Some of the entertaining and immoral books of the eighteenth century which fell into the boy's hands delighted him, and excited his youthful imagination for a short time, but these impressions were effaced by those of the Jesuit school. A combination of religious enthusiasm and delight in the freshness and beauty of nature purified his mind and inspired it with activity.
"Were I to live a thousand years," he writes in his Memoirs, "I should never forget those days of study, those hours of prayer, those nights spent in meditation, and the raptures of joy with which I fulfilled my duties, thinking all the time of God." And almost in the same breath he tells of the bliss of skimming in winter on his skates across the frozen marshes, as if borne on spirit wings, or of sitting under the hornbeams in the mild, still spring air, lost in devotional feeling, and happy in perfect peace of conscience.
The return of the Bourbons was hailed with rejoicing by the Lamartine family, including Alphonse, now a young man. The father (who had been wounded on the 10th of August 1792) conducted his son to Paris, and had him enrolled in the King's Guard. It fell one day to the young officer's lot to walk by the King's bath-chair, when he was being wheeled through the galleries of the Louvre to inspect the art treasures brought back by Napoleon from his various campaigns. The profound reverence of the youth's own mind made him imagine Louis's voice to be melodious, his person majestic and distinguished, his glance commanding, his speech brilliant, his silence eloquent. Several times after this the King addressed a few words to him when he was riding by the side of the royal carriage.
When Napoleon had landed at Cannes and was making his triumphal progress through France, Lamartine followed the Court to the Flemish frontier; there the Guard was disbanded and sent home, and after the Hundred Days Lamartine did not re-enter it, nor did he ever see the King again. But when, in 1820, Louis read the first volume of Lamartine's poems, he remembered their writer as a young officer of his Guard, and sent him, by way of reward, an edition of the poets of ancient Greece and Rome. Lamartine, apropos of this, makes the somewhat hasty remark, that King Louis evidently looked upon himself as an Augustus, who had discovered a Virgil.
The new poet openly proclaims himself to be a disciple of Chateaubriand and Bonald. In his Raphael (chap. 1.) he tells how he came to make Bonald's acquaintance. When he was at Chambéry (in his twenty-fifth year) worshipping the beautiful young Creole celebrated in his poems under the name of Elvire, that lady asked him to write an ode to Bonald, who was a frequent and honoured visitor at her house, Lamartine informs us that all he then knew of Bonald was his name, and the halo shed around it by its owner's fame as a Christian legislator. "I imagined to myself," he says, "that I was addressing a modern Moses, who derived from the rays of a new Sinai the divine light with which he illuminated human laws." And so the ode which is to be found in the first collection of Lamartine's poems under the title Le Génie was written. In it the young poet affirms—
Ainsi des sophistes célèbres
Dissipant les fausses clartés,
Tu tires du sein des ténèbres
D'éblouissantes vérités.
Par le désordre à l'ordre même
L'univers moral est conduit.
Here, as everywhere, we come upon that meagre conception of good—order. Bonald responded by sending Lamartine a complete edition of his works. The poet read them with enthusiasm. In notes appended to his ode at a later period he denies that they made any really profound impression on him; but he is confusing his earlier with his later conviction. He writes: "I read these works with that poetical enthusiasm for the past and that emotional reverence inspired by ruins which youthful imagination so easily transforms into dogma and doctrine. For some months I tried to believe, on the authority of Chateaubriand and Bonald, in revealed governments; but in my case, as in other people's, the tendency of the day and the development of human reason dispelled these beautiful illusions, and I comprehended that God reveals nothing to man but his social inclinations, and that the various systems of government are revelations of the age, of circumstances, of the vices and virtues of humanity." It is certain that Lamartine considerably antedates this conviction of his. All the Méditations are in the same tone as the ode to Bonald. The one entitled Dieu is dedicated to Lamennais, the dithyramb on the subject of sacred poetry to Genoude, the translator of the Bible. Lamartine himself wrote for Le Conservateur, a newspaper from the first appearance of which Chateaubriand dated the pronounced European reaction; and when this paper was given up, he, along with Lamennais and Bonald, started a new one on the same lines, Le Défenseur, the special aim of which was to oppose constitutional government. It fell to Lamartine's lot to solicit a contribution from Joseph de Maistre. It is significant that our poet, who by this time was aged thirty, should write to the author of Du Pape in such a tone as this: "Monsieur le Comte! At the time I received your book and your kind and flattering letter, I was very ill. I employ my earliest returning strength to thank you for both, but specially for the honour you do me in calling me nephew, a title of which I boast to all who know you. It is a title which in itself is a reputation, in such estimation is your name held by all those who in this misled and contemptible age understand true and profound genius. M. de Bonald and you, Monsieur le Comte, and one or two others who at a distance follow in your steps, have founded an imperishable school of high philosophy and Christian politics, the influence of which is steadily increasing, especially among the younger generation."
In this same letter Lamartine defines Joseph de Maistre's position in literature to be that of leader of the best writers, and attributes the antagonism to him to "that absurd Gallican presumption" which De Maistre has discountenanced in a manner worthy of all admiration. Lamartine, thus, unmistakably favours the unlimited ecclesiastical authority of the Pope—but, note well, only in theory. In his poetry he is not nearly so dogmatic. When, for example—responding to Chateaubriand's appeal—he considers it his duty, as a Christian poet, to drive heathen mythology out of poetry, it is not really a pious, but an artistic instinct by which he is inspired. The old myths had, as far as lyric poetry was concerned, long ago dwindled into mere allegories or paraphrases, things far too vapid to have an injurious effect upon any one's religion. A crusade against faith in Apollo and Amor was a perfectly unnecessary undertaking.
Lamartine's influence was due to the fact that he uttered, now the sad, now the comforting, now the inspiring words which thousands craved to hear. They did not feel the want of new thoughts in his utterances; they were moved by the sound of his sympathetic voice. They felt once more vibrating within them fibres which, during the period of universal depression, had been completely benumbed; he conjured tones from strings which had long given forth no sound; and men delighted in the novelty which consisted in a revival of old memories. But, besides all this, there was one really new element. For Lamartine the ugly and the bad, nay, even the petty and the mean, did not exist. He clothed everything in a garment of shining light. There was a heavenly radiance over his poetry. For the first time for long years, a wealth of beautiful feeling found expression in melodious verse.
The great naturalist Cuvier, in his speech on the occasion of Lamartine's reception into the Academy in 1830, declared that men, in the profound obscurity which surrounds their reason, require a leader who can snatch them out of the black perplexity of doubt and draw them along with him into the region of light and certainty. He accused Byron of having seen nothing in the universe but a temple for the God of evil, and greeted Lamartine as the poet of hope. Thus did France, like some poor creature recovering from a dangerous illness, confuse hope with belief, comfort with dogma, vital energy with determined vindication of Papal authority—until at last the force of circumstances dispelled the mist, and forced men of letters as well as the general public to adopt definite standpoints.