This fine programme was unhappily very indifferently realised in the Voyage to the Isle of France. Bernardin had first and foremost an immense difficulty to contend against in the absence of a picturesque vocabulary. "The art of depicting nature is so new," he said in the course of his narrative, "that its terminology is yet uninvented. Try to describe a mountain so that it shall be recognisable: when you have spoken of the foundation, of the sides, and the summit, you will have said everything. But what variety is there in those forms bulging, rounded, extended, here flattened, there hollowed, &c.! You can find nothing but paraphrases. There is the same difficulty with the plains and valleys.... It is not astonishing, then, that travellers give such poor accounts of natural objects. If they describe a country to you, you will see in it towns, rivers, mountains; but their descriptions are as barren as a geographical map: Hindostan resembles Europe; there is no character in it."
There are, in fact, accounts of travels of the eighteenth century in which one might confound a landscape in the East, with one in Touraine. Not only they did not see so much difference as we do: they wanted words to give to each its own idiosyncrasy. To Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is due the honour of having begun the work of enriching the language, which was one of the glories of the Romantic School.
Having to some extent overcome this first difficulty, Bernardin encountered a second before which he succumbed. That was his inexperience, and the timidity of a novice who dares not let himself go. His narrative is dry and often tiresome. There are here and there fine descriptions, written with a certain breadth and musical expression, but the whole only creates an interest because it is an attempt to achieve something new. The picture of the port at Lorient is one of the best things in it. It is at the beginning and it makes one hope for better things.
"A strong wind was blowing. We had crossed through the town without meeting any one. From the walls of the citadel I could see the inky horizon, the island of Grois covered with mist, the open sea tossing restlessly; in the distance great ships close-reefed, and poor sailing luggers in the trough of the sea; upon the shore troops of women benumbed with cold and fear; a sentinel on the top of a bastion surprised at the hardihood of those poor men who fish with the gulls in the midst of the tempest."
There is grandeur and emphasis in this passage. It has character, to use Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's expression; the sea which he paints for us is the real ocean, and the ocean as seen from the coast of France on a stormy day. He is no less happy in describing familiar things; witness his description of the fish market. "We returned well buttoned up, very wet, and holding on our hats with our hands. In passing through Lorient we saw the whole market-place covered with fish; skates white and dark-coloured, others bristling with spines; dog-fish, monstrous conger-eels writhing upon the ground; large baskets full of crabs and lobsters; heaps of oysters, mussels, and scallops; cod, soles, turbot, in fine a miraculous draught like that of the apostles."
The tempest at sea in the Mozambique Channel is perhaps the best page in the book. In order to enjoy it thoroughly, we must turn first to the classical tempests before Saint-Pierre's time, which are still more featureless, more destitute of character, than the landscapes. The following example is taken from Telemachus: "While they thus forgot the dangers of the sea a sudden tempest agitated the heavens and the sea. The unchained winds roared with fury in the sails; dark waves beat against the sides of the vessel, which groaned under their blows. Now we rose on to the summits of the swollen waves; now the sea seemed to disappear from under the ship and to plunge us into the abyss." When one has read one of these accounts one has read them all. The same terms, few in number, serve to fashion indefinitely the same images of groaning vessels which roaring winds precipitate into the abyss, and it is not even necessary to have seen the sea in order to acquit oneself quite respectably: it is enough if one consults the proper authors. Not a word of the description which we have been reading belonged really to Fénélon. He took it in its entirety from Virgil and Ovid:
... stridens aquilone procella.
Velum adversa ferit.
(Virgil. The Eniad.)
Sæpe? dat ingentem fluctu latus icta fragorem.