Alphonse de Lamartine was born at Mâcon in 1790, of a family belonging to the ranks of the lesser nobility. His father was one of the king's last faithful adherents at the time of the Revolution, and suffered for his devotion. Alphonse's loving, pious mother taught him to read in an illustrated Bible. He thus received his first literary and artistic impressions from scenes in the lives of the Patriarchs, the stories of Joseph and Samuel, of Sarah, and of Tobias and the Angel. After 1794 the family lived a very retired life upon small means on their little property of Milly. The son was at first taught at home by an amiable abbé, then sent to a school at Lyons, the rough, coarse tone of which was terribly repellent to a boy of a naturally refined disposition. By his mother's and his own wish he was removed to a school at Belley, kept by certain Jesuits who had managed to elude the laws banishing them from France, and who called themselves _Fathers of the Faith_. Here young Lamartine felt himself inexpressibly happy. The teachers were kind and refined; one of them reminded him of Fénélon; in the present century the Jesuits are undoubtedly not only the most unscrupulous, but also the most amiable, cleverest, and consequently most dangerous of all ecclesiastics. Amongst his fellow-pupils Lamartine soon found friends of his own standing, scions of French and Sardinian noble families. Among these were a young Alfieri, young Virieu, who, as V., plays a part in Graziella, and a nephew of Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Vignet. Through de Vignet Lamartine made acquaintance with all the members of the famous de Maistre family; Count Joseph attracted him least as a personality, but influenced him both by letters and by his works.
One day at Belley a master read some passages of Chateaubriand to the boys. The grandeur and charm of the majestic style made the deepest impression upon Lamartine, who had never heard anything like it before. But he declares in his Memoirs that he almost immediately assumed a critical attitude; he fell, he says, into a frenzy of admiration, but "not into a frenzy of bad taste." And he maintains that he presently, in talking to his comrades about the _Génie du Christianisme_, summed up his objections in the following pronouncement: "The main element in all perfect beauty, naturalness, is wanting. It is beautiful; but it is too beautiful." In other words, Lamartine, who himself wrote so instinctively, thought Chateaubriand's style strained. It is probable that he slightly antedates this criticism. In any case his admiration was such that as late as 1824, when hymning the consecration of Charles X., he wrote:--