INTRODUCTION XV

Like some of his great contemporaries (Balzac, Mérimée, Stendhal) he lacked the poetic imagination which has given the world Captain Renaud and Private Mulvaney, and a dialogue des morts between him and the author of Servitude et grandeur militaires would be a dialogue in which neither speaker would understand the other's language. Still, it must be remembered that Courier had seen what Vigny had only dreamt of.

Hère is his own description of himself as remembered by Dalayrac, his most intimate friend during a stay at Toulouse, which was terminated by a very discreditable escapade and a hurried departure : * Je suis peu fait pour le métier des armes : les longues marches, là fraîcheur des bivouacs, le tumulte et l'oisiveté des camps fatiguent la tête ; la vue d'un champ de bataille soulève mon cœur. Liberté ! Dieu le veut ! Vive la République ! sont des paroles magiques à l'aide desquelles les ambitieux de tous les temps ont soulevé les peuples et bouleversé les empires. Grâce à ma bonne étoile je suis sorti sain et sauf de la mêlée. Que les tambours battent maintenant la diane, le rappel, la générale ou la charge, je m'en moque, cela ne me regarde plus. J'inspecte les forges ; je fais préparer des armes à ceux qui doivent combattre. Je vais, dans mes loisirs, sacrifier aux Muses ; je vais redire en prose française les amours naives de Daphnis et de Chloé. Puisse Longus retrouver en moi un traducteur digne le lui ! ' ^ It would thus appear that the pose of being ' au-dessus de la mêlée ' was not originated in 19 14.

After some garrison duty on the Eastem frontier, at Thionville, Blies-Castel, Mayence, and spécial service at Alby, Toulouse {v,s.)y Rennes, he was sent in 1798 to Rome, which Berthier, at the head of a French army, had proclaimed a Republic. The allusions contained in the wonderful letters which Courier now began to address to his friends require for their understanding some acquaintance with the troubled

ï Quoted by Dr. Gaschet (op. cit. p. 75) from Dalayrac, Un an de la vie de Paul-Louis Courier^ Séjour à Toulouse, 1796-97.

history of Italy at this period. A gênerai idea of the state ot thingsi can be obtained from Southey*s Ufe of Nelson (Chapter vi.). It is the old story of the betrayal of a country by its own * Bolshevists ' to a predatory foreign power, to be foUowed inevitably by the establishment of a foreign tyranny.2

The détails of Courier's sojoum in Italy, interrupted by a stay at Strasbourg, a long leave spent in Paris and Touraine, and later on, by his résignation of his commission (1809), can be traced in his letters. He spent some time in Rome, Piacenza, Parma (where he 'annexed' some books from the library), Leghom, Naples, Florence. He also saw a good deal of uncomfortable service in Apulia and Calabria, where the French troops had as opponents the native guérilleros^ supported by a small British army. This little hole-and-comer war is in its way a good example of what the command of the sea means.^ With Florence is connected the great affair ol his life, that of the * tache d'encre,* or, as he preferred to call it, the *pâté.' He had discovered in the library of San Lorenzo a Greek M S. of Longus* Daphnis and Chloe^ which contained a considérable passage lacking in other Greek originals and in Amyot's translation.^ After a copy had been made, he obliterated in the original M S., by means of a huge blot, the greater part of the passage in question, accidentally according to his own account, purposely in the opinion of the librarian, del Furia, and of most other people. The Lettres contain many allusions to the résultant complications, but the most important conséquence from the literary point of view was the Lettre à M, Renouard,^ In this famous letter Courier

* For fuller détails see Albert Dufoiircq, Le régime jacobin en Italie.

^ Joseph Bonaparte was made King of Naples in 1806, to be replaced, on his promotion to the throne of Spain (1808), by Murât.

• It is the scène of a now forgotten novel, The Adventures of an Aidede-Camp, by James Grant, which I read as a boy with great enjoyment.

* Amyot, Bishop of Auxerre, translater of Plutarch, published his Daphnis et Chloé in 1559.

