exagérée, ' extravagant

1. 37. // n'a attaché son nom à aucune œuvre. The Code Napoléon must count as an exception.

Page 62. 1. 1. // ne représente rien dans l'histoire. Seeley's Short Hislory of Napoléon the First contains an excellent essay on Napoleon's place in history.

1. 12. à son fils: only son of Napoléon and Marie Louise, known as Duke of Reichstadt (born 181 1, died 1832), the Aiglon of Rostand.

1. 37. Il a restauré l' Eglise. By the Concordat of 1801 between Napoléon and Pope Pius VII.

Page 63. 1. 2. l'Institut. The Académie Française, which had been suppressed under the Convention, was embodied in 1795 in the Institut.

1. 33. Une revue anglaise. In particular the Edinhurgh Review censures Thiers' total disregard of ail English sources of informais 2

tion. For English afîairs he accepts ail the lying communiqués of the officiai Moniteur. For politics he has not read even Lord Malmesbury's Journal, nor the Life of Lord Sidmouth, nor the Memoirs of Fox. For war, he has never glanced at Napier's History of the Peninsular War or the Wellington Despatches. For German afîairs even Alison's History of Europe is far superior.

Page 64. 1. 7. trop purement militaire. Scherer's estimate of this side of the History is far too favourable. The only fault he finds is excess. French cri tics hâve judged him more severely. ' Dans sa prédilection pour le récit des choses militaires, et surtout pour les descriptions de batailles, il accumule les détails, de telle sorte qu'il arrive à la plus inextricable confusion. Il lui faut un volume pour décrire une action que les hommes du métier, les maîtres de la littérature militaire, peignent en quelques traits larges et rapides. On connaît aussi ses prétentions de tacticien, sa manie de refaire tous les plans des combats qu'il raconte et de gagner pour son compte personnel toutes les batailles que les combattants ont perdues. Ce ne sont là que de petits ridicules. Mais ce qui est plus grave, ce sont ses inexactitudes, dont beaucoup ont été déjà révélées. Charras, notamment, a consacré presque tout un volume de notes à réfuter les erreurs de M. Thiers sur la bataille de Waterloo.' — Larousse.

1. 28. Jomini (1779-1869), the famous writer on stratégies. His principal works are Traité des grandes opérations militaires et vie politique et militaire de Napoléon.

Page 65. 1. 12. victoire de La Boyne. Of William III over the Irish under James II, July 1, 1690 : Macaulay, History of England, vol. iii, p. 629 seq.

défaite de Nerwinde. Of William III by Luxembourg. The Battle of Neerwinden (or Landen) is in vol. iv, p. 404 seq. It is hère that occurs the famous phrase ' the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England.' As Taine, writing of Tennyson, said, ' Moi, je préfère Alfred de Musset,' so we, writing of Thiers, may say, ' Moi, je préfère Macaulay.'

Page 66. 1. 16. être simplement vrai. Expanded by Thiers in his rhetorical style : ' être simplement vrai, être ce que sont les choses elles-mêmes, n'être rien de plus qu'elles, n'être rien que par elles, comme elles, autant qu'elles.' — Empire, vol. xii, p. 24.

1. 27. plusieurs races d' historiens. ' Je dirai qu'il y a non pas une, mais vingt manières d'écrire l'histoire, qu'on peut écrire l'histoire comme Thucydide, Xénophon, Polybe, Tite-Live, Salluste, César, Tacite, Guichardin, Saint-Simon, Frédéric le Grand,

Napoléon, et qu'elle est ainsi supérieurement écrite, quoique très diversement. . . . Tel narre avec une abondance qui entraîne, tel autre narre sans suite, va par saillies et par bonds, trace en quelques traits les figures qui ne s'effacent jamais de la mémoire des hommes ; tel autre enfin, moins abondant ou moins habile à peindre, mais plus calme, plus discret, pénètre d'un œil auquel rien n'échappe dans la profondeur des événements humains et les éclaire d'une éternelle clarté. De quelque manière qu'ils fassent, je le répète, ils ont bien fait.' — L'Empire, vol. xii, ad in. This extract will show that Thiers' dictum about ' the one good style ' is somevvhat unfairly pressed, that he admits variety of styles as freely as Scherer could désire.

Page 67. 1. 18. le simple truchement de la réalité. Is it hypercritical to suggest that such an historian, if such a one is conceivable, would cease to be an artist ? Ail art implies sélection. The barest chronicler must sélect his facts. A photographer or a stenographer is not an artist.

1. 35. sang gaulois. Gaulois, as distinguished from français, dénotes the thoroughbred old-fashioned Frenchman, redolent of the soil, much as we speak of ' true British '. It has also, as in ' l'esprit gaulois,' ' gauloiserie,' the secondary sensé of freespoken, coarse language.

Page 68. 1. 7. vit surtout de sacrifices. Quintilian's advice to an orator, ' Avoid an unusual word as you would a rock,' will illustrate the meaning. Still more apposite is Archbishop Temple's admonition to a young divine, ' If ever you hâve the misfortune to engage again in a public correspondence, remember to eut out ail your epithets.'

1. 20. senties par un Anglais. Racine is a striking example. His plays can never be appreciated in England as they are in France.

Page 69. 1. 30. la recherche, ' élaboration,' ' exquisiteness,' ' over-refinement.'

