Edward Bruce Hamley

“ Frederick the Great specially admired the device of taking Henry to heaven and hell in spirit, in his sleep, rather than in the body, as Æneas and Ulysses went. "The single idea," says the admiring monarch, " of attributing to Henry's dream what he sees in heaven and hell, and what is prognosticated to him in the temple of Destiny, is worth the whole of the 'Iliad;' for the dream brings all which happens within the rules of reality, whereas the journey of Ulysses into hell is devoid of all the ornaments which might have given an air of truth to the ingenious fiction of Homer." ”

“ Henry (so the voice says) is to beware of surrendering himself to his feeble reason. "God has made thee to love, not to comprehend Him; invisible to thine eyes, He is to reign in thine heart; He hates injustice, but pardons error, except voluntary error, which is punished."
The king is now conveyed to the regions of eternal sorrow. There, besides more allegorical personages suitable to the scene—such as Envy, Pride, and Ambition—he sees Jacques Clement, the murderer of Valois, still clutching his bloody knife. ”

“ Self-menacing, to neighbours terrible.
Much blest whene'er the people, dutiful,
In reverence hold the rights of sovereign power,
More blest whene'er a king, wise, gentle, just,
In reverence holds the people's liberties.
'Ah!' Bourbon cried, 'when shall my countrymen,
Like you, find truest glory in sweet peace?
Take pattern here, O monarchs of the earth!
A woman's hand has closed the gates of war,
And, leaving woe and strife to you, has made
The happiness of these, her worshippers.'"
Henry has an interview with the queen, in which he sets forth the need of France for help ”

“ Fired with the audacity of a young man who is conscious of splendid powers and wants to make them felt, he appears to have proposed to himself to produce an epic which should combine the positive merit of being essentially national with the negative one of avoiding what he had found to condemn in his illustrious predecessors. The personage whom he chose as the central figure was the best fitted for his purpose that French history could furnish. ”

“ Henry of Valois, in his camp before Paris, despairing of success against the League, entreats Bourbon to seek aid from Elizabeth, trusting to the renown and the persuasions of his envoy to make a friend of our great Queen. Bourbon departs accordingly, and, approaching our coast, is driven by a storm to Jersey, where he meets with a venerable hermit, who prophesies that he will be victorious, and will ascend the throne, and gives him very pious and excellent advice respecting the use he should make of his victory. ”

“ Compare Ulysses' descent into hell with that of the seventh canto of the "Henriade," and you will see that the latter is enriched with an infinity of beauties which M. de Voltaire owes only to himself." Without going the whole length of this comparison, we may admit that it is not altogether devoid of justice.
The peculiar difficulty of Voltaire's task lay in the introduction of supernatural personages and events into times so recent as the period of the wars of the League. There were old men living when Voltaire was born who came into the world before Henry IV. quitted it. ”

“ The respite has revived the courage of the Leaguers, but the king is impatient to finish his conquest. The fierce D'Aumale exhorts the garrison to sally and become the assailants. He tells them that "the Frenchman who awaits the attack is already half beaten;" but he fails to inspire them with his own courage, and at last issues alone from the gates to challenge a champion of the enemy. All Henry's chiefs are eager to meet him, but to the valiant Turenne is awarded the honour of the encounter ”

“ It was Voltaire's object, by all means, to exalt out of the sphere of common life the fabric of his poem—likelihood was of small account with him compared with unity and artistic completeness; and viewed in this way, we must allow that the business of the epic has been as well managed as was possible under the circumstances. ”

“ The scene then changes to the abode of happy spirits, where he sees the just kings, wise ministers, and devoted warriors of France, including Joan of Arc, "shame of the English, of our throne the stay." And not these alone, for the palace of Destiny opens for him its hundred iron gates, showing him the great men of the future (among whom Voltaire gives an honourable place to his friend Marshal Villars) and the seer's own descendants. Henry exults to find one of these becoming king of Spain, but St Louis checks his transports by hinting how dangerous an honour this may prove to be ”

“ Again, Henry, like the Trojan hero, and like Ulysses, accomplishes the descent into hell, and, like Dante, visits heaven. The fight between Turenne and D'Aumale, which did not really happen, very much resembles that between Turnus and Æneas. Then there is a prophet and a palace of Destiny to connect, as Virgil's Sibyl does, the present of the poem with the future; there are personifications more or less fantastic, as personages having only such allegorical existence must be. Besides a palace of Destiny, there is a temple of Love, with its votaries ”

