ページの画像
PDF
ePub

fore a Madonna. A cry of fury immediately burst forth, and some one fired at him. The ball missed him, and striking against a wall rebounded and killed a woman. Her shrieks as she fell, and the tumult thereby caused, enabled him to escape to the house of his friend Chiaramonte. Next day Chiaramonte conveyed him in his coach to the castle of Saint Angelo, to which the French troops had retreated. On the 6th October Courier embarked with them at Civita Vecchia. Under the conduct of the English Commodore Trowbridge they reached Marseilles on the 27th of the same month.

On his way from Marseilles to Paris Courier was stripped by robbers of money, papers, and all his effects; and on reaching Paris he was attacked by a spitting of blood, which confined him to his room for four months.

His

medical attendant was M. Bosquillon, who suited him admirably, being like himself an enthusiastic Greek scholar. From this malady Courier frequently suffered till the end of his life. A renewed attack of it in 1801 compelled him to ask leave of absence from his military duties. He embraced this opportunity of visiting his mother at her residence in the country. While there his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached, died. On his return to Paris he sought with avidity an acquaintance with learned men, and refrained, as he had done up to this period, from all active share in political matters. He occupied himself also with translations from the ancients, or imitations of them, or articles on them. All these were distinguished by his magnificent individuality of style, though few of his papers were published at that time; and, as he was thoroughly destitute of ambition, it is probable that his genius as a writer would never have been known to any but his learned friends, if the insane bigotries of the Restoration had not called him into the field as the prince of pamphleteers.

A considerable part of the year 1802 was passed by Courier at Strasbourg, whither he was ordered on duty by the minister of war.

In July 1803 he was sent to join his company at Douai. But with his usual restlessness he soon grew tired GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXIV.

of Douai, and after two months we again find him in Paris.

Towards the end of the same year he was appointed through the influence of Generals Duroc and Marmont to a higher rank in the artillery. This appointment brought with it the pleasing necessity of going to Italy. He had scarcely arrived in that ever attractive country, when an incident occurred which called forth his peculiar talent. An order came to take the opinion of the army on the new form of government in France. The question was to be put to the different corps, which they preferred-an emperor or the republic. Courier, in a letter dated May, 1804, gives a very entertaining history of the manner in which this farce was transacted in the division of the army to which he belonged, In this letter he says of Bonaparte :"Poor man, he aspires in order to descend; he likes a title better than a name; his ideas are below his fortune. How different Cæsar! he took no wornout titles, but he made his name itself a title superior to that of kings."

Courier's career during the next few years was various and full of adventure. His letters give copious and interesting details regarding it. They are written in an incomparable style, and, besides the personal incidents which they contain, have much historical value, and show us what Italy was at that time, what the character and objects of the war carried on there, what French soldiers and French generals were, far better than more elaborate documents. At this period Courier went through a great deal of active service, and he would no doubt have obtained rapid promotion if he had been more inclined to give perfect heed to the soldier's great law-obedience. He was deficient also in that, without which success in any path is almost impossible, pertinacity of purpose. Among other literary labours, he snatched leisure from the turmoil of the war in Italy to make translations of Xenophon's two treatises on horsemanship and on the command of cavalry, which were published at Paris in 1809, with learned notes.

In the spring of 1809 Courier left Italy, apparently resolved to bid adieu for ever to the profession of a soldier. But when he reached Paris, in April,

T

he was seized with a sudden desire to make a campaign in an army which Napoleon himself commanded. He therefore solicited and obtained permission to join the troops in Germany. He arrived at head-quarters on the 15th June. The terrible slaughters at Lobau and Wagram, in the early part of July, effectually sickened Courier with war. He gives a striking picture of his own sufferings from hunger, from fatigue, from fever while engaged on the batteries constructed to protect the passage of the Danube by the French. He fell from exhaustion at the foot of a tree, and, fainting, was conveyed in this state to Vienna by some friendly soldiers. As soon as he was well enough to travel he left Vienna for Strasbourg, where we find him on the 15th July. His military life was now at an end.

After spending some months in Switzerland, Courier again departed for his beloved Italy. While at Lucerne he made a translation of the life of Pericles, by Plutarch. He reached Milan in the beginning of October. In the following month he arrived at Florence, where he had seen in the preceding year, in the library of San Lorenzo, a manuscript of the "Pastoralia" of Longus. On the present occasion he examined it with more care than he had then time to do. Discovering that it contained a passage which had been wanting in all the preceding editions of the romance, he immediately set himself to copy that passage. He had just finished when by accident he spilt some ink on that part of the manuscript which he had been copying. He made the heartiest apologies, but this did not satisfy the librarians, who denounced Courier, with fury, as if he had been guilty of the greatest crime. The affair, trifling enough in itself, made prodigious noise at the moment, and must have amused Courier as much as

in some respects it annoyed him. It is now no further interesting than as having called forth what has been considered one of Courier's masterpieces, the "Lettre à M. Renouard." Courier published for the first time a complete edition of the Greek text of the "Pastoralia," and also an improved translation of the work, with copious notes. Many of his letters to his

friends this year relate to Longus. For the sake of retirement and undisturbed study he spent the summer at Tivoli. During the remainder of his stay in Italy he seems to have resided chiefly at Rome, or in its neighbourhood, making, however, in May 1811, and in February 1812, two journeys to Naples. One of his companions in the latter of these journeys was the Countess of Albany, who had been the wife of the young Pretender, and is so well known to all who have read the memoirs of Alfieri. At Naples he had with the countess and the painter Fabre a conversation on the merit of artists compared to that of princes and warriors, a conversation of which Courier has given us a very piquant report.

