Turcaret, shrewd
and unscrupulous, has made money as a government contractor and
come to Paris to enjoy it, ordering his countrified wife to remain at
home.
and unscrupulous, has made money as a government contractor and
come to Paris to enjoy it, ordering his countrified wife to remain at
home.
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## p. 8976 (#608) ###########################################
## p. 8977 (#609) ###########################################
8977
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
(1798-1837)
BY KATHARINE HILLARD
PIKE Byron, Leopardi came of an ancient and patrician but im-
poverished family. His mother, who seems to have been the
real head of the house, had so absorbed herself in the task
of repairing its fallen fortunes, that she had little time and less ten-
derness left to lavish upon her children. His father, Count Monaldo
Leopardi, was a mere figure-head in his own household, and spent
most of his time shut up in his library. He lived at Recanati, a little
mountain village of Tuscany, high up in the Apennines, near Loreto;
and there, in the stifling dullness of a small provincial town, Giacomo
Leopardi was born, on the 29th of June, 1798. His father was as con-
servative as an ordinary mind bred up under the restraints of a little
village in the Italy of that day naturally would be. He was bigoted,
narrow-minded, bitterly opposed to progress, seeing nothing good out-
side of the precincts of the Church. He even preferred the costume
of an earlier period, and dressed himself and his wife in mediæval
attire. The young Leopardi, nervous, sickly, and deformed, was
brought up in his father's library, having no companions except his
sister and his brothers. He spent his time among dictionaries and
grammars; and with little or no assistance contrived to make him-
self master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and English,
by the time he was sixteen.
At that age he composed a Latin treatise on the Roman rhetori-
cians of the second century, a history of astronomy, and a Latin
translation and comment on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve said that
“one who had studied Plotinus his whole life could find something
useful in this work of a boy. ” At seventeen he wrote on the popular
errors of the ancients, and quoted more than four hundred authors.
His next achievement was two odes in the manner of Anacreon,
which imposed upon the first scholars in Italy. At eighteen he wrote
a long poem called “The Approach of Death,' which was lost for
many years, but finally discovered and published. It is a vision of
the omnipotence of death, that offers a remarkable resemblance in
many ways to Shelley's “Triumph of Life,' written six years later.
Then in 1819, when the young poet was but twenty years old, came
the two poems which gave him his place among the Italian classics:
XV—562
## p. 8978 (#610) ###########################################
8978
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
the Ode to Italy,' and that to the Dante monument then being
erected in Florence.
These poems were so full of the spirit of the hour, and gave such
complete expression to the anguish of a country awakened from the
sleep of centuries to find herself among the despised and rejected
nations of the world, — her political prestige gone, her intellectual
standing lost, even her poetry' and her art sunk into the lowest
depths of degradation,- that they fired the Italian people like a voice
from their glorious past. Leopardi had emerged from the seclusion
of his father's library a perfect Greek in spirit and in style; and only
Landor could compare with him for classic purity, precision, and
force. The rich harmonies of the Italian language lent to his poetry
a charm that no English translation can possibly give, and the un-
rhymed lines fall cold and dead upon the ear in our less musical
tongue.
The revolutionary spirit of these odes and the bitter disappoint-
ment that they breathed made the bigoted and narrow-minded father
furious, and he denied his son almost the necessaries of life. Because
the poet refused to become a priest, he was loaded with labors that
his frail health was not able to support; nor would the father allow
him to leave Recanati, where ennui, to use Leopardi's own words, not
merely oppressed and wearied him, but agonized and lacerated like a
cruel pain. He had suffered there a disappointment in love; having
cherished a romantic passion for a young girl whom he scarcely knew,
but whose voice he heard continually as she sang at her work in a
house opposite his father's palace. Probably had he known her bet-
ter he might have loved her less; but the count promptly crushed the
dawning passion, and shortly afterwards the young girl died. Her
memory represented for the poet all that he ever knew of love.
At the age of twenty-four he broke away at last from his paternal
prison-house and went to Rome; only to carry his melancholy with
him, his morbid contempt for his fellows, his physical weakness and
sufferings. Rome proved to him only a larger Recanati, where fri-
volity and dissipation reigned supreme. A few foreigners, principally
Germans, and among them Niebuhr, alone redeemed the social degra-
dation. Niebuhr, who considered Leopardi by far the first, if not the
only, Greek philologist in Italy, would have procured him a profes-
sorship of Greek philosophy in Berlin; but Leopardi would not leave
his own country. For some years he drifted about rather aimlessly,
always the prey of ill health, from Rome to Milan, to Bologna, to
Recanati again, to Pisa, and to Florence. Many men loved him; nota-
bly Antonio Ranieri, a young Neapolitan whose acquaintance Leopardi
made in 1832, and at whose house at Capodimonte, carefully tended
by Ranieri and his sister, the poet spent the last years of his unhappy
## p. 8979 (#611) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8979
life. Here he met the German en, and wrote one of his finest
poems, "La Ginestra) (The Broom-flower). It was at Naples also that
Leopardi wrote a satire in ottava rima upon the abortive Neapolitan
revolution of 1820; a poem clever in its way, but like much of the
verse of Giusti, too full of local allusions to be comprehensible except
by the Neapolitans of the early thirties. After four years of hopeless
invalidism, Leopardi died very suddenly, on the eve of departure for
the country, on June 15th, 1837. His remains were deposited at a
little church on the road to Pozzuoli.
That genial critic, De Sanctis, tells us that “love, inexhaustible
and almost ideal, was the supreme craving of Leopardi's heart, and
never left it through life); and that it may in truth be said that
pain and love form the twofold poetry of his existence. ” Except for
the society of his commonplace brothers and sisters he was absolutely
without companionship until he went to Rome. The pettiness of its
social ambitions swept away his last illusion. To quote De Sanctis
again: “The objects of our desire he called idols; our labors, idleness;
and everything, vanity.
Inertia — rust, as it were — even more
than pain consumed his life, alone in what he called 'this formidable
desert of the world. " » Like most pessimists, he demanded everything
and gave nothing. He desired the love of mankind, but he hated
and despised his fellows; and insisted upon what they owed him, for-
getting his debt to them. Like another Prometheus, Leopardi lay
bound to the rock of suffering, with a vulture gnawing at his heart;
but the vulture was of his own nurture, and his tortures were self-
imposed. It is to his praise however as a patriot, that his voice was
one of the first to arouse Italy from her shameful sleep to the desire
of better things. As a poet the beautiful purity of his style, and the
exquisite melody of his unrhymed or irregularly rhymed verse, have
never been surpassed.
Opinions differ as to the crowning expression of his genius; but
the popular verdict seems to settle upon (Sylvia,' and the noble
poem “La Ginestra,' or the Broom-flower. The lyric beauty of (Syl-
via' can never be rendered in English irregular verse: it belongs to
the Italian language. The Night-Song of a Wandering Shepherd of
Asia' is one of the most charming of his longer poems; though it
may be considered doubtful whether any wandering shepherd ever
felt that the crowning happiness of his flocks was their incapacity
for feeling bored. Other fine poems of Leopardi are Aspasia,' (The
Song-Sparrow,' Bento Minore,' and The Dominant Thought. '
>
(
Aputharma Billed
1
## p. 8980 (#612) ###########################################
8980
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
SYLVIA
S
YLVIA, canst thou still remember
That time in thy brief existence
When a beauty all-resplendent
Shone from thine eyes, with their fleeting, smiling glances,
What time, pensive yet gay, thou wert crossing
The boundaries of thy youth?
Resounded all thy quiet
Dwelling, and the lanes around it,
With the music of thy singing,
As intent on the tasks of women
Thou wert pond'ring, lost in contentment,
All the vague future fancy held before thee.
It was May, the month of fragrance; and thus ever
Didst thou dream out the hours.
And I, my fairest studies
At times forsaking, and the well-thumbed volumes
Over whose weary pages
I spent myself, and the best part of my youth,
Leaned from the terrace of my father's dwelling,
To listen to the music of thy voice;
And to watch thy busy fingers
As they flew o'er the tiresome sewing.
While I gazed on the placid heavens,
The golden lanes and the gardens,
And there the far-off sea, and here the mountains,–
No mortal tongue could utter
The feelings that rose in me.
O Sylvia mine, what visions,
What hopes, what hearts, were ours!
Under what beautiful seeming
Lay human life and fate!
When I remember those fancies,
I am seized by a mortal sorrow,
Bitter, devoid of comfort,
And I return to grieve over all my misfortune.
O Nature, O Mother Nature,
Why dost thou never give us
That we were promised at first ? Alas, why so often
Dost thou deceive thy children?
Thee, ere the grass had faded with winter,
Insidious death had vanquished;
Thy tender beauty perished. And never saw'st thou
## p. 8981 (#613) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8981
The flower of thy maiden years.
Thy heart was never melted
Or by the praises of thy raven tresses,
Or of thy loving glances, swift and bashful.
Nor at their feast-days with thy young companions,
Could'st thou discourse of love.
And shortly also perished
The sweet hope that treasured; even youth itself
The cruel fates denied me.
Alas, alas! how utterly has vanished
The dear companion of my early years,
The hope I mourn forever!
Is this the world we pictured? Can these be
The dear delights, the love, the deeds, the events,
That long ago we talked about so fondly?
