These two lyric apostles of the throne and
the altar, these two bards of the coronation, obeyed the double
inspiration of their imagination and their conscience. Party
spirit should not be too severe for a regime that suggested such
admirable verses to the two greatest French poets of the
nineteenth century--to Lamartine and to Victor Hugo.
Let us recall also that in Victor Hugo it was not only the
royalist poet that Charles X. protected, it was also the chief of
the romantic school; for the government, despite all the efforts
of the classicists, caused Hernani to be represented at the
Francais, a subsidized theatre. When the Academy pressed its
complaint to the very throne to prevent the acceptance of the
play, the King replied wittily that he claimed no right in the
matter beyond his place in the parterre. The first representation
of Hernani took place the 25th of February, 1830, and the author,
decorated, pensioned, encouraged by Charles X., did not lose the
royal favor, when, on the 9th of March following, he wrote in the
preface of his work: "Romanticism, so often ill-defined, is
nothing, taking it all in all--and this is its true definition, if
only its militant side be regarded--but liberalism in literature.
The principle of literary liberty, already understood by the
thinking and reading world, is not less completely adopted by that
immense crowd, eager for the pure emotions of art, that throngs
the theatres of Paris every night.
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