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the Pucelle of Voltaire. For the work of Chapelain, which I had long sought in vain, I am obliged to a valuable friend. The book is rare, and I believe no person less interested than myself in the story, could persevere through it. The Analysis however which I have now prefixed to the English Poem will not be found unamusive; it comprizes all the beauties, and most of the absurdities of twelve thousand lines.

On the eighth of May, the epoch of its deliverance, an annual fete is held at Orleans; and monuments have been erected to the memory of the Maid. Her family was ennobled by Charles; But it should not be forgotten in the history of this monarch, that, in the hour of misfortune, he abandoned to her fate, the woman who had saved his kingdom,

ANALYSIS

OF

La Pucelle,

OU

La France Delivree,

BY

CHAPELAIN.

THE MAID,

OR

FRANCE DELIVERED.

THE FIRST BOOK,

The Poem opens with an exordium, an invocation, and a panegyric; like a good Christian, Chapelain invokes the Angels instead of the Muses, and as he tells us that the bounty of the Duc de Longueville enabled him to enjoy a life of leisure, we may, on the score of gratitude, excuse four and forty lines of encomium, after fourteen pages of dedication.

During the melancholy course of a hundred years, the just rigour of the holy Destinies had overwhelmed France with every kind of evil. Two deluges of blood from her veins had flooded the fields at Poitiers and at Azincour, two strokes of lightning at Crevant and Verneuil had conducted her to the gates of the grave. Charles, her young master, wandered from his captived throne; he saw his vassal reverenced instead of

himself; he saw the cruel enterprize of the English daily prospering; he saw his realm torn from him, and in his own country sought for his country.

Les costaux, les vallons, les champs et les prairies,
A ses regards troublés n' offroient que barbaries,
Et les vaftes remparts des tremblantes Cités
N'enfermoient que tourmens, et que calamités.
Tous les fleaux des humains, la Peste et la Famine
Des peuples, en tous lieux, avançoient la ruine,
Et la Guerre, en tous lieux, agitant son flambeau,
De leur toits embrasés composoit leur tombeau.
L'impitoyable Mort, des provinces entieres
Ne faisoit desormais que de grands cimetieres.

To his troubled eye

The shores, the vales, the meadows and the fields,
Presented nought but horrors: the vast walls
Of his affrighted cities bulwark'd in

But torments and calamities alone.

Famine and Pestilence, and all the Plagues

Of humankind, on every side urged on
His people's ruin. War, tossing her torch,

Of their burnt dwellings made their sepulchres,

And pityless Death to cemeteries turn'd

Whole provinces.

Orleans alone remained faithful to her King; but Orleans had been for nine months besieged, and every

attempt to relieve the garrison had failed. On the sum

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