Page 70. 1. 3. congrès de Vienne: November, 1814.

1. 13. frappées. The metaphor is from métal work — the clear image and superscription, the sharp outlines of the coin or medal fresh from the mint. Thus Voltaire has ' Quelques vers bien frappés ne suffisent pas.' De frappées, de magistrales might be rendered ' clear-cut, architectonic'

For a just estimate of Scherer's review, it must be borne in mind that it has no pretence to be a full and final judgement. Thiers was still living, and was, moreover, idolized by the French nation as their historiographer royal, the chronicler of impérial

l66 ÉTUDES FRANÇAISES ET ANGLAISES

victories and triumphs, of which even the sturdiest republican, the most conservative of royalists, was proud. It was natural that Scherer should emphasize the merits and pass lightly over the defects of the History. Of Thiers' false standard of morals something has been said, but his worship of success as the final test of excellence in a ruler, his idolatry of the strong man, in which he outdoes Carlyle, his condonation of crime, call for clearer and more emphatic censure than we find anywhere in Scherer.

Another defect in the History is only glanced at. Scherer tells us that it is too military, and, he might hâve added, too full of finance, but it is only by implication that we learn how onesided it is, how serious are the omissions. Of philosophy, of science, of literature, of art, of the life of society and the condition of the working classes, there is in the twenty volumes hardly a word. It is a dynastie history, not a history of the French people.

Prévost-Paradol.

Prévost-Paradol, Lucien Anatole (i 829-1 870), was the son of an eminent actress. At school he carried ail before him, winning the first prize for a French essay and for philosophy, open to the whole of France, and in 1849 he was among the successful candidates for admission to the École Normale. This is an honour at least équivalent to a Balliol scholarship in England, and has been the first step in the career of Taine, his schoolfellow About, and many of the most distinguished authors and publicists of contemporary France. After passing out of the École Normale, he devoted himself for four years to literary work and study, gained a prize offered by the Académie for an appréciation of Bernardin de St. Pierre, and obtained his doctorate in 1855, with a thesis on Jonathan Swift. For a brief year he filled the chair of French Literature at Aix, but he felt bitterly that free thought and free speech were not compatible with the réticence imposed on a State teacher, and he gladly accepted an invitation to fill the place of M. John Lemoinne as a leader-writer on the Journal des Débats. His work and his qualities as a journalist are fully treated in the Essai, and we need only add one particular as throwing light on his subséquent career. For a brochure entitled Les Anciens Partis, published in 1860, he was prosecuted and condemned to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 francs. This vastly increased his popularity, and stamped him in public estimation as a Libéral who had the courage of his opinions. In 1865 he was elected to the Académie as successor to Ampère, and was the youngest member of that vénérable body. But officiai respectability and décorum had no

attraction for Prévost-Paradol, and an article written shortly after his élection, in which he compared France to a great Court lady who falls in love with a groom, and is dragged down and demoralized by the baseness of her low-born mate, led to the suppression of the journal in which it appeared. In 1868 he published his most important political work, La France nouvelle, a defence of parliamentary government and a plea for judicial reforms, and for complète séparation of Church and State. Between 1863 and 1869 he made three attempts to enter the Corps Législatif, but his candidature met with little success. He felt acutely this repuise, and became conscious at the same time that his influence as a journalist was on the wane. The Empire was being brought to bay, and, as its antagonists closed in, they had no need of skirmishers and sharpshooters. It was in a moment of dépression and lassitude that Prévost-Paradol consented to make il gran rifiuto and accepted at the hands of the government the post of Plenipotentiary Minister to the United States. To his friends he justified the step as the acceptance of an honourable retreat, which withdrew him for a time from the troubled world of politics and polemics, in which he had temporarily failed, and would permit him after a year or two of rest to start afresh with renewed vigour. From this self-delusion he was rudely awakened by the comments of the press, which branded him as a déserter, a lost leader who had sold himself ' just for a handful of silver '. Nor did his réception in America serve to salve his wounded honour and restore his self-respect. There he was regarded not only as a déserter from the Libéral cause, but as an unpatriotic citizen who had left his country on the eve of a mortal struggle. Life without honour was to him worse than death, and he shot himself on July II, 1870, and died a month later.

Page 71. 1. 12. M. Cousin, 1792-1868.

M. Renan, 1823-1892.

M. Villemain, 1 790-1 870.

M. Taine, 1828-1893.

1. 14. M. de Sacy, 1758-1838. Scherer speaks of him elsewhere as ' resté fidèle à de vieilles et gracieuses traditions littéraires ; un débris d'un autre âge, étranger assurément et dépaysé parmi nous, mais piquant par cette étrangeté même, agréable par un parfum d'aimables et honnêtes lettres, quelque chose qui rappelle les Arnauld d'Andilly ou les Rollin.'

Page 72. 1. 11. le bulletin du jour. Comments on the political events of the previous day, corresponding most nearly to the leaderettes or notes of the day of our evening papers,

l68 ÉTUDES FRANÇAISES ET ANGLAISES

1. 18. qu'il vient de réimprimer. In Quelques pages d'histoire contemporaine, 1862, 1864, 1866, four volumes.

1. 22. Essais. Nouveaux essais de politique et de littérature,