“ St Louis continues to be an important actor in the rest of the epic, and with happy effect. The objections made to Discord, Truth, &c., do not apply to him. A sentiment common to all nations warrants the poet in assuming that a man's departed forefathers continue to bestow on him interest and protection; and there is a peculiar propriety in representing the great French hero as specially watched over by his sainted ancestor, to whom the Bourbons have always looked with veneration. ”

“ Excellent sense, conveyed in the most perfect form of expression, a vigour and confidence which prevent him from ever falling ignominiously beneath the height to which his argument may conduct him, and the completeness with which he has overcome the exceptional difficulties of French verse, form the chief elements of his success. ”

“ The king thereupon made common cause with the great enemy of the League, Henry of Navarre. Joining forces, they encamped before Paris, which Guise's brother, the "Mayenne" of the poem, now the chief of the League, held with his troops; and it is at this point that the "Henriade" opens.
The tone of those essays of Voltaire of which we have spoken gives promise of such independence of treatment, that the reader of them is somewhat surprised to find how many close imitations of Homer and Virgil his epic exhibits ”

“ Being thus the personification only of the evil tendencies of the actors themselves, such an addition to the dramatis personæ, if skilfully managed and rendered vague, shadowy, and mysterious, could have helped to exalt the characters and scenery into an unfamiliar and supernatural atmosphere, without doing such violence to belief as we have to complain of when we find these very abstract and unsubstantial conditions of social existence bodied forth with features, looks, and garments, taking part in battles, appearing in chariots, and inspiring courage or fear by actual words. ”

“ In the camp Bourbon is hailed as king; in the city the Leaguers assemble to choose a monarch. Whilst they are occupied in their deliberations (in which Potier, a citizen, by his assertion of Bourbon's rights in the very presence of Mayenne, earns for himself an immortal niche in the poem) , they are startled by a sudden call to arms. Henry has chosen that moment to direct an assault upon the walls ”

“ Makes piously of wisdom infinite."
"Death, the frightful daughter of Time, brings before him the inhabitants of our sorrowful world;" and, as they appear, the different priesthoods of the earth look in vain for the beings they had deemed divine. Everything being in a moment made clear to them, the dead hear in silence the eternal judgments. Henry dares not approach the throne whence are delivered the sentences "which so many of us presumptuous mortals try in vain to anticipate;" ”

“ It might be supposed that the solemn incidents, the celestial experience, and the divine counsel of the preceding canto would have fortified the king against such a disreputable device as that which the malignant Discord now had recourse to. She repairs to the temple of Love (which is full of allegorical personages) , and rousing the deity from his bed of flowers, enlists him in her cause. Delighted with a mission so completely suited to him, he flies at once to the plains of Ivry, near which Henry was hunting. Love "felt at sight of his victim an inhuman joy ”

“ And all the rallying chiefs around him throng."
The Leaguers are repulsed. D'Aumale, trying to rally them, is in danger, when an unexpected auxiliary appears. Discord, "the daughter of Hell," arrives in person on the scene, and dreading the loss of so devoted an adherent of herself, covers him with her shield, and withdraws him within the walls of Paris. She then flies to Mayenne, and addressing him as "Thou, bred under my eyes, formed under my laws," bids him be of good cheer. ”

“ The seventh canto is in some respects the most remarkable. It opens by telling us that the infinite goodness of God has placed among us two beneficent beings, always lovable inhabitants of earth, supports in trouble, treasures in poverty ”

“ The Leaguers, disheartened by Henry's successes, are about to receive important succour. Count Egmont, marching from the Netherlands with a strong force of Spanish cavalry, was approaching Paris to join Mayenne, who hoped, thus reinforced, to attack the king with advantage. Henry met them both in the open field, and the incidents of the battle and its results make up the eighth canto. The well-known words of Henry to his soldiers are embodied in the poem:—
"'When the fight's hottest, look to my white plume! ”

“ Her youth, her heart, a hero, and the god."
Everything being thus satisfactorily accounted for, without detriment either to the heroism of the monarch or the modesty of the maiden (all blame for whatever may happen obviously resting with the supernatural powers who have so craftily brought them together) , the pair are kept in the silken chains of the malignant deity, while the chiefs of the army wonder what has become of the general, and the soldiers, bereft of his leadership, seem already vanquished. ”