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73]
After listening to the petty cavillings and verbal criticisms of many small disputants, he hailed with delight
Lamartine's approach to the tribune, and from what follows, one can almost hear the distinguished member of the provisional government as he addresses the legislature:
... The essence of Lamartine's oratory is sentiment, imagination.
It is not the reason he addresses, and logic is not one of his weapons, but there is something electric, something inspired in his words which makes you forget reason, forget everything, indeed, but the magnificent periods that seem to envelop you like an atmosphere of the finer and more exciting quality.
His oratory absorbs you, carries you away, magnetizes and delights you. You are revived, elevated, ennobled by its influence.
Your mind afterwards works more freely, as if it had been bathed in some invigorating and expanding element.
He has not argued with you, has not convinced you, has not instructed you, but you come from hearing him with a new faith in truth and in humanity, with clearer insight, and with fresh resolution and courage.
A close but kindly criticism follows.
The orator fails to grasp great principles in their details and to develop them into workable institutions.
While he sympathizes with the people and favors their right to labor, he conveys no intelligible idea of how that right is to be secured.
Having no clear idea of his own, he necessarily utters nothing but vague and glittering generalities.
... “But,” says our correspondent, “I find myself criticising him as coolly as if there was nothing else to say about his speech but to point out its faults, when at the time of its delivery one would as soon have thought of finding fault with a summer sunrise.”
As no analysis can do justice to these letters, the reader must be content with an extract now and then on some