Is this the destiny of all mankind ?
When the truth dawned upon thee,
Poor child, thou sank'st before it; thy cold hand pointing
To where the naked tomb and pallid Death
Waited me from afar.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
NIGHT-SONG
OF A WANDERING ASIAN SHEPHERD
WHAT
HAT dost thou, moon in heaven; tell me, what dost thou,
O silent moon ?
Rising with evening, and slowly pacing
The skies, contemplating the desert; then setting.
Oh, art thou not yet weary
Of still retracing the everlasting pathways?
Art thou not yet rebellious ? dost still delight
In gazing at these valleys ?
Like thy life
The shepherd's life, methinks.
With earliest dawn he rises,
Drives his flock far afield, and watches
The flock, the brooks, the pastures;
Then wearied out, lies down to rest at evening.
Nor to aught else aspires.
Tell me, () moon, what value
Such a life to the shepherd,
## p. 8982 (#614) ###########################################
8982
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Such a life, moon, to thee? tell me where leadeth
This brief existence of mine,
And thy eternal journeys?
An old man hoary and delicate,
Half clad, and going barefoot,
Bearing a heavy burden upon his shoulders, -
Over mountains and over valleys,
Over sharp rocks, deep sands, and thorny places,
In wind, in tempest, or when the lightning
Flashes, or the hailstones strike him,-
Still hurries on, hurries on panting,
Traverses torrents and marshes,
Falls and rises again, and faster and faster hastens;
Without or rest or refreshment,
Torn and bleeding he goes: and at last arriveth
There where the pathway
And his struggles alike have ending;
Where yawns the abyss, bottomless, terrible,-
There he Alings himself down, and findeth oblivion.
Such, O virgin noon,
Such is mortal existence.
Often, thus gazing upon thee,
Standing so silent above these, the desert regions,
Whereto with distant arch the heavens confine thee,
Or as my flock I follow,
Step by step, as we travel slowly together,
And when I gaze at the stars, that above me are burning,
I say to myself, as I'm thinking,
Why all these starry fires ?
What means this infinite air, and what the
Depths of the heavens? What is the meaning
Of all this solitude boundless? And I, what am I?
Thus I discourse with myself, and of all my surroundings,
Sky and earth, endless and splendid,
With all their offspring unnumbered;
Of all their relations and movements,
Of all things celestial, terrestrial,
Sweeping on still, without resting,
Ever returning to fill their places appointed.
Of all things, no purpose,
No real fruit can I see.
But thou at least, maiden immortal, thou
Knowest all things.
## p. 8983 (#615) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8983
This thing I know, and I feel it:
That out of this endless motion,
Out of this frail human nature,
Some slight good and contentment
Others may get, perchance; to me our life is but evil.
O flock of mine, at rest here! O happy creatures,
That know not your fate, I believe you unconscious of sorrow!
What envy to you I bear!
Not only that even of suff'ring
Almost unheeding ye go,—
That hunger or terror
Seizing upon you, is ever as swiftly forgotten, -
But still more because tedium never o'ertakes you.
And when ye rest in the shade on sweet grasses,
Content and quiet bide with you.
Had I wings like a bird, peradventure,
To bear me on high through the heavens,
And one by one to number the planets,
Or, like the thunder, leap from one peak to another,
Happier I'd be, sweet my flock,
Happier I'd be, fairest moon.
Perchance, though, my wandering fancy
Strays from the truth, in dreaming of fortunes not mine.
Perchance in every fate, in every form,
Whether within the cradle or the fold,
To all the fatal day is that of birth.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
## p. 8984 (#616) ###########################################
8984
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
(1668-1747)
BY JANE GROSVENOR COOKE
N FRANCE the seventeenth century was a time of dreams.
Imagination reveled in the grotesque and fantastic, and
craved the exuberant sentiment, the ideal emotion, expressed
in the romances of d'Urfé and Madame de La Fayette. Toward the
end of the century this mood was followed by reaction. People
stopped dreaming to study the real life before their eyes; and litera-
ture reflected the change. The first great realist in fiction was Alain
Le Sage.
Le Sage was a sturdy, self-willed Breton, with keen interest in
human affairs, and more than usual skill in drawing conclusions from
them. He was an optimist, taught by experience to distrust men's
motives. Left an orphan at fourteen, under guardianship of an
uncle who squandered his small patrimony, he accepted poverty with
characteristic cheerfulness. His seems to have been a sensible, con-
trolled nature, with slight inclination towards irregular ways. At
twenty-six he married a pretty girl of the bourgeoisie, went to writing,
and was the first Frenchman to earn a living by authorship.
Unlike the authors who preceded him, this honest bourgeois had
no powerful patronage to insure his success. He knew little of court
and salon, depended on his own exertions, and hence experienced
many disappointments before he found his place. His need of money
forced him to inferior production, and much of his work is now
valueless.
He had studied law; but Antoine Danchet a successful young
dramatist, and his chum and fellow-student of the Quartier Latin
urged him to write. Undoubtedly he liked the suggestion, although
his was
no evident vocation nor immediate success. His early at-
tempts were pot-boilers, efforts toward self-discovery; and the first-
a translation from the Greek, Letters of Aristænetus)
a failure.
But he was warmly encouraged by the Abbé de Lyonne,- eccentric
drinker of twenty-two daily pints of Seine water, and probable original
of the Sangrado of Gil Blas. ' He took Le Sage under his protec-
tion; made his perseverance in authorship possible by bestowing upon
him a pension of six hundred livres; and is said to have interested
)
## p. 8984 (#617) ###########################################
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## p. 8984 (#618) ###########################################
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## p. 8984 (#619) ###########################################
LE SAGE.
## p. 8984 (#620) ###########################################
## p. 8985 (#621) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8985
him in Spanish literature, to which he may also have been attracted
by the fact that his wife's mother was a Spaniard. For years he
groped on, translating Spanish plays and stories, - unoriginal plodder.
Le Sage was curiously unambitious. His aspirations never seem
to have been of a highly emotional order, and he had no kinship
with the exalted sentiment of French classic drama and romance.
Sainte-Beuve calls him a man without any ideality; but it is truer to
define his ideal as the rule of good sense. He scorned to affect emo-
tion which he ignored, and was quick to detect and expose social
hypocrisies. Kindly in spite of many disillusions, he is the genius
of the commonplace; picturing with humorous satire and dramatic
force the actuating sentiments of ordinary men and women.
He required the stimulus of outside suggestion; and like Shake-
speare, loved to transform a ready-made tale. The plot and scene
remain Spanish, like the originals from which he borrowed; the atmo-
sphere and characterization are French.
When nearly forty he won his first brilliant success with two
dramas,— Crispin Rival de son Maître,' and Don César Ursin,'—
which were played upon one occasion at the Théâtre Français. The
first was a lively improbable one-act lever de rideau, in which a valet
in masquerade courts his master's daughter. The audience applauded
it enthusiastically, but were indifferent to the longer play. Oddly
enough, the situation was reversed at Versailles, where Don César
succeeded and the lever de rideau failed. The Parisians had shown
the keener judgment, for "Crispin' has become a classic.
(Turcaret,' his one great drama, was refused by the Théâtre
Français under its first title, Les Étrennes'; but when remodeled
introduced a daring innovation in stage tradition.
Turcaret, shrewd
and unscrupulous, has made money as a government contractor and
come to Paris to enjoy it, ordering his countrified wife to remain at
home. He falls in love with a baroness, who flatters and fleeces him
and promptly bestows his gifts upon a younger lover. The valets
and grisettes flatter their master's foibles, pilfer when they can, and
better their condition by all clever knavery. The keen exposure of
human pettiness ends in the discomfiture of the vulgar hero. His
low-bred wife claims him at an evening reception; his coarse-grained
sister comes to sell finery to the baroness; he is swindled out of his
ill-gotten wealth and bundled off to prison. In the period of the
Spanish war, this typical portrayal of a class whose unscrupulous
dealings stirred up wrath and fear was even more daring than the
realism of Le Sage's great predecessor, Molière. For a time the play
was in danger of suppression, which it only escaped through the
intervention of royal authority. Even then the ridiculed class reviled
it hotly, hired men to hiss it down, and offered the author large
>
## p. 8986 (#622) ###########################################
8986
ALAIN RENE LE SAGE
bribes for its withdrawal: an opposition which only determined Le
Sage to continue it.
In spite of this success, he did not go on producing regular drama,
but devoted himself to the more profitable work of writing little
plays and operettas to be acted out of doors at the fairs of Paris.
These pièces de la foire, given in booths set up along the streets,
attracted a humbler audience, which received his satire more cor-
dially and offered him more certain recompense than the regular
theatres. In one of these plays he introduced a woman doctor; and
the idea of such an anomaly was greatly enjoyed as an impossible
burlesque.
His first noteworthy story, Le Diable Boiteux,'— founded on the
Spanish (Diablo Cojuelo' of Guevara, to whom it was dedicated,
appeared in 1707, and was the most immediately popular of Le Sage's
works. The spirit, liberated from a bottle in a magician's laboratory,
entertains his rescuer with the secret sights of a great city at night;
and unroofing the buildings, explains the sufferings, transports, and
agitations revealed. On this thread of story is strung a succession of
vivid satiric little dramas. Often compared with "Les Caractères of
La Bruyère in general idea, Le Diable' has greater continuity; for
while the foriner is a series of detached sketches, the latter continu-
ally recalls the interest to a central plot.
