When Napoleon had landed at Cannes and was making his triumphal progress through France, Lamartine followed the Court to the Flemish frontier; there the Guard was disbanded and sent home, and after the Hundred Days Lamartine did not re-enter it, nor did he ever see the King again. But when, in 1820, Louis read the first volume of Lamartine's poems, he remembered their writer as a young officer of his Guard, and sent him, by way of reward, an edition of the poets of ancient Greece and Rome. Lamartine, apropos of this, makes the somewhat hasty remark, that King Louis evidently looked upon himself as an Augustus, who had discovered a Virgil.
The new poet openly proclaims himself to be a disciple of Chateaubriand and Bonald. In his _Raphael_ (chap. 1.) he tells how he came to make Bonald's acquaintance. When he was at Chambéry (in his twenty-fifth year) worshipping the beautiful young Creole celebrated in his poems under the name of Elvire, that lady asked him to write an ode to Bonald, who was a frequent and honoured visitor at her house, Lamartine informs us that all he then knew of Bonald was his name, and the halo shed around it by its owner's fame as a Christian legislator. "I imagined to myself," he says, "that I was addressing a modern Moses, who derived from the rays of a new Sinai the divine light with which he illuminated human laws." And so the ode which is to be found in the first collection of Lamartine's poems under the title _Le Génie_ was written. In it the young poet affirms--
Ainsi des sophistes célèbres Dissipant les fausses clartés, Tu tires du sein des ténèbres D'éblouissantes vérités. Par le désordre à _l'ordre_ même L'univers moral est conduit.
Here, as everywhere, we come upon that meagre conception of good--order. Bonald responded by sending Lamartine a complete edition of his works. The poet read them with enthusiasm. In notes appended to his ode at a later period he denies that they made any really profound impression on him; but he is confusing his earlier with his later conviction. He writes: "I read these works with that poetical enthusiasm for the past and that emotional reverence inspired by ruins which youthful imagination so easily transforms into dogma and doctrine. For some months I tried to believe, on the authority of Chateaubriand and Bonald, in revealed governments; but in my case, as in other people's, the tendency of the day and the development of human reason dispelled these beautiful illusions, and I comprehended that God reveals nothing to man but his social inclinations, and that the various systems of government are revelations of the age, of circumstances, of the vices and virtues of humanity." It is certain that Lamartine considerably antedates this conviction of his. All the _Méditations_ are in the same tone as the ode to Bonald. The one entitled _Dieu_ is dedicated to Lamennais, the dithyramb on the subject of sacred poetry to Genoude, the translator of the Bible. Lamartine himself wrote for _Le Conservateur_, a newspaper from the first appearance of which Chateaubriand dated the pronounced European reaction; and when this paper was given up, he, along with Lamennais and Bonald, started a new one on the same lines, _Le Défenseur_, the special aim of which was to oppose constitutional government. It fell to Lamartine's lot to solicit a contribution from Joseph de Maistre. It is significant that our poet, who by this time was aged thirty, should write to the author of _Du Pape_ in such a tone as this: "Monsieur le Comte! At the time I received your book and your kind and flattering letter, I was very ill. I employ my earliest returning strength to thank you for both, but specially for the honour you do me in calling me nephew, a title of which I boast to all who know you. It is a title which in itself is a reputation, in such estimation is your name held by all those who in this misled and contemptible age understand true and profound genius. M. de Bonald and you, Monsieur le Comte, and one or two others who at a distance follow in your steps, have founded an imperishable school of high philosophy and Christian politics, the influence of which is steadily increasing, especially among the younger generation."