"Still more significant are two books produced on the eve of the ever-memorable explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the world,—Saint-Pierre's 'Paul et Virginie' and Louvet's 'Chevalier de Faublas,'—noteworthy books, which may be considered as the last speech of old Feudal France. In the first there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world. Everywhere wholesome Nature is in unequal conflict with diseased perfidious Art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea. Ruin and Death must strike down the loved one, and what is most significant of all, death even here not by necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet on the whole our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical, though most morbid. We will call his book the swan-song of old dying France."
So far Carlyle, who was a sentimentalist at heart.
It is noticeable, however, that M. Barine, whose biography of Saint-Pierre is here introduced to the English reader, and who, I have no doubt, represents modern criticism, lays no stress upon the death of Virginia, observing, with much composure, "The shipwreck of the 'Saint Geran' and the death of Virginia, which made us all shed floods of tears when we were children, are, it must be allowed, somewhat melodramatic, and, from a literary point of view, very inferior to the passionate scenes" (p. 173). It is as a love-story glowing and fervent, full of the unrestfulness and tumult which are the harbingers of passion in virgin breasts, that "Paul et Virginie" must now be regarded. So M. Barine says, and he is undoubtedly right; and the English reader, however much his moral sense rejects the climax of the tale, must be dull of heart who does not recognize, even though he fail to admire, the power which depicts the woful plight of poor Virginia when she becomes Love's thrall.
The pages of "Paul et Virginie" are frequently enlivened by aphorism and ennobled by description. One of its sayings is quoted with great effect by Sainte-Beuve in his "Causerie" on Cowper: "Il y a de plus dans la femme une gaieté légère qui dissipe la tristesse de l'homme." In the same way there is a certain quality in the writings of Saint-Pierre, perceptible even to the foreigner, which renders acquiescence in the judgment of France upon his fame as a writer easier than might have been expected.
A. B.
BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE.
