[L. 38.] étamine. A. Chénier seems to have used étamine, properly the stamen or male organ of flowers, for the pollen or fecundating dust which is secreted by the stamen. Cf. note to p. 27, l. 30.
[L. 47.] Anacreon, Od. xx. The thought, as a lover's wish, is hackneyed.
[L. 61.] périsse l'amant que satisfait la crainte! The meaning, not very obvious, but explained by the following lines, is: Beshrew that lover who is content to frighten his mistress into fidelity.
III. AUX FRÈRES DE PANGE.
The following desponding lines were written by Chénier just before undertaking a journey to Switzerland and Italy. His friends, finding him in a very bad state of health, prevailed upon him to accompany them. His spirits seem to have been very low at that time, as appears from the thoughts of death he gives expression to, and numerous are the passages in which the melancholy mind of Chénier gloats upon death.
[L. 1.] je suis prêt à descendre. Grammarians have long distinguished between près de and prêt à, but writers never did, until lately, when prêt à was restricted to expressing 'ready to' and près de 'on the point of.'
[L. 3.] linceul. In the Dictionnaire des rimes françaises, by Jean Le Febvre, Paris, 1587, linceuil and linceul are given. Littré observes that both pronunciations are heard.
[L. 13.] reliques. The English student is likely to overlook this word, as English 'relics' means both (1) what remains as a memorial of a departed saint, martyr, or other holy person, and (2) the remains of a person, the body of one deceased. But this latter sense is of very rare occurrence in French, and Chénier uses it because, being seldom used, it is still all but novel. He thinks it 'fine and sonorous,' and proceeds to observe that Racine has it twice. Alfred de Musset, after him, employed reliques figuratively in; 'Les morts dorment en paix dans le sein de la terre; Ainsi doivent dormir nos sentiments éteints; Ces reliques du coeur ont aussi leur poussière; Sur leurs restes sacrés ne portons pas les mains.' Yet it is easy to see that in this instance both senses are implied.
[L. 24.] qu'il dut vivre longtemps. All editions, and our present selection after them, print dut without a circumflex accent. Dût is in fact the imperfect of the subjunctive used, as was usual in the older language and is still occasional in seventeenth-century French, for the pluperfect of the subjunctive, as in: 'Mais puisque son dédain, au lieu de le guérir, Ranime ton amour qu'il dût faire mourir. Sers-toi de mon pouvoir,' Corneille, Clit. II. iv. 484. So here dût stands for eût dû = aurait dû. See Haase, § 66 B.
[L. 25.] le meurtre jamais n'a souillé mon courage. Tibullus, iii. 5. 5 ff. When Chénier speaks of murder he has duelling in his mind, which he deprecated in his prose works. He also takes courage in its older sense, frequent in the great French classics, and the oldest sense, recorded in English, of 'the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, &c.; spirit, mind, disposition, nature.'—N.E.D.