From the very idleness of
the man's mind, and not from intensity of feeling, it happens
that all his poems are more or less autobiographical. But
they form an autobiography singularly bald and uneventful.
Little is therein recorded beside sentiments. Thoughts, in
any true sense, he had none to record. And if we can gather
that he had been a prisoner in England, that he had lived in
the Orleannese, and that he hunted and went in parties of
pleasure, I believe it is about as much definite experience
as is to be found in all these five hundred pages of
autobiographical verse. Doubtless, we find here and there a
complaint on the progress of the infirmities of age.
Doubtless, he feels the great change of the year, and
distinguishes winter from spring; winter as the time of snow
and the fireside; spring as the return of grass and flowers,
the time of St. Valentine's day and a beating heart. And he
feels love after a fashion. Again and again, we learn that
Charles of Orleans is in love, and hear him ring the changes
through the whole gamut of dainty and tender sentiment. But
there is never a spark of passion; and heaven alone knows
whether there was any real woman in the matter, or the whole
thing was an exercise in fancy. If these poems were indeed
inspired by some living mistress, one would think he had
never seen, never heard, and never touched her.
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