English readers know Le Sage best from his great novel, Gil
Blas,' over which he worked for more than twenty years. After a
long and bitter controversy as to his indebtedness to Spanish liter-
ature, the idea of a romance of which (Gil Blas) is a translation was
disproved. The central idea is Spanish, as often in his work; the
development his own.
Le Sage had no exalted opinion of reason as a controlling power;
but regarded a human being as an impressionable mass, capable of
recording and of being transformed by sensation. Gil Blas, the young
Spaniard who starts out to seek his fortune, is not remarkable for
vice or virtue. He is a shrewd, good-hearted youth, easily influenced
by his surroundings. But the power of good is impressed upon him
without conscious moralizing; and in middle life, after many follies
and mistakes, he becomes a staid, trustworthy citizen. He tells the
story of his adventures with witty candor and good-humor. He is a
shifty politic fellow, with a racquet for every ball. ” When he hears
of a relative whom he had never met — «Yet nature will prevail: as
soon as I had heard that he was in a fair way, I was tempted to call
upon him. ” While a valet, Gil Blas finds it necessary to leave his
place at short notice. "I made a bundle of my own goods, incident-
ally slipping in some odd articles belonging to my master. ”
He is
a knave certainly, but never a serious villain. Society, he finds, is
## p. 8987 (#623) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8987
composed of people who live by their wits, and who think a great
deal about good things to eat and drink. So he scrambles with the
others. In the four volumes of Gil Blas's adventures, with the long
digressions about his acquaintances, there is no more plot than in a
man's life. There is no preaching. Yet the effect is of unity, and
the tale as moral as experience itself. ”
The distinctive quality of Le Sage is unprejudiced exposition.
“My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists,"
he says in the preface to Gil Blas. «God forbid I should hold myself
out as a portrait-painter. Nevertheless he is a portrait-painter, seiz-
”
ing the outward visible fact with little psychological effort. His is
the hearty spontaneity of the simple story-teller.
In spite of his love of Spanish models, Le Sage breaks away from
the popular picaresque literature,- sensational tales recording the suc-
cess of low-born, witty rogues. He represents plenty of knavery; but
after all, Gil Blas finds honesty the best policy.
The work of Le Sage marks the transition from the spirit of the
seventeenth to that of the eighteenth century. In his large and gen-
eral view of life, of society en masse, and in his taste for foreign lit-
erature, he belongs to the seventeenth century. But his realism is
more modern; and in his lack of conscious moral motive, and in his
fatalistic acceptance of the conditions of human life, a grain of Vol-
tairean unbelief is already germinating:
Curiously enough, Le Sage exercised more influence abroad than
at home. Before his fellow-countrymen had learned to appreciate
him, Smollett had translated Gil Blas into English; and it had become
the model after which Fielding and his contemporaries sought to
shape the English novel.
The great charm of Le Sage lies in the strong and rapid style of
his witty narration. Occasionally he shows an appreciation of nature,
but his interest in life is almost wholly social. Whatever he has to
say is expressed with characteristic grace and strength. The words
are so ready and so apt, the phrase so just yet easy, the whole effect
so animated, that in his instinctive pleasure the reader hardly realizes
the great literary skill which created this masterpiece of precise and
vigorous French.
a!
11
Jane Grovrenn Cooke
.
## p. 8988 (#624) ###########################################
8988
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
GIL BLAS ENTERS THE SERVICE OF DR. SANGRADO
From (Gil Blas)
I
»
»
»
eases.
DETERMINED to throw myself in the way of Sigñor Arias de
Londona, and to look out for a new berth in his register; but
as I was on my way to No Thoroughfare, who should come
across me but Doctor Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the
day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my
hat. He kenned me in a twinkling, though I had changed my
dress; and with as much warmth as his temperament would
allow him, “Heyday! ” said he, “the very lad I wanted to see;
you have never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a
clever fellow about me, and pitched upon you as the very thing,
if you can read and write. ” “Sir," replied I, “if that is all you
require, I am your man. " “In that case,” rejoined he, “we
need look no further. Come home with me: it will be all com-
fort; I shall behave to you like a brother. You will have no
wages, but everything will be found you. You shall eat and
drink according to the true faith, and be taught to cure all dis-
In a word, you shall rather be my young Sangrado than
my footman. »
I closed in with the doctor's proposal, in the hope of becom-
ing an Esculapius under so inspired a master. He carried me
home on the spur of the occasion, to install me in my honorable
employment; which honorable employment consisted in writing
down the name and residence of the patients who sent for him
in his absence. There had indeed been a register for this pur-
pose, kept by an old domestic; but she had not the gift of spell-
ing accurately, and wrote a most perplexing hand. This account
I was to keep. It might truly be called a bill of mortality; for
my members all went from bad to worse during the short time
they continued in this system. I was a sort of bookkeeper for
the other world, to take places in the stage, and to see that the
first come were the first served. My pen was always in my
hand, for Doctor Sangrado had more practice than any physician
of his time in Valladolid. He had got into reputation with the
public by a certain professional slang, humored by a medical face,
and some extraordinary cases more honored by implicit faith than
scrupulous investigation.
He was in no want of patients, nor consequently of property.
He did not keep the best house in the world: we lived with some
## p. 8989 (#625) ###########################################
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»
>
little attention to economy. The usual bill of fare consisted of
peas, beans, boiled apples or cheese. He considered this food as
best suited to the human stomach; that is to say, as most ame-
nable to the grinders, whence it was to encounter the process of
digestion. Nevertheless, easy as was their passage, he was not
for stopping the way with too much of them; and to be sure,
he was in the right. But though he cautioned the maid and me
against repletion in respect of solids, it was made up by free per-
mission to drink as much water as we liked. Far from prescrib-
ing us any limits in that direction, he would tell us sometimes:
"Drink, my children: health consists in the pliability and moisture
of the parts. Drink water by pailfuls: it is a universal dissolv.
ent; water liquefies all the salts. Is the course of the blood a
little sluggish ? this grand principle sets it forward: too rapid ?
its career is checked. ” Our doctor was so orthodox on this head
that though advanced in years, he drank nothing himself but
water. He defined old age to be a natural consumption which
dries us up and wastes us away: on this principle he deplored
the ignorance of those who call wine “old men's milk. ” He
maintained that wine wears them out and corrodes them; and
pleaded with all the force of his eloquence against that liquor,
fatal in common both to the young and old,- that friend with
a serpent in its bosom, - that pleasure with a dagger under its
girdle.
In spite of these fine arguments, at the end of a week a loose-
ness ensued, with some twinges, which I was blasphemous enough
to saddle on the universal dissolvent and the new-fangled diet.
I stated my symptoms to my master, in the hope that he would
relax the rigor of his regimen and qualify my meals with a
little wine; but his hostility to that liquor was inflexible. If
you have not philosophy enough,” said he, «for pure water, there
are innocent infusions to strengthen the stomach against the nau-
sea of aqueous quaffings. Sage, for example, has a very pretty
flavor; and if you wish to heighten it into a debauch, it is only
mixing rosemary, wild poppy, and other simples with it, but no
compounds. ”
In vain did he crack off his water, and teach me the secret of
composing delicious messes, I was so abstemious that, remark-
ing my moderation, he said:— "In good sooth, Gil Blas, I mar-
vel not that you are no better than you are: you do not drink
enough, my friend. Water taken in a small quantity serves only
-
«
## p. 8990 (#626) ###########################################
8990
ALAIN-RENÉ LE SAGE
to separate the particles of bile and set them in action; but our
practice is to drown them in a copious drench. Fear not, my
good lad, lest a superabundance of liquid should either weaken
or chill your stomach; far from thy better judgment be that silly
fear of unadulterated drink. I will insure you against all conse-
quences; and if my authority will not serve your turn, read Cel-
sus. That oracle of the ancients makes an admirable panegyric
on water; in short, he says in plain terms that those who plead
an inconstant stomach in favor of wine, publish a libel on their
own viscera, and make their constitution a pretense for their
sensuality. ”
As it would have been ungenteel in me to run riot on my
entrance into the career of practice, I affected thorough con-
viction; indeed I thought there was something in it. I therefore
went on drinking water on the authority of Celsus, or to speak
in scientific terms, I began to drown the bile in copious drenches
of that unadulterated liquor; and though I felt myself more out
of order from day to day, prejudice won the cause against expe-
rience. It is evident therefore that I was in the right road to
the practice of physic. Yet I could not always be insensible
to the qualms which increased in my frame, to that degree as
to determine me on quitting Doctor Sangrado. But he invested
me with a new office which changed my tone.
