terature the generation of 1830 would be more
exactly described as the generation of the Restoration. This regime can
claim the glory of Lamartine, as poet. A body-guard of Louis XVIII., he
was the singer of royalty. He published, in 1820, the first volume of
his Meditations Poetiques, in 1823 the second, and in 1829 the
Harmonies. His literary success opened to him the doors of diplomacy.
He was successively attache of the Legation at Florence, Secretary of
Embassy at Naples and at London, Charge d'Affaires in Tuscany. When the
Revolution of 1830 broke out, he had just been named Minister
Plenipotentiary to Greece.

Victor Hugo published his Odes et Ballades from 1822 to 1828. "La
Vendee," "Les Vierges de Verdun," "Quiberon," "Louis XVII," "Le
Retablissement de la Statue de Henri IV.," "La Mort du due de Berry,"
"La Naissance du duc de Bordeaux," "Les Funerailles de Louis XVIII.,"
"Le Sacre de Charles X.," are true royalist songs. Alexandre Dumas,
FILS, in receiving M. Leconte de Lisle at the French Academy, recalled
"the light of that little lamp, seen burning every night in the mansard
of the Rue Dragon, at the window of the boy poet, poor, solitary,
indefatigable, enamoured of the ideal, hungry for glory, of that little
lamp, the silent and friendly confidant of his first works and his
first hopes so miraculously realized." Who knows? without the support
of the government of the Restoration the light of that little lamp
might less easily have developed into the resplendent star that the
author of La Dame aux Camelias indicated in the firmament.

The author of Meditations Poetiques and the author of the Odes et
Ballades were sincere in the expression of their political and
religious enthusiasm. These two lyric apostles of the throne and the
altar, these two bards of the coronation, obeyed the double inspiration
of their imagination and their conscience. Party spirit should not be
too severe for a regime that suggested such admirable verses to the two
greatest French poets of the nineteenth century--to Lamartine and to
Victor Hugo.

Let us recall also that in Victor Hugo it was not only the royalist
poet that Charles X. protected, it was also the chief of the romantic
school; for the government, despite all the efforts of the classicists,
caused Hernani to be represented at the Francais, a subsidized theatre.
When the Academy pressed its complaint to the very throne to prevent
the acceptance of the play, the King r