It ought to be observed that when, in his _Memoirs_, Chateaubriand himself has occasion to write of _Les Martyrs_, he does so with proud modesty; he shows that he is conscious of the faultiness of the work in certain respects, and draws particular attention to the small degree of success it has had in comparison with _Le Génie du Christianisme_. He ascribes the comparatively unfavourable reception which it met with at first principally to outward circumstances; and in this he is right. Napoleon's relations with the Pope were at that moment strained and unfriendly. What Chateaubriand had written of Diocletian as the persecutor of the Christians was applied to the Emperor. There were allusions to the humble circumstances of Napoleon's youth and to his insatiable ambition in the description of Galerius, and allusions to his court in the description of Diocletian's. Hence _Les Martyrs_ was not supported and circulated by the Government, as Chateaubriand's first work had been. And the clergy, with the Bishop of Chartres at their head, did not consider the book sufficiently orthodox; they discovered heresies in it. But in the end, in spite of everything, it made its way. Four editions were sold in a few years. What Chateaubriand desired to prove by means of this work was the peculiar adaptability of the Christian legend, of Christian supernaturalism, to the use of the poet. What he succeeded in proving was that in our days orthodox Christian poetry comes centuries too late. The poets who have dealt with supernatural themes have as a rule been more successful in their representations of hell than in their descriptions of the state of the blessed. In Dante a perfect host of bold figures, so powerfully conceived that they dominate the whole poem, emerge from the waters and the flames of perdition. Amongst the damned of the Inferno those whom we remember best are the almost superhumanly defiant and proud Italian nobles of the poet's own day--Farinata, for example. As to Milton, his Satan is universally acknowledged to be his most masterly character; and it has been maintained, not without reason, that the prototype of this character is to be sought among those energetic Puritan rebels who, even when they were overcome, did not cease to defy the royal authority. Each age paints its Lucifer in its own image. Chateaubriand's rebellious spirit is not the traditional devil either, but a devil who has brought about the French Revolution. Every time he and his attendant courtiers open their mouths it is to utter one or other of the watchwords of the revolutionary period. In Satan's speech to his army we are astonished to hear the echo of the oratory of 1792. After a few introductory Biblical phrases he falls into the style of the hymns of the Revolution, which Chateaubriand has amused himself by caricaturing.