“Hark you, my
child,” said he to me one day: "I am not one of those hard and
ungrateful masters, who leave their household to grow gray in
service without a suitable reward. I am well pleased with you,
I have a regard for you; and without waiting till you have
served your time, I will make your fortune. Without more ado,
I will initiate you in the healing art, of which I have for so
many years been at the head. Other physicians make the science
to consist of various unintelligible branches; but I will shorten
the road for you, and dispense with the drudgery of studying
natural philosophy, pharmacy, botany, and anatomy. Remember,
my friend, that bleeding and drinking warm water are the two
grand principles, — the true secret of curing all the distempers
incident to humanity. Yes, this marvelous secret which I reveal
to you, and which Nature, beyond the reach of my colleagues,
has failed in rescuing from my pen, is comprehended in these
two articles; namely, bleeding and drenching. Here you have
the sum total of my philosophy; you are thoroughly bottomed in
medicine, and may raise yourself to the summit of fame on the
(
## p. 8991 (#627) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8991
>>
shoulders of my long experience. You may enter into partner-
ship at once, by keeping the books in the morning and going
out to visit patients in the afternoon. While I dose the nobility
I
and clergy, you shall labor in your vocation among the lower
orders; and when you have felt your ground a little, I will get
you admitted into our body. You are a philosopher, Gil Blas,
though you have never graduated; the common herd of them,
though they have graduated in due form and order, are likely to
run out the length of their tether without knowing their right
hand from their left. »
I thanked the doctor for having so speedily enabled me to
serve as his deputy; and by way of acknowledging his goodness,
promised to follow his system to the end of my career, with a
magnanimous indifference about the aphorisms of Hippocrates.
But that engagement was not to be taken to the letter. This
tender attachment to water went against the grain, and I had a
scheme for drinking wine every day snugly among the patients.
I left off wearing my own suit a second time, to take up one
of my master's and look like an experienced practitioner. After
which I brought my medical theories into play, leaving those it
might concern to look to the event. I began on an alguazil
in a pleurisy; he was condemned to be bled with the utmost
rigor of the law, at the same time that the system was to be
replenished copiously with water. Next I made a lodgment in
the veins of a gouty pastry-cook, who roared like a lion by rea-
son of gouty spasms.
I stood on
more ceremony with his
blood than with that of the alguazil, and laid no restriction on
his taste for simple liquids. My prescriptions brought me in
twelve rials: an incident so auspicious in my professional career,
that I only wished for the plagues of Egypt on all the hale sub-
jects of Valladolid.
I was no sooner at home than Doctor Sangrado came in. I
talked to him about the patients I had seen, and paid into his
hands eight remaining rials of the twelve I had received for my
prescriptions.
“Eight rials! ” said he, as he counted them: “mighty little for
two visits! But we must take things as we find them. ” In the
spirit of taking things as he found them, he laid violent hands
on six, giving me the other two. "Here, Gil Blas,” continued
he, “see what a foundation to build upon. I make over to you
the fourth of all you may bring me.
You will soon feather your
no
1.
>
## p. 8992 (#628) ###########################################
8992
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
I was
nest, my friend; for by the blessing of Providence, there will be
a great deal of ill health this year. "
I had reason to be content with my dividend; since, having
determined to keep back the third part of what I received in my
rounds, and afterwards touching another fourth of the remain-
der,- then half of the whole, if arithmetic is anything more
than a deception, would become my perquisite. This inspired me
with new zeal for my profession. The next day, as soon as I
had dined, I resumed my medical paraphernalia and took the
field once more. I visited several patients on the list, and
treated their several complaints in one invariable routine. Hith-
erto things went on under the rose; and no individual, thank
Heaven, had risen up in rebellion against my prescriptions. But
let a physician's cures be as extraordinary as they will, some
quack or other is always ready to rip up his reputation.
called in to a grocer's son in a dropsy. Whom should I find
there before me but a little. black-looking physician, by name
Doctor Cuchillo, introduced by a relation of the family. I bowed
round most profoundly, but dipped lowest to the personage whom
I took to have been invited to a consultation with me.
He re-
turned my compliment with a distant air; then, having stared
me in the face for a few seconds, -"Signor Doctor,” said he, "I
beg pardon for being inquisitive: I thought I was acquainted
with all my brethren in Valladolid, but I confess your physi-
ognomy is altogether new. You must have been settled but a
short time in town. ” I avowed myself a young practitioner, act-
ing as yet under the direction of Doctor Sangrado. "I wish you
joy,” replied he politely: "you are studying under a great man.
You must doubtless have seen a vast deal of sound practice,
young as you appear to be. ” He spoke this with so easy an
assurance that I was at a loss whether he meant it seriously,
was laughing at me. While I was conning over my reply,
the grocer, seizing on the opportunity, said, “Gentlemen, I am
persuaded of your both being perfectly competent in your
art: have the goodness without ado to take the case in hand,
and devise some effectual means
for the restoration of my
son's health. ”
Thereupon the little pulse-counter set himself about reviewing
the patient's situation; and after having dilated to me on all the
symptoms, asked me what I thought the fittest method of treat-
ment. "I am of opinion,” replied I, “that he should be bled
»
or
(
## p. 8993 (#629) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8993
1
»
(
>
once a day, and drink as much warm water as he can swallow. ”
At these words, our diminutive doctor said to me, with a ma-
licious simper, "And so you think such a course will save the
patient ? »
“Not a doubt of it,” exclaimed I in a confident tone:
"it must produce that effect, because it is a certain method of
cure for all distempers. Ask Signor Sangrado. ” "At that rate,”
retorted he, "Celsus is altogether in the wrong; for he contends
that the readiest way to cure a dropsical subject is to let him
almost die of hunger and thirst. ” “Oh, as for Celsus,” inter-
rupted I, “he is no oracle of mine; as fallible as the meanest of
us: I often have occasion to bless myself for going contrary to
his dogmas. ” I discover by your language,” said Cuchillo, the
safe and sure method of practice Doctor Sangrado instills into his
pupils. Bleeding and drenching are the extent of his resources.
No wonder so many worthy people are cut off under his direc-
tion. ” — “No defamation! ” interrupted I with some acrimony:
“a member of the faculty had better not begin throwing stones.
Come, come, my learned doctor, patients can get to the other
world without bleeding and warm water; and I question whether
the most deadly of us has ever signed more passports than your-
self. If you have any crow to pluck with Signor Sangrado, write
against him; he will answer you, and we shall soon see who will
have the best of the battle. ” “By all the saints in the calendar! ”
swore he in a transport of passion, you little know whom you
are talking to. I have a tongue and a fist, my friend; and am
not afraid of Sangrado, who with all his arrogance and affecta-
tion is but a ninny. ” The size of the little death-dealer made
me hold his anger cheap. I gave him a sharp retort; he sent
back as good as I brought, till at last we came to cuffs. We had
pulled a few handfuls of hair from each other's head before the
grocer and his kinsman could part us. When they had brought
this about, they fee'd me for my attendance, and retained my
antagonist, whom they thought the more skillful of the two.
Another adventure succeeded close on the heels of this. I
went to see a huge chanter in a fever. As soon as he heard me
talk of warm water, he showed himself so averse to this specific
as to fall into a fit of swearing. He abused me in all possible
shapes, and threatened to throw me out at window. I was in a
greater hurry to get out of his house than to get in. I did not
choose to see any more patients that day, and repaired to the
inn where I had agreed to meet Fabricio. He was there first.
(
1
XV-563
## p. 8994 (#630) ###########################################
8994
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
As we found ourselves in a tippling humor, we drank hard, and
returned to our employers in a pretty pickle; that is to say, so-so
in the upper story. Signor Sangrado was not aware of my being
drunk, because he took the lively gestures which accompanied
the relation of my quarrel with the little doctor for an effect of
the agitation not yet subsided after the battle. Besides, he came
in for his share in my report; and feeling himself nettled by
Cuchillo, «You have done well, Gil Blas,” said he, to defend
the character of our practice against this little abortion of the
faculty. So he takes upon him to set his face against watery
drenches in dropsical cases ? An ignorant fellow! I maintain, I
do, in my own person, that the use of them may be reconciled
to the best theories. Yes, water is a cure for all sorts of drop-
sies, just as it is good for rheumatisms and the green-sickness.
It is excellent, too, in those fevers where the effect is at once
to parch and to chill; and even miraculous in those disorders
ascribed to cold, thin, phlegmatic, and pituitous humors. This
opinion may appear strange to young practitioners like Cuchillo,
but it is right orthodox in the best and soundest systems; so
that if persons of that description were capable of taking a
philosophical view, instead of crying me down they would become
my most zealous advocates. "
In his rage, he never suspected me of drinking: for to ex-
asperate him still more against the little doctor, I had thrown
into my recital some circumstances of my own addition. Yet
engrossed as he was by what I had told him, he could not help
taking notice that I drank more water than usual that evening.
