FullReads

Amphisbaenic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying Ercildoune’s precept, ‘Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye,’ to the syllable.–Don Giovanni’s hitherto fondly chanted ‘Andiam, andiam,’ become suddenly impersonal and prophetic: IT shall go, and you also. A cry–before it is a song, then song and accompaniment together–perfectly done; and the march ‘towards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty thousand–they to the sound of stringed music–preceded by young girls with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldier-wise their shovels and picks, and with one throat are singing Ca ira.'[180]

Through all the springtime of 1790, ‘from Brittany to Burgundy, on most plains of France, under most city walls, there march and constitutionally wheel to the Ca-iraing mood of fife and drum–our clear glancing phalanxes;–the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand, virgin led, is in the long light of July.’ Nevertheless, another song is yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers having gone–amphisbaenic,–on the 28th of August 1792, ‘Dumouriez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to Sedan.'[181]

And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night Dumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and little hindrance–we scattered, helpless here and there–what to advise? The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses them,–keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful, yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows–the cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris this time, the autumnal hours of fate pass on–ca ira–and on the 6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. ‘Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged–at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action.’ Thus, through the lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle,[182] ‘Aux armes–marchons!’ Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning–in what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan!

While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung, and danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper. Different also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord, and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this main point–that while the Ca ira and Marseillaise were essentially songs of blame and wrath, the British bards wrote, virtually, always songs of praise, though by no means psalmody in the ancient keys. On the contrary, all the three are alike moved by a singular antipathy to the priests, and are pointed at with fear and indignation by the pietists, of their day;–not without latent cause. For they are all of them, with the most loving service, servants of that world which the Puritan and monk alike despised; and, in the triple chord of their song, could not but appear to the religious persons around them as respectively and specifically the praisers–Scott of the world, Burns of the flesh, and Byron of the devil.