George Saintsbury

“ Lamartine had the advantage of coming at a time when the literary field, at least in the departments of belles lettres, was almost empty. The feeble school of descriptive writers, epic poets of the extreme decadence, fabulists and miscellaneous verse-makers, which the Empire had nourished could satisfy no one. Madame de Staël was dead; Chateaubriand, though alive, was something of a classic, and had not effected a full revolution. Lamartine did not himself go the complete length of the Romantic revival, but he went far in that direction. ”

“ As a statesman Lamartine was placed during his brief tenure of office in a position from which it would have been almost impossible for any man, who was not prepared and able to play the dictator, to emerge with credit. At no time in history were unpractical crotchets so rife in the heads of men as in 1848. But Lamartine could hardly have guided the ship of state safely even in much calmer weather. ”

“ The four volumes of the Méditations, the Harmonies and the Recueillements, which contained the prime of his verse, are perhaps the most monotonous reading to be found anywhere in work of equal bulk by a poet of equal talent. They contain nothing but meditative lyrical pieces, almost any one of which is typical of the whole, though there is considerable variation of merit. The two narrative poems which succeeded the early lyrics, Jocelyn and the Chute d’un ange, were, according to Lamartine’s original plan, parts of a vast “Epic of the Ages,” some further fragments of which survive. ”