REPLIES.

FRENCH POEM BY MALHERBE.

The two stanzas your correspondent E.R.C.B. has cited (Vol. ii., p. 71.) are from an elegiac poem by MALHERBE (who died in 1628, at the good old age of seventy-three), which is entitled Consolation a Monsieur Du Perrier sur la Mort de sa Fille.  It has always been a great favorite of mine; for, like Gray’s Elegy and the celebrated Coplas of Jorge Manrique on the death of his father, beside its philosophic moralising strain, it has that pathetic character which makes its way at once to the heart.  I will transcribe the first four stanzas for the sake of the beauty of the fourth:—­

  “Ta douleur, Du Perrier, sera done eternelle,
     Et les tristes discours
  Que te met en l’esprit l’amitie paternelle
     L’augmenteront toujours.

  “Le malheur de ta fille au tombeau descendue,
     Par un commun trepas,
  Est-ce quelque dedale, ou ta raison perdue
     Ne se retrouve pas?

  “Je sai de quels appas son enfance estoit pleine;
     Et n’ay pas entrepris,
  Injurieux ami, de soulager ta peine
     Avecque son mepris.

  “Mais elles estoit du monde, ou les plus belles choses
     Ont le pire destin: 
  Et Rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
     L’espace d’un matin.”

The whole poem consists of twenty-one stanzas and should be read as a whole; but there are several other striking passages.  The consolation the poet offers to his friend breathes the spirit of Epictetus:—­

  “De moy, deja deux fois d’une pareille foudre
     Je me suis vu perclus,
  Et deux fois la raison m’a si bien fait resoudre,
     Qu’il ne m’en souvient plus.

  “Non qu’il ne me soit grief que la terre possede
     Ce qui me fut si cher;
  Mais en un accident qui n’a point de remede,
     II n’en faut point chercher.”

Then follow the two stanzas cited by your correspondent, and the closing verse is:—­

  “De murmurer contre-elle et perdre patience,
     Il est mal-a-propos: 
  Vouloir ce que Dieu veut, est la seule science
     Qui nous met en repos.”

The stanza beginning “Le pauvre en sa cabane,” is an admirable imitation of the “Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede,” &c. of Horace, which a countryman of the poet is said to have less happily rendered “La pale mort avec son pied de cheval,” &c.

Malherbe has been duly appreciated in France:  his works, in one edition, are accompanied by an elaborate comment by Menage and Chevreau:  Racan wrote his life, and Godeau, Bishop of Vence, a panegyrical preface.  He was a man of wit, and ready at an impromptu; yet it is said, that in writing a consolotary poem to the President de Verdun, on the death of his wife, he was so long {105} in bringing his verses to that degree of perfection which satisfied his own fastidious taste, that the president was happily remarried, and the consolation not at all required.