In fact, the wine had made me very thirsty. Any one but
Sangrado would have distrusted my being so very dry as to
swallow down glass after glass; but as for him, he took it for
granted in the simplicity of his heart that I began to acquire
a relish for aqueous potations. "Apparently, Gil Blas,” said he,
with a gracious smile, you have no longer such a dislike to
water. As Heaven is my judge, you quaff it off like nectar! It
is no wonder, my friend; I was certain you would take a liking
to that liquor. ” “Sir,” replied I, there is a tide in the affairs
of men: with my present lights I would give all the wine in
Valladolid for a pint of water. ” This answer delighted the
doctor, who would not lose so fine an opportunity of expatiating
on the excellence of water. He undertook to ring the changes
once more in its praise; not like a hireling pleader, but as an
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## p. 8976 (#608) ###########################################
## p. 8977 (#609) ###########################################
8977
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
(1798-1837)
BY KATHARINE HILLARD
PIKE Byron, Leopardi came of an ancient and patrician but im-
poverished family. His mother, who seems to have been the
real head of the house, had so absorbed herself in the task
of repairing its fallen fortunes, that she had little time and less ten-
derness left to lavish upon her children. His father, Count Monaldo
Leopardi, was a mere figure-head in his own household, and spent
most of his time shut up in his library. He lived at Recanati, a little
mountain village of Tuscany, high up in the Apennines, near Loreto;
and there, in the stifling dullness of a small provincial town, Giacomo
Leopardi was born, on the 29th of June, 1798. His father was as con-
servative as an ordinary mind bred up under the restraints of a little
village in the Italy of that day naturally would be. He was bigoted,
narrow-minded, bitterly opposed to progress, seeing nothing good out-
side of the precincts of the Church. He even preferred the costume
of an earlier period, and dressed himself and his wife in mediæval
attire. The young Leopardi, nervous, sickly, and deformed, was
brought up in his father's library, having no companions except his
sister and his brothers. He spent his time among dictionaries and
grammars; and with little or no assistance contrived to make him-
self master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and English,
by the time he was sixteen.
At that age he composed a Latin treatise on the Roman rhetori-
cians of the second century, a history of astronomy, and a Latin
translation and comment on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve said that
“one who had studied Plotinus his whole life could find something
useful in this work of a boy. ” At seventeen he wrote on the popular
errors of the ancients, and quoted more than four hundred authors.
His next achievement was two odes in the manner of Anacreon,
which imposed upon the first scholars in Italy. At eighteen he wrote
a long poem called “The Approach of Death,' which was lost for
many years, but finally discovered and published. It is a vision of
the omnipotence of death, that offers a remarkable resemblance in
many ways to Shelley's “Triumph of Life,' written six years later.
Then in 1819, when the young poet was but twenty years old, came
the two poems which gave him his place among the Italian classics:
XV—562
## p. 8978 (#610) ###########################################
8978
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
the Ode to Italy,' and that to the Dante monument then being
erected in Florence.
These poems were so full of the spirit of the hour, and gave such
complete expression to the anguish of a country awakened from the
sleep of centuries to find herself among the despised and rejected
nations of the world, — her political prestige gone, her intellectual
standing lost, even her poetry' and her art sunk into the lowest
depths of degradation,- that they fired the Italian people like a voice
from their glorious past. Leopardi had emerged from the seclusion
of his father's library a perfect Greek in spirit and in style; and only
Landor could compare with him for classic purity, precision, and
force. The rich harmonies of the Italian language lent to his poetry
a charm that no English translation can possibly give, and the un-
rhymed lines fall cold and dead upon the ear in our less musical
tongue.
The revolutionary spirit of these odes and the bitter disappoint-
ment that they breathed made the bigoted and narrow-minded father
furious, and he denied his son almost the necessaries of life. Because
the poet refused to become a priest, he was loaded with labors that
his frail health was not able to support; nor would the father allow
him to leave Recanati, where ennui, to use Leopardi's own words, not
merely oppressed and wearied him, but agonized and lacerated like a
cruel pain. He had suffered there a disappointment in love; having
cherished a romantic passion for a young girl whom he scarcely knew,
but whose voice he heard continually as she sang at her work in a
house opposite his father's palace. Probably had he known her bet-
ter he might have loved her less; but the count promptly crushed the
dawning passion, and shortly afterwards the young girl died. Her
memory represented for the poet all that he ever knew of love.
At the age of twenty-four he broke away at last from his paternal
prison-house and went to Rome; only to carry his melancholy with
him, his morbid contempt for his fellows, his physical weakness and
sufferings. Rome proved to him only a larger Recanati, where fri-
volity and dissipation reigned supreme. A few foreigners, principally
Germans, and among them Niebuhr, alone redeemed the social degra-
dation. Niebuhr, who considered Leopardi by far the first, if not the
only, Greek philologist in Italy, would have procured him a profes-
sorship of Greek philosophy in Berlin; but Leopardi would not leave
his own country. For some years he drifted about rather aimlessly,
always the prey of ill health, from Rome to Milan, to Bologna, to
Recanati again, to Pisa, and to Florence. Many men loved him; nota-
bly Antonio Ranieri, a young Neapolitan whose acquaintance Leopardi
made in 1832, and at whose house at Capodimonte, carefully tended
by Ranieri and his sister, the poet spent the last years of his unhappy
## p. 8979 (#611) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8979
life. Here he met the German en, and wrote one of his finest
poems, "La Ginestra) (The Broom-flower). It was at Naples also that
Leopardi wrote a satire in ottava rima upon the abortive Neapolitan
revolution of 1820; a poem clever in its way, but like much of the
verse of Giusti, too full of local allusions to be comprehensible except
by the Neapolitans of the early thirties. After four years of hopeless
invalidism, Leopardi died very suddenly, on the eve of departure for
the country, on June 15th, 1837. His remains were deposited at a
little church on the road to Pozzuoli.
That genial critic, De Sanctis, tells us that “love, inexhaustible
and almost ideal, was the supreme craving of Leopardi's heart, and
never left it through life); and that it may in truth be said that
pain and love form the twofold poetry of his existence. ” Except for
the society of his commonplace brothers and sisters he was absolutely
without companionship until he went to Rome. The pettiness of its
social ambitions swept away his last illusion. To quote De Sanctis
again: “The objects of our desire he called idols; our labors, idleness;
and everything, vanity.
Inertia — rust, as it were — even more
than pain consumed his life, alone in what he called 'this formidable
desert of the world. " » Like most pessimists, he demanded everything
and gave nothing. He desired the love of mankind, but he hated
and despised his fellows; and insisted upon what they owed him, for-
getting his debt to them. Like another Prometheus, Leopardi lay
bound to the rock of suffering, with a vulture gnawing at his heart;
but the vulture was of his own nurture, and his tortures were self-
imposed. It is to his praise however as a patriot, that his voice was
one of the first to arouse Italy from her shameful sleep to the desire
of better things. As a poet the beautiful purity of his style, and the
exquisite melody of his unrhymed or irregularly rhymed verse, have
never been surpassed.
Opinions differ as to the crowning expression of his genius; but
the popular verdict seems to settle upon (Sylvia,' and the noble
poem “La Ginestra,' or the Broom-flower. The lyric beauty of (Syl-
via' can never be rendered in English irregular verse: it belongs to
the Italian language. The Night-Song of a Wandering Shepherd of
Asia' is one of the most charming of his longer poems; though it
may be considered doubtful whether any wandering shepherd ever
felt that the crowning happiness of his flocks was their incapacity
for feeling bored. Other fine poems of Leopardi are Aspasia,' (The
Song-Sparrow,' Bento Minore,' and The Dominant Thought. '
>
(
Aputharma Billed
1
## p. 8980 (#612) ###########################################
8980
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
SYLVIA
S
YLVIA, canst thou still remember
That time in thy brief existence
When a beauty all-resplendent
Shone from thine eyes, with their fleeting, smiling glances,
What time, pensive yet gay, thou wert crossing
The boundaries of thy youth?
Resounded all thy quiet
Dwelling, and the lanes around it,
With the music of thy singing,
As intent on the tasks of women
Thou wert pond'ring, lost in contentment,
All the vague future fancy held before thee.
It was May, the month of fragrance; and thus ever
Didst thou dream out the hours.
And I, my fairest studies
At times forsaking, and the well-thumbed volumes
Over whose weary pages
I spent myself, and the best part of my youth,
Leaned from the terrace of my father's dwelling,
To listen to the music of thy voice;
And to watch thy busy fingers
As they flew o'er the tiresome sewing.
While I gazed on the placid heavens,
The golden lanes and the gardens,
And there the far-off sea, and here the mountains,–
No mortal tongue could utter
The feelings that rose in me.
O Sylvia mine, what visions,
What hopes, what hearts, were ours!
Under what beautiful seeming
Lay human life and fate!
When I remember those fancies,
I am seized by a mortal sorrow,
Bitter, devoid of comfort,
And I return to grieve over all my misfortune.
O Nature, O Mother Nature,
Why dost thou never give us
That we were promised at first ? Alas, why so often
Dost thou deceive thy children?
Thee, ere the grass had faded with winter,
Insidious death had vanquished;
Thy tender beauty perished. And never saw'st thou
## p. 8981 (#613) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8981
The flower of thy maiden years.
Thy heart was never melted
Or by the praises of thy raven tresses,
Or of thy loving glances, swift and bashful.
Nor at their feast-days with thy young companions,
Could'st thou discourse of love.
And shortly also perished
The sweet hope that treasured; even youth itself
The cruel fates denied me.
Alas, alas! how utterly has vanished
The dear companion of my early years,
The hope I mourn forever!
Is this the world we pictured? Can these be
The dear delights, the love, the deeds, the events,
That long ago we talked about so fondly?
Is this the destiny of all mankind ?
When the truth dawned upon thee,
Poor child, thou sank'st before it; thy cold hand pointing
To where the naked tomb and pallid Death
Waited me from afar.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
NIGHT-SONG
OF A WANDERING ASIAN SHEPHERD
WHAT
HAT dost thou, moon in heaven; tell me, what dost thou,
O silent moon ?
