While himself without employment he conceived the plan of a long poem and actually wrote several cantos. It was to be the history of a human soul and its migrations through successive terms of existence and forms of experience till its eventual reunion to the Centre of the Universe, God.
He also projected and began several other compositions. He labored incessantly to perfect his style, till it became, though diffuse, a model of elegance, energy and correctness.
He had from time to time written verses to which he gave the title of Meditations. Friends slyly pilfered these, and gave copies to ladies of their acquaintance. These passed from hand to hand till they came to the table of Talleyrand himself. The prince greatly admired them and his praises were repeated to the Marquise de Raigecourt. This lady had been an intimate friend of the Princess Elizabeth. Lamartine had been introduced to her by the Count de Virieu, and she took a motherly interest in his welfare. Yet he could not bring himself to go to the Court. “I was born wild and free,” he says for himself, “and I did not like to bend down in order to rise.”
From 1815 to 1818 when at home, he composed several tragedies—Medée, one relating to the Crusades, and Saul. He had a hope that by them he might gain some celebrity and perhaps contribute something to the fortune of his parents and sisters. He completed them in the spring of 1818, and having copied them in a plain hand hurried with them to Paris. He solicited an interview with Talma who granted it at once.
On invitation, he read extracts from the tragedy entitled Saul. The great tragedian listened attentively, and was for some time silent. His first words were: “Young man, I have desired to know you for twenty years. You would have been my poet. But it is too late. You are coming to the world and I am going from it.”
He then requested Lamartine to tell him frankly, as a son to a father, his personal history, his family relations, and his wishes.
This he did and told how he had desired to work, to come out of his obscurity, to produce something that would be an honor to the name of his father and a comfort to the heart of his mother. He had thought of Talma. He had written several tragedies, of which this was a specimen.
“Will you be good enough,” he implored, “to hold out your hand and help me succeed by the stage?”
Tears stood in Talma’s eyes. He praised the work, and declared that in the reign of Louis XIV. it would have won applause. But now, tragedy had been superseded, in general estimation, by the drama. He counselled Lamartine to study Shakespeare, to forget art and study nature.
When Lamartine came again to Paris the next winter, he asked him to write for the stage. But Lamartine coveted a public rather than a literary career, and applied to M. Pasquier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, for a diplomatic appointment.