In the summer of 1812 Courier left Italy and arrived at Paris. In October, on his way to Tours, he was arrested by the gendarmes for travelling without a passport. He obtained permission to write to his friends in Paris, and through their interference was released after an imprisonment of four days.

The next few years of Courier's life contain nothing interesting except his marriage, which took place on the 12th May, 1814. His wife was the eldest daughter of an old friend, M. Clavier. From the autumn of 1812 till this event Courier had chiefly lived at Saint Prix, in the valley of Montmorency. The new circumstances in which Courier was placed by his marriage prevented him from feeling so keenly as he otherwise might have done the disastrous events which befel his country in 1814 and 1815. There is no doubt, however, that they weighed heavily on his heart. He was not a partisan of Bonaparte, but to see that land which only a few years before had seemed the invincible empress of the world trodden by the exulting foot of the foreigner; to be pushed rudely and contemptuously aside by the returning tide of hungry emigrants, who brought nothing with them but their rapacity, bigotry, and vengeance, was enough to rouse indignation and sorrow in a soul far less impressionable than Courier's. But his time for speaking out the wrath and grief which were felt in millions of hearts besides his own was not yet come.

What the Bourbons might have done on their return to France after the battle of Waterloo, it is not now worth while inquiring. The thing above all wanted was, that they should use temperately a triumph which they had not owed to their own prowess. Instead of this they dreamed foolish dreams of absolutism, and gave themselves up into the hands of the priests. In doing so they cannot perhaps be accused of anything worse than incompetency. To apply to such persons the names of tyrant and oppressor is the excess of absurdity. They were not so much guilty in what they did or attempted to do as in what they permitted. They were afraid to offend those who seemed to have a claim on their gratitude. And it was less the substantial grievances of which they were the ostensible authors, than the petty persecutions which they countenanced in their underlings, which made them hated. It

was to picture and to denounce some of those persecutions that Courier, in December, 1816, published his first political pamphlet under the title of "Petition aux Deux Chambres." The events detailed in this petition occurred in that part of Touraine where Courier's property lay. The pamphlet produced an immense sensation, and first made Courier aware of his power as a writer. In 1819 and 1820 appeared a series of political letters, dated from Véretz, where Courier then resided, and addressed to the editor of the "Censeur;" and about the same time an epistle as full of bitterness as of talent to "Messieurs de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres." On the death of his father-in-law M. Clavier, who had been a member of the Academy, Courier had been induced by his friends, much against his inclination, to become a candidate for the vacant place, and was unanimously rejected. He was blamed and with justice for depreciating in this epistle a body of which he had desired to form one. His next political pamphlet, entitled "Simple Discours de Paul Louis Courier," was an attack on a proposal of the Minister of the Interior to purchase for the Duc de Bordeaux the estate and chateau of Chambord by national subscription. Courier was condemned for his free utterances on this occasion to two months' imprison

66

ment and a fine of three hundred francs. The day before the term of his imprisonment expired he was taken before the tribunal for a new pamphlet, the "Petition pour des Villageois qu' on empêche de danser." He received no harder punishment this time than a simple reprimand. One of his best writings is his "Procès de Paul Louis Courier," and which gives an account of his trial. In 1822 appeared his Réponse aux Anonymes;" in 1823, the "Gazette du Village," the "Livret de Paul Louis," the "Piéce Diplomatique;" and in 1824, the last, most famous, and most finished of his political productions, the "Pamphlet des Pamphlets." It would greatly transcend our limits to state in detail the objects of these and of various other smaller political works of Courier. They display talents of the highest order, and of an altogether original kind. Besides their artistic merits, they cannot be lost sight of in any history of the Restoration. For Courier was no rapid or vulgar declaimer, but a great comic painter whom circumstances exalted into a tribune of the people. And we find in his pamphlets a living and faithful delineation of what France was in itself and in its relation to governments and ideas, far better than in such wretched specimens of book-making as the Memoirs of Chateaubriand.

Paul Louis Courier was shot on the 10th April, 1825, a few steps from his house in the country: he died immediately. Suspicion attached to the government, to his wife, to some private enemy; but we have no light to guide us in pronouncing on whom the guilt lies. Madame Courier married again; and the writer of this article, some dozen years or more ago, often saw her at Geneva, leaning on the arm of a husband much younger than herself.

The collected works of Courier, literary and political, were published in 1829, in four volumes, under the editorial care of Armand Carrel. An admirable biography by Carrel was prefixed. Carrel was himself the last truly great political writer the French have had. It was fitting that entering into Courier's labours he should be the historian of Courier's career. The notice we have given of Courier has been derived mainly from the materials

furnished by Carrel. Like Courier, Carrel died a violent death, and like him, in the midst of political achievements and the promise of greater; and thus Carrel's records of one who might almost be called his master have acquired a peculiar and melancholy interest.