Rising with evening, and slowly pacing
The skies, contemplating the desert; then setting.
Oh, art thou not yet weary
Of still retracing the everlasting pathways?
Art thou not yet rebellious ? dost still delight
In gazing at these valleys ?
Like thy life
The shepherd's life, methinks.
With earliest dawn he rises,
Drives his flock far afield, and watches
The flock, the brooks, the pastures;
Then wearied out, lies down to rest at evening.
Nor to aught else aspires.
Tell me, () moon, what value
Such a life to the shepherd,
## p. 8982 (#614) ###########################################
8982
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
Such a life, moon, to thee? tell me where leadeth
This brief existence of mine,
And thy eternal journeys?
An old man hoary and delicate,
Half clad, and going barefoot,
Bearing a heavy burden upon his shoulders, -
Over mountains and over valleys,
Over sharp rocks, deep sands, and thorny places,
In wind, in tempest, or when the lightning
Flashes, or the hailstones strike him,-
Still hurries on, hurries on panting,
Traverses torrents and marshes,
Falls and rises again, and faster and faster hastens;
Without or rest or refreshment,
Torn and bleeding he goes: and at last arriveth
There where the pathway
And his struggles alike have ending;
Where yawns the abyss, bottomless, terrible,-
There he Alings himself down, and findeth oblivion.
Such, O virgin noon,
Such is mortal existence.
Often, thus gazing upon thee,
Standing so silent above these, the desert regions,
Whereto with distant arch the heavens confine thee,
Or as my flock I follow,
Step by step, as we travel slowly together,
And when I gaze at the stars, that above me are burning,
I say to myself, as I'm thinking,
Why all these starry fires ?
What means this infinite air, and what the
Depths of the heavens? What is the meaning
Of all this solitude boundless? And I, what am I?
Thus I discourse with myself, and of all my surroundings,
Sky and earth, endless and splendid,
With all their offspring unnumbered;
Of all their relations and movements,
Of all things celestial, terrestrial,
Sweeping on still, without resting,
Ever returning to fill their places appointed.
Of all things, no purpose,
No real fruit can I see.
But thou at least, maiden immortal, thou
Knowest all things.
## p. 8983 (#615) ###########################################
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
8983
This thing I know, and I feel it:
That out of this endless motion,
Out of this frail human nature,
Some slight good and contentment
Others may get, perchance; to me our life is but evil.
O flock of mine, at rest here! O happy creatures,
That know not your fate, I believe you unconscious of sorrow!
What envy to you I bear!
Not only that even of suff'ring
Almost unheeding ye go,—
That hunger or terror
Seizing upon you, is ever as swiftly forgotten, -
But still more because tedium never o'ertakes you.
And when ye rest in the shade on sweet grasses,
Content and quiet bide with you.
Had I wings like a bird, peradventure,
To bear me on high through the heavens,
And one by one to number the planets,
Or, like the thunder, leap from one peak to another,
Happier I'd be, sweet my flock,
Happier I'd be, fairest moon.
Perchance, though, my wandering fancy
Strays from the truth, in dreaming of fortunes not mine.
Perchance in every fate, in every form,
Whether within the cradle or the fold,
To all the fatal day is that of birth.
Translation of Katharine Hillard.
## p. 8984 (#616) ###########################################
8984
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
(1668-1747)
BY JANE GROSVENOR COOKE
N FRANCE the seventeenth century was a time of dreams.
Imagination reveled in the grotesque and fantastic, and
craved the exuberant sentiment, the ideal emotion, expressed
in the romances of d'Urfé and Madame de La Fayette. Toward the
end of the century this mood was followed by reaction. People
stopped dreaming to study the real life before their eyes; and litera-
ture reflected the change. The first great realist in fiction was Alain
Le Sage.
Le Sage was a sturdy, self-willed Breton, with keen interest in
human affairs, and more than usual skill in drawing conclusions from
them. He was an optimist, taught by experience to distrust men's
motives. Left an orphan at fourteen, under guardianship of an
uncle who squandered his small patrimony, he accepted poverty with
characteristic cheerfulness. His seems to have been a sensible, con-
trolled nature, with slight inclination towards irregular ways. At
twenty-six he married a pretty girl of the bourgeoisie, went to writing,
and was the first Frenchman to earn a living by authorship.
Unlike the authors who preceded him, this honest bourgeois had
no powerful patronage to insure his success. He knew little of court
and salon, depended on his own exertions, and hence experienced
many disappointments before he found his place. His need of money
forced him to inferior production, and much of his work is now
valueless.
He had studied law; but Antoine Danchet a successful young
dramatist, and his chum and fellow-student of the Quartier Latin
urged him to write. Undoubtedly he liked the suggestion, although
his was
no evident vocation nor immediate success. His early at-
tempts were pot-boilers, efforts toward self-discovery; and the first-
a translation from the Greek, Letters of Aristænetus)
a failure.
But he was warmly encouraged by the Abbé de Lyonne,- eccentric
drinker of twenty-two daily pints of Seine water, and probable original
of the Sangrado of Gil Blas. ' He took Le Sage under his protec-
tion; made his perseverance in authorship possible by bestowing upon
him a pension of six hundred livres; and is said to have interested
)
## p. 8984 (#617) ###########################################
:
1
## p. 8984 (#618) ###########################################
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## p. 8984 (#619) ###########################################
LE SAGE.
## p. 8984 (#620) ###########################################
## p. 8985 (#621) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8985
him in Spanish literature, to which he may also have been attracted
by the fact that his wife's mother was a Spaniard. For years he
groped on, translating Spanish plays and stories, - unoriginal plodder.
Le Sage was curiously unambitious. His aspirations never seem
to have been of a highly emotional order, and he had no kinship
with the exalted sentiment of French classic drama and romance.
Sainte-Beuve calls him a man without any ideality; but it is truer to
define his ideal as the rule of good sense. He scorned to affect emo-
tion which he ignored, and was quick to detect and expose social
hypocrisies. Kindly in spite of many disillusions, he is the genius
of the commonplace; picturing with humorous satire and dramatic
force the actuating sentiments of ordinary men and women.
He required the stimulus of outside suggestion; and like Shake-
speare, loved to transform a ready-made tale. The plot and scene
remain Spanish, like the originals from which he borrowed; the atmo-
sphere and characterization are French.
When nearly forty he won his first brilliant success with two
dramas,— Crispin Rival de son Maître,' and Don César Ursin,'—
which were played upon one occasion at the Théâtre Français. The
first was a lively improbable one-act lever de rideau, in which a valet
in masquerade courts his master's daughter. The audience applauded
it enthusiastically, but were indifferent to the longer play. Oddly
enough, the situation was reversed at Versailles, where Don César
succeeded and the lever de rideau failed. The Parisians had shown
the keener judgment, for "Crispin' has become a classic.
(Turcaret,' his one great drama, was refused by the Théâtre
Français under its first title, Les Étrennes'; but when remodeled
introduced a daring innovation in stage tradition.
Turcaret, shrewd
and unscrupulous, has made money as a government contractor and
come to Paris to enjoy it, ordering his countrified wife to remain at
home. He falls in love with a baroness, who flatters and fleeces him
and promptly bestows his gifts upon a younger lover. The valets
and grisettes flatter their master's foibles, pilfer when they can, and
better their condition by all clever knavery. The keen exposure of
human pettiness ends in the discomfiture of the vulgar hero. His
low-bred wife claims him at an evening reception; his coarse-grained
sister comes to sell finery to the baroness; he is swindled out of his
ill-gotten wealth and bundled off to prison. In the period of the
Spanish war, this typical portrayal of a class whose unscrupulous
dealings stirred up wrath and fear was even more daring than the
realism of Le Sage's great predecessor, Molière. For a time the play
was in danger of suppression, which it only escaped through the
intervention of royal authority. Even then the ridiculed class reviled
it hotly, hired men to hiss it down, and offered the author large
>
## p. 8986 (#622) ###########################################
8986
ALAIN RENE LE SAGE
bribes for its withdrawal: an opposition which only determined Le
Sage to continue it.
In spite of this success, he did not go on producing regular drama,
but devoted himself to the more profitable work of writing little
plays and operettas to be acted out of doors at the fairs of Paris.
These pièces de la foire, given in booths set up along the streets,
attracted a humbler audience, which received his satire more cor-
dially and offered him more certain recompense than the regular
theatres. In one of these plays he introduced a woman doctor; and
the idea of such an anomaly was greatly enjoyed as an impossible
burlesque.
His first noteworthy story, Le Diable Boiteux,'— founded on the
Spanish (Diablo Cojuelo' of Guevara, to whom it was dedicated,
appeared in 1707, and was the most immediately popular of Le Sage's
works. The spirit, liberated from a bottle in a magician's laboratory,
entertains his rescuer with the secret sights of a great city at night;
and unroofing the buildings, explains the sufferings, transports, and
agitations revealed. On this thread of story is strung a succession of
vivid satiric little dramas. Often compared with "Les Caractères of
La Bruyère in general idea, Le Diable' has greater continuity; for
while the foriner is a series of detached sketches, the latter continu-
ally recalls the interest to a central plot.