• A Parisian bookseller who had accompanied Courier to the library,

INTRODUCTION XVll

ran amok at everybody. It revealed him as a consummate master of invective satire, but it lost him ail his numerous Italian friends, and eamed the stem disapproval of some of the most respected French savants (see Note on p. loo, 1. 57). But its success with the gênerai public was immense, and when, many years later, the vigneron of Touraine took up the cudgels against authority of ail kinds, he wielded a weapon of which he had already proved the efficacy in this literary squabble.

From this incident may be said also to date his bitter hatred for Bonapartism, a hatred which he sometimes found it convenient to tone down a little when he attacked the Bourbon ruie in his pamphlets. He had previously looked on at the Impérial developments with an amused contempt, but in the matter of the < tache d'encre ' he professed to regard himself as offered up by the French authorities in Italy in order to placate the natives, and his indifférence to the Empire became detestation. This is characteristic of the man. He was really, except in his love of the classics, a bilious indifferentist ail his life, and some personal grievance was at the bottom of each of his political feuds.

In 18 12 he finally left Italy, whither he had returned after his Austrian adventure, and the wandering irresponsible Courier of the Lettres^ who was fond of describing himself as a Greek, a Neapolitan, an Italian, or a Swiss, settled down, after a few false starts, to live the life of a rural landowner.

The French hâve ever bcen famous letter-writers, but it may be doubted whether any Frenchman, or Frenchwoman, has ever attained to the absolute perfection of Courier. Many hâve more grâce, more spontaneity, even more wit, but there

and who was to hâve published his revision and completion of Amyot's translation. I hâve omitted this pamphlet from my sélection, because, brilliant as it is, too much of it is necessarily taken up with the petty détails of a rather squalid business. I hâve, however, included the amusing avertissement composed by Courier many years later (1821), when he issued a new édition of the pamphlet.

XVlll PAUL-LOUIS COURIER

is in Courier's Lettres a something which is as unmistakable, and at the same time as indefinable, as the charm of Anatole France's prose. This style, which appears so simple, and of which every word has been weighed, every phrase polished and repolished in accordance with Boileau's precept, has as its foundation the incessant study of the great masters of the seventeenth century — Pascal, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine. It is tinged with réminiscences of the more archaic sixteenthcentury tongue ^ of Rabelais, Montaigne, and Bishop Amyot. It has the perfect restraint and finish of the best French tradition, with an added something that is Greek and Courier : * Il imitait, en effet, les anciens sans fatigue et avec un art adorable dans de petits sujets, soit qu'il adressât à sa cousine, madame Pigalle, du pied du Vésuve des contes dignes de Lucius et d'Apulée (i" novembre 1807), soit qu'aux bords du lac de Luceme, du pied du Righi, il envoyât à M. et à madame Thomassin (25 août et 12 octobre 1809) des idylles malicieuses et fraîches où il aime à montrer toujours, à côté des jeunes filles joueuses ou effrayées, le rire du Satyre. Ce sont de petites scènes parlantes, achevées, faites pour être ciselées sur une coupe antique, sur une de ces coupes que Théocrite proposait en prix à ses bergers. Et là encore se vérifie le précepte favori de Courier : " Peu de matière et beaucoup d'art." A ces jolies bagatelles, travaillées comme une ode d'Horace, Courier donne un poli de style qui rappelle l'éclat du marbre de Paros.' 2

I hâve said above that other writers excel Courier in spontaneity, The fact is that the Lettres^ as we hâve them, are

* Writing from Paris to Mme Courier (Sept. 182 1) he says : 'Il faut que tu me copies deux passages de Brantôme ; c'est dans le tome 30, page 171 et page 333. Dans chacune de ces deux pages tu trouveras ces quatre mots : quand tout est dit. Copie, et envoie-moi les deux passages où se trouvent ces mots.' And again (Oct. 1821), ' Cherche dans Bonaventure Desperriers, nouvelle 74, vers la fin ; tu trouveras ces mots : le plus du temps, c'est-à-dire, la plupart du temps. Copie cette phrase, et me l'envoie dans ta première lettre. '

^ Sainte-Beuve, op. cit. p. 340.