Besides the works which we have mentioned, Courier also wrote a translation of "The Ass" of Lucius of Patras, and of fragments from Herodotus, and many miscellaneous pieces, among others an "Eloge de Buffon."

Courier did not belong to the race of great heroic men; and we do not wish to vindicate his character in all things. He was guilty of numerous and signal inconsistencies. His mobility and impressionableness, though favourable to his artistic culture and

completeness, were altogether fatal to that earnest dignity and persistent force without which there can be no real greatness. He was simply a brave, honest, generous, somewhat capricious man, with a hearty hatred of semblances and oppressions. It is his genius as a writer, however, which has attracted us towards him. Admiration of that genius has principally urged us to introduce him to the attention of our readers. Whatever they may think of Courier's character, or of the political part which he played, they will find that he is worthy to be read after Rabelais, and that he is a noble son of that race, so singular, so audacious, so fantastical, so richly endowed, so intensely French, of which Rabelais is the immortal type. FRANCIS HARWELL.

GREAT LITERARY PIRACY IN THE PRAYER BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY SOCIETY.

MR. URBAN, July 12th. THE late [?] Ecclesiastical History Society derived its notoriety principally from two circumstances: first, from its wonderful clerical patronage, its combination of both the archbishops, and of so many bishops that the Church seemed for the first time in its history to be making an approximation to something like unity; and, second, from the distinguished and altogether peculiar inaccuracy of its publications. Having lately had occasion to refer to its last publication, entitled "The Book of Common Prayer: with notes, legal and historical, by Archibald John Stephens, Barrister-at-Law," I have been surprised into acquaintance with a circumstance which I think enables this Society to put in a third claim to the consideration and notice of the public. The principal peculiarity of this edition of the Common Prayer Book is not of course to be found in the Prayer Book itself, which is much like all other prayer books, save that it is printed in a very odd way; but in the notes, which are certainly wonderful, that is, in extent. The poor Prayer Book is the bread to a most astonishing quantity of sack; the theme of a com

ment before which even the twenty-one volume edition of Shakspere must hide its diminished head. There may be a sort of propriety in this. A threequarters of an hour's sermon upon a line or two of text is a kind of composition familiar to most of the supporters of the Ecclesiastical History Society, and the editor may have thought that he could not do better than pay off his clerical readers in their own coin. I, for one, am not at all inclined to object to his doing so, although the results have been to give us, what we have in great plenty elsewhere, dull sermons, in the shape of notes, and to throw the scraps of Prayer Book which are printed in the course of the volume very much into the situation of needles to be searched for in bottles of hay.

The felicity with which the editor has seized upon every little peg or text on which he might hang a note is strikingly exhibited in the example I am about to quote. Prefixed to the Prayer Book there is, as we all know, a Kalendar. That word "Kalendar is the occasion of a long note, which begins thus:—

"A few observations may be here made respecting the Jewish Kalendar, the Chris

[merged small][ocr errors]

These "few observations" extend through many pages, and embrace a great variety of important topics, which are discussed in a very lucid and satisfactory manner. Now, everybody will recollect that there is a most useful volume of Lardner's Cyclopædia entitled the Chronology of History. This work, which is principally derived from L'Art de Verifier les Dates and the Dictionnaire Raisonné de Diplomatique, is universally allowed to be a very satisfactory performance, highly creditable to the late Sir Harris Nicolas, its editor, and most serviceable to every student of history.

The compiler of the notes to the Common Prayer Book of the Ecclesiastical History Society seems to have thought as highly of the Chronology of History as any one, for he has taken it as if written not merely for his example, or for his information in common with the world at large, but for his exclusive use. Without the slightest mention of Sir Harris Nicolas or of his book, without a single reference to either, without the most covert hint or allusion to the fact that he was quoting and not com

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

piling, without telling his readers in any way whatever that there was such a book as the Chronology of History, or any book whatever which he was making use of, he adopts what he finds written in Sir Harris Nicolas's volume, and puts it forth as if it were his own.

If this had been done merely to the extent of a few sentences, or even of a page or two, one might have passed it over with silent mental condemnation, but many pages have in this way been extracted bodily from Sir Harris Nicolas's book, and converted, without acknowledgment or other indication of the fact, into the main bulk and staple of the "few observations," which the editor thought might there "be made."

To exhibit the actual character of this wholesale plunder is rather difficult, consistently with the space which you can devote to such a subject, but I must beg of you to insert one specimen, as illustrative both of the matter and the manner of the whole. The first column of the following extract contains the note from the Prayer Book of the Ecclesiastical History Society, beginning at p. 264; the second the passage as it stands in the Chronology of History, beginning at p. 167.

[blocks in formation]

29 or 30

[ocr errors]

29 or 30

29 or 30

[blocks in formation]

29

[blocks in formation]

30

[blocks in formation]

29

[blocks in formation]

29

[blocks in formation]

30

[blocks in formation]

29

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

30

[blocks in formation]
« 前へ次へ »