English readers know Le Sage best from his great novel, Gil
Blas,' over which he worked for more than twenty years. After a
long and bitter controversy as to his indebtedness to Spanish liter-
ature, the idea of a romance of which (Gil Blas) is a translation was
disproved. The central idea is Spanish, as often in his work; the
development his own.
Le Sage had no exalted opinion of reason as a controlling power;
but regarded a human being as an impressionable mass, capable of
recording and of being transformed by sensation. Gil Blas, the young
Spaniard who starts out to seek his fortune, is not remarkable for
vice or virtue. He is a shrewd, good-hearted youth, easily influenced
by his surroundings. But the power of good is impressed upon him
without conscious moralizing; and in middle life, after many follies
and mistakes, he becomes a staid, trustworthy citizen. He tells the
story of his adventures with witty candor and good-humor. He is a
shifty politic fellow, with a racquet for every ball. ” When he hears
of a relative whom he had never met — «Yet nature will prevail: as
soon as I had heard that he was in a fair way, I was tempted to call
upon him. ” While a valet, Gil Blas finds it necessary to leave his
place at short notice. "I made a bundle of my own goods, incident-
ally slipping in some odd articles belonging to my master. ”
He is
a knave certainly, but never a serious villain. Society, he finds, is
## p. 8987 (#623) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8987
composed of people who live by their wits, and who think a great
deal about good things to eat and drink. So he scrambles with the
others. In the four volumes of Gil Blas's adventures, with the long
digressions about his acquaintances, there is no more plot than in a
man's life. There is no preaching. Yet the effect is of unity, and
the tale as moral as experience itself. ”
The distinctive quality of Le Sage is unprejudiced exposition.
“My purpose was to represent human life historically as it exists,"
he says in the preface to Gil Blas. «God forbid I should hold myself
out as a portrait-painter. Nevertheless he is a portrait-painter, seiz-
”
ing the outward visible fact with little psychological effort. His is
the hearty spontaneity of the simple story-teller.
In spite of his love of Spanish models, Le Sage breaks away from
the popular picaresque literature,- sensational tales recording the suc-
cess of low-born, witty rogues. He represents plenty of knavery; but
after all, Gil Blas finds honesty the best policy.
The work of Le Sage marks the transition from the spirit of the
seventeenth to that of the eighteenth century. In his large and gen-
eral view of life, of society en masse, and in his taste for foreign lit-
erature, he belongs to the seventeenth century. But his realism is
more modern; and in his lack of conscious moral motive, and in his
fatalistic acceptance of the conditions of human life, a grain of Vol-
tairean unbelief is already germinating:
Curiously enough, Le Sage exercised more influence abroad than
at home. Before his fellow-countrymen had learned to appreciate
him, Smollett had translated Gil Blas into English; and it had become
the model after which Fielding and his contemporaries sought to
shape the English novel.
The great charm of Le Sage lies in the strong and rapid style of
his witty narration. Occasionally he shows an appreciation of nature,
but his interest in life is almost wholly social. Whatever he has to
say is expressed with characteristic grace and strength. The words
are so ready and so apt, the phrase so just yet easy, the whole effect
so animated, that in his instinctive pleasure the reader hardly realizes
the great literary skill which created this masterpiece of precise and
vigorous French.
a!
11
Jane Grovrenn Cooke
.
## p. 8988 (#624) ###########################################
8988
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
GIL BLAS ENTERS THE SERVICE OF DR. SANGRADO
From (Gil Blas)
I
»
»
»
eases.
DETERMINED to throw myself in the way of Sigñor Arias de
Londona, and to look out for a new berth in his register; but
as I was on my way to No Thoroughfare, who should come
across me but Doctor Sangrado, whom I had not seen since the
day of my master's death. I took the liberty of touching my
hat. He kenned me in a twinkling, though I had changed my
dress; and with as much warmth as his temperament would
allow him, “Heyday! ” said he, “the very lad I wanted to see;
you have never been out of my thought. I have occasion for a
clever fellow about me, and pitched upon you as the very thing,
if you can read and write. ” “Sir," replied I, “if that is all you
require, I am your man. " “In that case,” rejoined he, “we
need look no further. Come home with me: it will be all com-
fort; I shall behave to you like a brother. You will have no
wages, but everything will be found you. You shall eat and
drink according to the true faith, and be taught to cure all dis-
In a word, you shall rather be my young Sangrado than
my footman. »
I closed in with the doctor's proposal, in the hope of becom-
ing an Esculapius under so inspired a master. He carried me
home on the spur of the occasion, to install me in my honorable
employment; which honorable employment consisted in writing
down the name and residence of the patients who sent for him
in his absence. There had indeed been a register for this pur-
pose, kept by an old domestic; but she had not the gift of spell-
ing accurately, and wrote a most perplexing hand. This account
I was to keep. It might truly be called a bill of mortality; for
my members all went from bad to worse during the short time
they continued in this system. I was a sort of bookkeeper for
the other world, to take places in the stage, and to see that the
first come were the first served. My pen was always in my
hand, for Doctor Sangrado had more practice than any physician
of his time in Valladolid. He had got into reputation with the
public by a certain professional slang, humored by a medical face,
and some extraordinary cases more honored by implicit faith than
scrupulous investigation.
He was in no want of patients, nor consequently of property.
He did not keep the best house in the world: we lived with some
## p. 8989 (#625) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8989
»
>
little attention to economy. The usual bill of fare consisted of
peas, beans, boiled apples or cheese. He considered this food as
best suited to the human stomach; that is to say, as most ame-
nable to the grinders, whence it was to encounter the process of
digestion. Nevertheless, easy as was their passage, he was not
for stopping the way with too much of them; and to be sure,
he was in the right. But though he cautioned the maid and me
against repletion in respect of solids, it was made up by free per-
mission to drink as much water as we liked. Far from prescrib-
ing us any limits in that direction, he would tell us sometimes:
"Drink, my children: health consists in the pliability and moisture
of the parts. Drink water by pailfuls: it is a universal dissolv.
ent; water liquefies all the salts. Is the course of the blood a
little sluggish ? this grand principle sets it forward: too rapid ?
its career is checked. ” Our doctor was so orthodox on this head
that though advanced in years, he drank nothing himself but
water. He defined old age to be a natural consumption which
dries us up and wastes us away: on this principle he deplored
the ignorance of those who call wine “old men's milk. ” He
maintained that wine wears them out and corrodes them; and
pleaded with all the force of his eloquence against that liquor,
fatal in common both to the young and old,- that friend with
a serpent in its bosom, - that pleasure with a dagger under its
girdle.
In spite of these fine arguments, at the end of a week a loose-
ness ensued, with some twinges, which I was blasphemous enough
to saddle on the universal dissolvent and the new-fangled diet.
I stated my symptoms to my master, in the hope that he would
relax the rigor of his regimen and qualify my meals with a
little wine; but his hostility to that liquor was inflexible. If
you have not philosophy enough,” said he, «for pure water, there
are innocent infusions to strengthen the stomach against the nau-
sea of aqueous quaffings. Sage, for example, has a very pretty
flavor; and if you wish to heighten it into a debauch, it is only
mixing rosemary, wild poppy, and other simples with it, but no
compounds. ”
In vain did he crack off his water, and teach me the secret of
composing delicious messes, I was so abstemious that, remark-
ing my moderation, he said:— "In good sooth, Gil Blas, I mar-
vel not that you are no better than you are: you do not drink
enough, my friend. Water taken in a small quantity serves only
-
«
## p. 8990 (#626) ###########################################
8990
ALAIN-RENÉ LE SAGE
to separate the particles of bile and set them in action; but our
practice is to drown them in a copious drench. Fear not, my
good lad, lest a superabundance of liquid should either weaken
or chill your stomach; far from thy better judgment be that silly
fear of unadulterated drink. I will insure you against all conse-
quences; and if my authority will not serve your turn, read Cel-
sus. That oracle of the ancients makes an admirable panegyric
on water; in short, he says in plain terms that those who plead
an inconstant stomach in favor of wine, publish a libel on their
own viscera, and make their constitution a pretense for their
sensuality. ”
As it would have been ungenteel in me to run riot on my
entrance into the career of practice, I affected thorough con-
viction; indeed I thought there was something in it. I therefore
went on drinking water on the authority of Celsus, or to speak
in scientific terms, I began to drown the bile in copious drenches
of that unadulterated liquor; and though I felt myself more out
of order from day to day, prejudice won the cause against expe-
rience. It is evident therefore that I was in the right road to
the practice of physic. Yet I could not always be insensible
to the qualms which increased in my frame, to that degree as
to determine me on quitting Doctor Sangrado. But he invested
me with a new office which changed my tone.
