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Alphonse de Lamartine, the present Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of France, was born in 1792, at Saint Pont, near Mâcon, in the Department of the Saone and Loire. His true family name is De Prat; but he took the name of De Lamartine from his uncle, whose fortune he inherited in 1820. His father and uncle were both royalists, and suffered severely from the Jacobins during the revolution. Had they lived in Paris their heads might have fallen from the block, but even in the province they did not escape persecution—a circumstance which, from the earliest youth of Lamartine, made a deep and indelible impression on his mind. His early education he received at the College of Belley, from which he returned in 1809, at the age of 18 years.
The splendor of the empire under Napoleon had no attractions for him. Though, at that period, Napoleon was extremely desirous to reconcile some of the old noble families, and for that purpose employed confidential ladies and gentlemen to correspond with the exiles and to represent to them the nobility of sentiment, and the magnanimity of the emperor; Lamartine refused to enter the service of his country under the new régime. So far from taking an interest in the great events of that period, he devoted himself entirely to literary studies, and improved his time by perambulating Italy. The fall of Napoleon did not affect him, for he was no friend of the first revolution, (whose last representative Napoleon still continued to be, though he had tamed it;) and when, in 1814, the elder line of Bourbons was restored, Lamartine returned from Naples, and entered, the service of Louis XVIII., as an officer of the garde-du-corps. With the return of Napoleon from Elba he left the military service forever.
A contemporary of Chateaubriand, Delavigne and Beranger, he now devoted himself to that species of lyric and romantic poetry which at first exasperated the French critics, but, in a very short time, won for him the European appellation of "the French Schiller." His first poems, "Méditations Poétiques," which appeared in Paris in 1820, were received with ten times the bitter criticism that was poured out on Byron by the Scotch reviewers, but with a similar result; in less than two months a second edition was called for and published. The spirit of these poems is that of a deep but undefined religion, presentiments and fantastic dreams of another world, and the consecration of a noble and disinterested passion for the beau ideal of his youth, "Elvire," separated from him forever by the chilly hand of death. In the same year Lamartine became Secretary of the French Legation at Naples, and in 1822, Secretary of the Legation in London—Chateaubriand being at the time minister plenipotentiary.
But the author of the Génie du Christianism, les Martyrs, and Bonaparte et des Bourbons, "did not seem to have been much pleased with Lamartine, whom he treated with studied neglect, and afterward entirely forgot as minister of foreign affairs. Chateaubriand, shortly before taking the place of Mons. Decazes in London, had published his Mémoires, lettres, et pièces authentiques touchant la vie et la mort du Duc de Berri,"[3] and was then preparing to accompany the Duke of Montmorency, whom, in December 1822, he followed as minister of foreign affairs to the Congress of Verona. It is very possible that Chateaubriand, who was truly devoted to the elder branch of the Bourbons,[4] may at that time have discovered in Lamartine little of that political talent or devotion which could have recommended him to a diplomatic post. Chateaubriand was a man of positive convictions in politics and religion, while Lamartine, at that period, though far surpassing Chateaubriand in depth of feeling and imagination, had not yet acquired that objectiveness of thought and reflection which is indispensable to the statesman or the diplomatist.
After the dismission of Chateaubriand from the ministry, in July, 1824, Lamartine became Secretary to the French Legation at Florence. Here he wrote "Le dernier chant du pélerinage d'Harold," (the Last Song of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,) which was published in Paris in 1825. Some allusions to Italy which occur in this poem, caused him a duel with Col. Pepe, a relation of General Pepe—who had commanded the Neapolitan Insurgents—in which he was severely wounded. In the same year he published his "Chant du Sacre," (Chant of the Coronation,) in honor of Charles X., just about the time that his contemporary, Beranger, was preparing for publication his "Chansons inédittes," containing the most bitter sarcasm on Charles X., and for which the great Chansonnier was afterward condemned to nine month's imprisonment, and a fine of 10,000 francs. The career of Lamartine commences in 1830, after he had been made a member of the Academy, when Beranger's muse went to sleep, because, with Charles X.'s flight from France, he declared his mission accomplished. Delavigne, in 1829, published his Marino Falieri.
While in London, Lamartine married a young English lady, as handsome as spirituelle, who had conceived a strong affection for him through his poems, which she appreciated far better than his compeer, Chateaubriand, and requited with the true troubadour's reward. With the accession of Louis Philippe, Lamartine left the public service and traveled through Turkey, Egypt, and Syria. Here he lost his daughter, a calamity which so preyed on his mind that it would have incapacitated him for further intellectual efforts, had he not been suddenly awakened to a new sphere of usefulness. The town of Bergues, in the Department of the North, returned him, in his absence, to the Chamber of Deputies. He accepted the place, and was subsequently again returned from his native town, Mâcon, which he represented at the period of the last Revolution, which has called him to the head of the provisional government.
It is here worthy of remark, that Lamartine, from the commencement of his political career, did not take that interest in public affairs which seriously interferred with his poetical meditations; on the contrary, it was his muse which gave direction to his politics. He took a poetical view of religion, politics, morals, society, and state; the Chambers were to him but the medium for the realization of his beaux ideals. But it must not be imagined that Lamartine's beaux ideals had a distinct form, definitive outlines, or distinguishing lights and shades. His imagination has never been plastic, and his fancy was far better pleased with the magnitude of objects than with the artistical arrangement of their details. His conceptions were grand; but he possessed little power of elaboration; and this peculiarity of his intellect he carried from literature into politics.
Shortly after his becoming a member of the French Academy, he publishes his "Harmonies politiques et religieuses."[5] Between the publication of these "Harmonies," and the "Poetical Meditations," with which he commenced his literary career, lies a cycle of ten years; but no perceptible intellectual progress or developement. True, the first effusions of a poet are chiefly marked by intensity of feeling and depth of sentiment. (What a world of emotions does not pervade Schiller's "Robbers," or Goethe's "Götz of Berlichingen, with the iron hand!") but the subsequent productions must show some advancement toward objective reality, without which it is impossible to individualize even genius. To our taste, the "Meditations" are superior to his "Harmonies," in other words, we prefer his præludium to the concert. The one leaves us full of expectation, the other disappoints us. Lamartine's religion is but a sentiment; his politics at that time were but a poetical conception of human society. His religion never reached the culmination point of faith; his politics were never condensed into a system; his liquid sympathies for mankind never left a precipitate in the form of an absorbing patriotism. When his contemporary, Beranger, electrified the masses by his "Roi d'Yvetot," and "le Senateur," (in 1813,) Lamartine quietly mused in Naples, and in 1814 entered the body guard of Louis XVIII., when Cormenin resigned his place as counsellor of state, to serve as a volunteer in Napoleon's army.