"Or, qu'est-ce que le Vrai? Le Vrai, c'est le malheur;
Il souffle, et l'heur vaincu s'éteint, vaine apparence:
Ses pourvoyeurs constants, le désir, l'espérance,
Sous leur flamme nous font mûrir pour la douleur.
Le Vrai, c'est l'incertain; le Vrai, c'est l'ignorance;
C'est le tâtonnement dans l'ombre et dans l'erreur;
C'est un concert de fête avec un fond d'horreur;
C'est le neutre, l'oubli, le froid, l'indifférence."
O'Neddy tried criticism, but at an unpropitious moment. He began to praise Hugo as a dramatist just when, in the Forties, the great man's popularity was on the wane. Its freshness of feeling lends beauty to his passionately enthusiastic defence of Les Burgraves. In his animadversions on the attitude of Hugo's critics to Ponsard's Lucrèce, O'Neddy was not unjust to Ponsard, and showed a spirit of noble reverence. But the next time he wrote in defence of Hugo the editorship of the Patrie was in other hands, and his article was returned to him. He took this rebuff to heart and gave up journalism, never again writing a newspaper article. He withdrew into his own inner world, feeling like Don Quixote after his return home, or Molière's Misanthrope when he wearily seeks solitude. Yet he writes in his last poem that, unbeliever in immortality though he may be, if ever his heroes should ride victoriously over his forgotten grave, his heart will beat again, in time with their horses' gallop:
"Et qui tendra l'oreille ouïra mon fier cœur
Bondir à l'unison du fier galop vainqueur."
The "heroes" for whom he had the profoundest admiration were, amongst the men of action, Garibaldi, amongst the poets, Victor Hugo, and amongst prose authors, Michelet and Quinet, and, at a later period, Renan.
O'Neddy's later life was sad. After losing his lady-love he lost his mother. He was long ill, and in the end paralysed. Only one pleasure was reserved for his old age, that of seeing himself warmly appreciated by Théophile Gautier in an article which now forms part of the latter's Histoire du Romantisme. He did not die till 1875, when he had been silent as a poet for forty-two years.
Whilst we are occupied in seeking out these victims of the literary battle and victory, we seem all the time to hear a funeral march played on muffled drums. And when we have seen how numerous they are, we involuntarily regard such a book as De Vigny's Stello and such a drama as his Chatterton in a more favourable light. The idea of the suffering poet or artist was an ever-present one at that period; and yet many were allowed to perish who deserved a better fate. It would seem that at all times, in every age, there is a difficulty in finding out the deserving, suffering men of talent.
The historian whose aim is, not to touch his readers, but to throw light upon his subject, gives these background figures a momentary prominence because the characteristics of the age are no less legibly and markedly displayed in their works than in those of its geniuses. The geniuses show us Romanticism in its health and strength; its pathology is to be studied in the works and lives of these unfortunates, who are so enthusiastically devoted to a foreign language that they neglect the cultivation of their own, or who blaze up in a sudden, ephemeral literary activity, or who make a desperate assault on fame only to be discouraged for ever by their first repulse, or who are mortally wounded by the indifference of the public, or who convulsively strain their powers until they suddenly give way. These men are as legitimate offspring of the Romanticism of 1830 as any of the others. They are its genuine enfants perdus.
[1] Ymbert Galloix's Poésies Posthumes were published in Geneva in 1834. By some mistake—for plagiarism is out of the question—Sainte-Beuve's poem "Suicide" is included in the collection.
[2] See Borel: Champavert (1833); Rapsodies (Bruxelles, 1838); Madame Putiphar (Paris, 1878). Jules Claretie: Petrus Borel, le Lycanthrope (1865).