“Hark you, my
child,” said he to me one day: "I am not one of those hard and
ungrateful masters, who leave their household to grow gray in
service without a suitable reward. I am well pleased with you,
I have a regard for you; and without waiting till you have
served your time, I will make your fortune. Without more ado,
I will initiate you in the healing art, of which I have for so
many years been at the head. Other physicians make the science
to consist of various unintelligible branches; but I will shorten
the road for you, and dispense with the drudgery of studying
natural philosophy, pharmacy, botany, and anatomy. Remember,
my friend, that bleeding and drinking warm water are the two
grand principles, — the true secret of curing all the distempers
incident to humanity. Yes, this marvelous secret which I reveal
to you, and which Nature, beyond the reach of my colleagues,
has failed in rescuing from my pen, is comprehended in these
two articles; namely, bleeding and drenching. Here you have
the sum total of my philosophy; you are thoroughly bottomed in
medicine, and may raise yourself to the summit of fame on the
(
## p. 8991 (#627) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8991
>>
shoulders of my long experience. You may enter into partner-
ship at once, by keeping the books in the morning and going
out to visit patients in the afternoon. While I dose the nobility
I
and clergy, you shall labor in your vocation among the lower
orders; and when you have felt your ground a little, I will get
you admitted into our body. You are a philosopher, Gil Blas,
though you have never graduated; the common herd of them,
though they have graduated in due form and order, are likely to
run out the length of their tether without knowing their right
hand from their left. »
I thanked the doctor for having so speedily enabled me to
serve as his deputy; and by way of acknowledging his goodness,
promised to follow his system to the end of my career, with a
magnanimous indifference about the aphorisms of Hippocrates.
But that engagement was not to be taken to the letter. This
tender attachment to water went against the grain, and I had a
scheme for drinking wine every day snugly among the patients.
I left off wearing my own suit a second time, to take up one
of my master's and look like an experienced practitioner. After
which I brought my medical theories into play, leaving those it
might concern to look to the event. I began on an alguazil
in a pleurisy; he was condemned to be bled with the utmost
rigor of the law, at the same time that the system was to be
replenished copiously with water. Next I made a lodgment in
the veins of a gouty pastry-cook, who roared like a lion by rea-
son of gouty spasms.
I stood on
more ceremony with his
blood than with that of the alguazil, and laid no restriction on
his taste for simple liquids. My prescriptions brought me in
twelve rials: an incident so auspicious in my professional career,
that I only wished for the plagues of Egypt on all the hale sub-
jects of Valladolid.
I was no sooner at home than Doctor Sangrado came in. I
talked to him about the patients I had seen, and paid into his
hands eight remaining rials of the twelve I had received for my
prescriptions.
“Eight rials! ” said he, as he counted them: “mighty little for
two visits! But we must take things as we find them. ” In the
spirit of taking things as he found them, he laid violent hands
on six, giving me the other two. "Here, Gil Blas,” continued
he, “see what a foundation to build upon. I make over to you
the fourth of all you may bring me.
You will soon feather your
no
1.
>
## p. 8992 (#628) ###########################################
8992
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
I was
nest, my friend; for by the blessing of Providence, there will be
a great deal of ill health this year. "
I had reason to be content with my dividend; since, having
determined to keep back the third part of what I received in my
rounds, and afterwards touching another fourth of the remain-
der,- then half of the whole, if arithmetic is anything more
than a deception, would become my perquisite. This inspired me
with new zeal for my profession. The next day, as soon as I
had dined, I resumed my medical paraphernalia and took the
field once more. I visited several patients on the list, and
treated their several complaints in one invariable routine. Hith-
erto things went on under the rose; and no individual, thank
Heaven, had risen up in rebellion against my prescriptions. But
let a physician's cures be as extraordinary as they will, some
quack or other is always ready to rip up his reputation.
called in to a grocer's son in a dropsy. Whom should I find
there before me but a little. black-looking physician, by name
Doctor Cuchillo, introduced by a relation of the family. I bowed
round most profoundly, but dipped lowest to the personage whom
I took to have been invited to a consultation with me.
He re-
turned my compliment with a distant air; then, having stared
me in the face for a few seconds, -"Signor Doctor,” said he, "I
beg pardon for being inquisitive: I thought I was acquainted
with all my brethren in Valladolid, but I confess your physi-
ognomy is altogether new. You must have been settled but a
short time in town. ” I avowed myself a young practitioner, act-
ing as yet under the direction of Doctor Sangrado. "I wish you
joy,” replied he politely: "you are studying under a great man.
You must doubtless have seen a vast deal of sound practice,
young as you appear to be. ” He spoke this with so easy an
assurance that I was at a loss whether he meant it seriously,
was laughing at me. While I was conning over my reply,
the grocer, seizing on the opportunity, said, “Gentlemen, I am
persuaded of your both being perfectly competent in your
art: have the goodness without ado to take the case in hand,
and devise some effectual means
for the restoration of my
son's health. ”
Thereupon the little pulse-counter set himself about reviewing
the patient's situation; and after having dilated to me on all the
symptoms, asked me what I thought the fittest method of treat-
ment. "I am of opinion,” replied I, “that he should be bled
»
or
(
## p. 8993 (#629) ###########################################
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
8993
1
»
(
>
once a day, and drink as much warm water as he can swallow. ”
At these words, our diminutive doctor said to me, with a ma-
licious simper, "And so you think such a course will save the
patient ? »
“Not a doubt of it,” exclaimed I in a confident tone:
"it must produce that effect, because it is a certain method of
cure for all distempers. Ask Signor Sangrado. ” "At that rate,”
retorted he, "Celsus is altogether in the wrong; for he contends
that the readiest way to cure a dropsical subject is to let him
almost die of hunger and thirst. ” “Oh, as for Celsus,” inter-
rupted I, “he is no oracle of mine; as fallible as the meanest of
us: I often have occasion to bless myself for going contrary to
his dogmas. ” I discover by your language,” said Cuchillo, the
safe and sure method of practice Doctor Sangrado instills into his
pupils. Bleeding and drenching are the extent of his resources.
No wonder so many worthy people are cut off under his direc-
tion. ” — “No defamation! ” interrupted I with some acrimony:
“a member of the faculty had better not begin throwing stones.
Come, come, my learned doctor, patients can get to the other
world without bleeding and warm water; and I question whether
the most deadly of us has ever signed more passports than your-
self. If you have any crow to pluck with Signor Sangrado, write
against him; he will answer you, and we shall soon see who will
have the best of the battle. ” “By all the saints in the calendar! ”
swore he in a transport of passion, you little know whom you
are talking to. I have a tongue and a fist, my friend; and am
not afraid of Sangrado, who with all his arrogance and affecta-
tion is but a ninny. ” The size of the little death-dealer made
me hold his anger cheap. I gave him a sharp retort; he sent
back as good as I brought, till at last we came to cuffs. We had
pulled a few handfuls of hair from each other's head before the
grocer and his kinsman could part us. When they had brought
this about, they fee'd me for my attendance, and retained my
antagonist, whom they thought the more skillful of the two.
Another adventure succeeded close on the heels of this. I
went to see a huge chanter in a fever. As soon as he heard me
talk of warm water, he showed himself so averse to this specific
as to fall into a fit of swearing. He abused me in all possible
shapes, and threatened to throw me out at window. I was in a
greater hurry to get out of his house than to get in. I did not
choose to see any more patients that day, and repaired to the
inn where I had agreed to meet Fabricio. He was there first.
(
1
XV-563
## p. 8994 (#630) ###########################################
8994
ALAIN RENÉ LE SAGE
As we found ourselves in a tippling humor, we drank hard, and
returned to our employers in a pretty pickle; that is to say, so-so
in the upper story. Signor Sangrado was not aware of my being
drunk, because he took the lively gestures which accompanied
the relation of my quarrel with the little doctor for an effect of
the agitation not yet subsided after the battle. Besides, he came
in for his share in my report; and feeling himself nettled by
Cuchillo, «You have done well, Gil Blas,” said he, to defend
the character of our practice against this little abortion of the
faculty. So he takes upon him to set his face against watery
drenches in dropsical cases ? An ignorant fellow! I maintain, I
do, in my own person, that the use of them may be reconciled
to the best theories. Yes, water is a cure for all sorts of drop-
sies, just as it is good for rheumatisms and the green-sickness.
It is excellent, too, in those fevers where the effect is at once
to parch and to chill; and even miraculous in those disorders
ascribed to cold, thin, phlegmatic, and pituitous humors. This
opinion may appear strange to young practitioners like Cuchillo,
but it is right orthodox in the best and soundest systems; so
that if persons of that description were capable of taking a
philosophical view, instead of crying me down they would become
my most zealous advocates. "
In his rage, he never suspected me of drinking: for to ex-
asperate him still more against the little doctor, I had thrown
into my recital some circumstances of my own addition. Yet
engrossed as he was by what I had told him, he could not help
taking notice that I drank more water than usual that evening.
In fact, the wine had made me very thirsty. Any one but
Sangrado would have distrusted my being so very dry as to
swallow down glass after glass; but as for him, he took it for
granted in the simplicity of his heart that I began to acquire
a relish for aqueous potations. "Apparently, Gil Blas,” said he,
with a gracious smile, you have no longer such a dislike to
water. As Heaven is my judge, you quaff it off like nectar! It
is no wonder, my friend; I was certain you would take a liking
to that liquor. ” “Sir,” replied I, there is a tide in the affairs
of men: with my present lights I would give all the wine in
Valladolid for a pint of water. ” This answer delighted the
doctor, who would not lose so fine an opportunity of expatiating
on the excellence of water. He undertook to ring the changes
once more in its praise; not like a hireling pleader, but as an
## p.
