[3] We feel how genuinely Romantic, how profoundly characteristic of the period, such a little inspiration as this is, when we come upon the very same thought in one of George Sand's Lettres d'un Voyageur (January, 1835): "Jésus, en souffrant le martyre, a donné un grand exemple de suicide." It is curious that the idea never occurred to Novalis.
[XXXV]
CONCLUSION
Such was this school, such were its victors and its vanquished, such its artistic and its social enthusiasts. Thus it arose; thus, with all this wealth of genius and talent, it grew to be great; thus it dissolved as a school to continue its life in the intellectual life of widely different individuals who, even when in appearance farthest from their starting-point, nevertheless retained the essential qualities of the school—for we all keep long upon our shoulders the mark of the first banner we bore. The Romantic School was broken up and scattered; but before its extinction, Romanticism had revitalised style in almost every branch of literature, had brought hitherto undreamt of subjects within the range of art, had allowed itself to be fertilised by all the social and religious ideas of the day, had re-created lyric poetry, the drama, fiction, and criticism, had insinuated itself as a fertilising power into the science of history, as an inspiring power into politics.
To have attempted to write a complete history of the School would have been, in my case, to have attempted an impossibility. Here, as elsewhere in this work, I have traced only the main currents. I have dwelt long and in detail on the principal personages instead of introducing numerous secondary personages who, in spite of their real importance and interest, would have stood in the way of the condensation which has been my aim; and I have even followed the careers of one or two of these principal personages beyond the limit of the period, seeing that it was not until after 1848 that they displayed their originality in its entirety.
Many remarkable personalities I have merely sketched—such as Alexandre Dumas, who may well be called the Ariosto of French Romanticism, and De Vigny, who has described himself in the saying: "Honour is the poetry of duty." Others I have only been able to name—such as Jules Janin, "the prince of feuilletonists," whose novel, L'Âne mort et la Femme guillotine, is such a remarkable forerunner of the naturalism of a later period; and Nodier's successor, Gérard de Nerval, the Euphorion of Romanticism, whose female characters are ethereally delicate, whose preternatural fantasies have an oriental marvellousness, and whose sonnets, written when he was insane, are amongst the cleverest and most beautiful which the period has produced. Many men of talent of the second and third rank I have been obliged to leave altogether unnoticed—such as Antony Deschamps, who occupies much the same place in literature as Leopold Robert does in art; and Victor Hugo's worshipper, Auguste Vacquerie, who is interesting because of his blind belief in Romanticism and his aplomb, and whose drama Tragabaldas is one of the boldest exploits of French Romantic volatility. I have only been able, and have only desired, as a rule, to present the great typical figures in relief. The great woman of the period, George Sand, must stand alone, as a representative of its women, interesting though it would have been to describe several of the others—clever Madame de Girardin, melancholy Madame Desbordes-Valmore, or the two emancipated authoresses, the Comtesse d'Agoult and Madame Allart. Sainte-Beuve is the solitary representative of criticism; both Philarète Chasles and Jules Janin I have been obliged to ignore; and Balzac alone represents realism in fiction, no mention being made of less gifted and profound observers of life, like Alphonse Karr or Charles de Bernard. The authors of the generation of 1830 naturally divide themselves into two groups, a small group which wrote for the whole world, and a larger, which wrote for France alone; it is only the former which I have endeavoured to place distinctly before my readers.
We have seen how the character of the two Restoration monarchies, the Legitimist and the popular, formed the historic background from which Romanticism projected itself, and without which it cannot be understood; and we have also observed that the movement had numerous foreign forerunners and a not inconsiderable period of preparation in France itself. The Restoration starts Romanticism; the Juste-milieu government goads it on; the study of Scott and Byron, Goethe and Hoffmann, enriches it; at the hands of André Chénier it receives its lyrical consecration; the controversies in the Globe develop its critical powers. The writings of Charles Nodier, which are romantic in the general, European, sense of the word, prepare the way for the great French Romanticists. Then Victor Hugo assumes the leadership of the movement, proves himself capable of the task he has undertaken, and hastens from victory to victory. Presently he and De Vigny are named in the same breath with Lamartine as lyric poets; then Hugo outshines all the rest. Both Sainte-Beuve and Théophile Gautier possess a lyrical vein, but as a lyric poet, Alfred de Musset supplants all the other younger men in the favour of the reading public, in time supplants even Hugo himself, and is long the idol of youth.
Romanticism had at first a historical tendency; De Vigny, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Mérimée, endeavoured to give France the historical novel of which England was so proud; Vitet, Mérimée, Alexandre Dumas, De Vigny, Hugo, tried to create a historical drama which should take the place of tragedy. But the historical novel soon made way for the modern novel in its various forms, as written by George Sand, Beyle, and Balzac; and the historical drama also soon lost favour; for it was, generally speaking, either uninterestingly dry, as in the case of Vitet's and Mérimée's plays, or exaggeratedly lyrical, as in Hugo's. The dramatic authors had, as a rule, most success on the stage after the first passion of their youth had raged itself out. There came a time in the Forties when there existed, not only an école de bon sens outside of the Romantic School, but a phase of bon sens in the lives of the authors within the Romantic circle. It was during this period that Alfred de Musset wrote his short plays and George Sand her peaceful novels and peasant stories. Whilst Hugo was steadily increasing in power as a lyric poet, Gautier was leading Romanticism in the direction of plastic art. Balzac developed it in the direction of physiology; Beyle, in the direction of national, or comparative, psychology; Mérimée, in the historical direction; Sainte-Beuve, in that of naturalistic criticism. In every one of these domains the generation of 1830 has produced imperishable works.
The French Romantic School may therefore, without exaggeration, be called the greatest literary school of the nineteenth century.