful
sea, of dancing choirs upon the luminous heights, under the blue
heavens, which lift to ecstasy his spirit, light as the light
breathing of the Cyclades."

In the _Iambes_, inspired by the emotions of the Revolution during
his months of imprisonment, Chenier united modern passion with the
beauty of classic form; satire in these loses its critical temper,
and becomes truly lyrical. In his versification he attained new and
alluring harmonies; he escaped from the rhythmical uniformity of
eighteenth-century verse, gliding sinuously from line to line and
from strophe to strophe. He did over again for French poetry the work
of the Pleiade, but he did this as one who was a careful student and
a critic of Malherbe.

BOOK THE FIFTH
1789-1850

CHAPTER I
THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIRE--MADAME DE STAEL--CHATEAUBRIAND

I

The literature of the Revolution and the Empire is that of a period
of transition. Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand announce the future;
the writers of an inferior rank represent with declining power the
past, and give some faint presentiment of things to come. The great
political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united
with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature
of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the
stage, but their literary value is insignificant.

Marie-Joseph Chenier (1764-1811), brother of the great poet who
perished on the scaffold, attempted to inaugurate a school of national
tragedy in his _Charles IX._; neither he nor the public knew history
or possessed the historical sentiment--his tragedy was a
revolutionary "school of kings." Arnault, Legouve, Nepomucene
Lemercier were applauded for their classic dignity, or their depth
of characterisation, or their pomp of language. The true tragedy of
the time was enacted in the streets and in the clubs. Comedy was
welcome in days of terror as at all other times. Collin d'Harleville
drew mirth from the infirmities and follies of old age in