“Pooh!” said Lady—, taking Lord Vincent’s arm, “your jealousy does indeed rest upon ‘a trifle light as air.’”
“Do you forgive me?” whispered I to Madame D’Anville, as I handed her to the salle a manger. “Does not love forgive every thing?” was her answer.
“At least,” thought I, “it never talks in those pretty phrases.”
The conversation soon turned upon books. As for me, I never at that time took a share in those discussions; indeed, I have long laid it down as a rule, that a man never gains by talking to more than one person at a time. If you don’t shine, you are a fool—if you do, you are a bore. You must become either ridiculous or unpopular—either hurt your own self-love by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering “good!” “true!” Thank heaven, however, the suspension of one faculty only increases the vivacity of the others; my eyes and ears always watch like sentinels over the repose of my lips. Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing ever escapes me: the minutest erreur in a dish or a domestic, the most trifling peculiarity in a criticism or a coat, my glance detects in an instant, and transmits for ever to my recollection.
“You have seen Jouy’s ‘Hermite de la Chaussee D’Antin?’” said our host to Lord Vincent.
“I have, and think meanly of it. There is a perpetual aim at something pointed, which as perpetually merges into something dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the further for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur D’A—, your literature is at a very reduced ebb; bombastic in the drama—shallow in philosophy—mawkish in poetry, your writers of the present day seem to think, with Boileau—
“‘Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.’”
“Surely,” cried Madame D’Anville, “you will allow De la Martine’s poetry to be beautiful?”
“I allow it,” said he, “to be among the best you have; and I know very few lines in your language equal to the two first stanzas in his ‘Meditation on Napoleon,’ or to those exquisite verses called ‘Le Lac;’ but you will allow also that he wants originality and nerve. His thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus—(you remember, D’A—, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that ‘there is something august in the shades;’ but he has applied this thought wrongly—in his obscurity there is nothing sublime—it is the back ground of a Dutch picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested with such pomposity of shadow and darkness.”
“But his verses are so smooth,” said Lady—.