The sentence does not end, because Chateaubriand's behaviour made any end superfluous. He went over openly to the opposition, and it is to be noted that it was to the thorough-going opposition, which had always seemed to him to be the only sensible thing under a representative government, anything less being impotent. The day after his fall he met with a warm reception from the whole party then in antagonism to the government. An article by Bertin in the Journal des Débats announced that he had become the leader of the party, and he was soon also practically the editor of that newspaper.
The whole Seraphic school, of which he was the founder, soon followed him. Lafayette sent him a laurel leaf. Constant flattered him. He began to fraternise with Béranger, who afterwards addressed a poem to him. Two of its verses run:
Son éloquence à ces rois fit l'aumône:
Prodigue fée, en ses enchantements
Plus elle voit de rouille à leur vieux trône,
Plus elle y sème et fleurs et diamants.
Mais de nos droits il gardait la mémoire.
Les insensés dirent: Le ciel est beau.
Chassons cet homme, et soufflons sur sa gloire,
Comme au grand jour on éteint un flambeau.
Victor Hugo addressed a eulogistic and consolatory ode to him (livre iii. ode 2) containing such sentiments as: Was a court the place for you? and: What can be more beautiful than a laurel scathed by lightning?
Chateaubriand's defection was a fatal blow to the monarchy by the grace of God. As long as the illusions of the restoration lasted, the poets of France were Immanuelistic and saw a guardian angel beside every cradle and every bier. With Chateaubriand's illusions vanished the illusions of all the rest, and the Immanuelistic school was succeeded by one to which Southey gave the name of Satanic, a name which it accepted—a school with a keen eye for all that is evil and terrible, a gloomy view of life, and a tendency to rebellion.
But while the minds of Frenchmen were still occupied with this unexpected and momentous event, there occurred a more momentous event, which stirred the whole world, namely, Byron's death in Greece.
The news of Byron's death raised the enthusiasm for the first war of liberation that had been fought since the Revolution to fever heat. A new ideal was conceived by the human mind. With Napoleon the glory of energy had passed away, and the heroes of action had for a time disappeared from the earth. Human enthusiasm was, as has been said, in the plight of a pedestal from which the statue has been removed. Byron took possession of the vacant place with his fantastically magnificent heroes. Napoleon had supplanted Werther, René, and Faust; Byron's Promethean and despairing heroes supplanted Napoleon. Byron was in marvellous accord with the spirit and the cravings of the age. Orthodox dogmas had in the early years of the century overcome revolutionary and free-thinking principles; now orthodoxy was in its turn undermined and obsolete. There was at this moment no future for either thorough-going unbelief or thorough-going piety. There remained doubt, as doubt—poetic Radicalism, the thousand painful and agitating questions concerning the goal and the worth of human life. These were the questions which Byron asked.
But he did not ask indifferently. It was the spirit of rebellion which asked with his voice, and which through his voice made of the young generation in all lands one cosmopolitan society. They united their voices with his in the cry:
.... Revolution
Alone can save the world from hell's pollution.
His death did far more to advance the cause of liberty in general than his life. Under the restored monarchy by the grace of God society had been reduced to an extreme of believing subjection to authority, of slavish subjection to theology, of dutiful subjection to power—to an extreme of supineness and hypocrisy. That monarchy was rotten to the core, but supported outwardly by superstition and bayonets. In England Bentham, the Radical philosopher, ashamed to see the reaction successful even in that most advanced of countries, had tried to undermine it by appealing to men's interests. Byron let loose all the passions. His attack was not directed at any one point; he aimed at revolutionising men's minds, at awaking them to the sense of tyranny.