m HENRY BEYLE In Two Volumes, Crown 8vo, pp. 830, Cloth, 12s., RESEARCHES ON THE DANUBE AND THE ADRIATIC; OK CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MODERN HISTORY OF HUNGARY AND TRANSYLVANIA, DALMATIA AND CROATIA, SERVIA AND BULGARIA. " The interest of these volumes lies prirtly in the narratives of travel they contain, und partly in the stores of information on all kinds of subjects with which they abound. Mr Paton is a model traveller. He has even something to tell us of people hitherto unnoticed in the English language. ... It would be impos ible to notice one-tenth of the impoi-tant points in the current history of Eastern Europe on which Mr Paton gives us the benefit of his wide information and his honest and impartial judgment."— ^a^wrday Review. •' If the cause of human aud national progress has reason to be thankful to all those who contribute evidence towards determining its limits and condition, Mr Paton is a real benefactor in right of the two volumes just named. We never came across a work which more conscientiously and accurately does exactly what it pro- fesses to do. . . . Through this labyrinth of races and dialects, Mr Paton is an invaluable guide. He is at homo in lUyria and Dalmatia, on the slopes of the Balkan, on tiie coasts of the Euxine, on the banks of the Danube and the Seine."— Spectator. In Two Vols., Demy Svo, pp. xii.-395, and viii.-446. Cloth, IBs., Second Edition, Enlarged, A HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION, FROM THE PERIOD OF THE MAMELUKES TO THE DEATH OF MOHAMMED ALI ; FROM ARAB AND EUROPEAN MEMOIRS, ORAL TRADITION, AND LOCAL RESEARCH. " Mr Paton tries to show us modern Egypt from something of the Eastern point of view. He knows the c(mdition of Turkey well, as he showed by his ' Researches on the Danube and Adriatic ;' and his practical experience in political affairs during the crisis that followed the IJuttle of Nezib, and again during the bloody civil war in Mount Lebanon, has stood him in goo i stea(i in the present work. The first volume contains a preliminary sketch of Egyptian history from the Moslem Conquest to Napoleon's expedition, which is described at length, with considerable illustration from native writers. But the second volume is the really important part of the book, as it shows what political and social and commercial changes followed the rise of Mohammed All"— Academy. London : TRtJBNER & CO., 57 and 69 LUDGATE HILL. HENEY BEYLE (OTHERWISE DE STENDAHL) $ Critical nnb finjgrap^icnl Stubg ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS AND UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF THE FAMILY OF BEYLE BY ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON AUTHUK OF "RESEARCHES ON THE DANUBE AND THE ADRIATIC," AND " A HISTORY OF THE E<;YPTIAN REVOLUTION" '\ ^A r rS Js: H ^\H^ LONDON TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59 LUDGATE HILL 1874 \^AU rights reserved] ^1^ 3573 f3^ ^^f- 37 \^^ PEEFACE Who was Henry Beyle 1 is a question I have more than once heard asked by people who would have been offended had they been supposed to belong to the non-literary class. Beyle was not a man of universal fame like the Hugos and Lamartines ; nor a man popular and successful, with a distinct specialty, like a Scribe, a Eugene Sue, or a Paul de Kock ; nor one of those noisy politicians who write history ; nor of those quiet historians who give the state the benefit of their theories ; nor a mere critic like the Villemains or Sainte Beuves, however able they may have been. But as a miscellaneous prose writer, who has tried romance, bio- graphy, art, criticism, and philosophic disquisition, he was one of the most original of modern French litterateurs — one of the most eccentric, and, at the same time, one of the most brilliant indivi- duals of modern French society. Inferior to Balzac as an artist, he certainly was his superior in insight into the science of life, and in width of range as a critic of the art of others. His eru- dition was extensive, but not ponderous, for his style was gay, garrulous, and familiar, so as to remind one more of the pleasant flavour of the literary merits of Voltaire than perhaps any other modern writer. Therefore Beyle is one of the French classics of the nineteenth century, and has his place on the French Parnassus. Nay more, his reputation is Europeap with the lovers of choice literature. But, except in his popular and charming " Life of Rossini," he is, to a certain extent, *' caviare to the general," and is more enjoyed by those who have a certain social and intellectual culture than by the great outer public. But apart from literary qualities, I think that his life offers the stuff for a varied biography that may interest the general reader. Beyle was both a regimental and a commissariat officer in those grand armies of the First Empire that swept like a tor- rent over Europe. He was an officer of the imperial household h VI PREFACE. when kings clustered round the fleeting successor of Charlemagne. Beyle made the retreat from Moscow, and when the fabric of the Empire disappeared like the palace of Aladdin, he became a dilettante in art and a lounger in Italy when Canova and Ros- sini shone in their utmost lustre. In his long residence in the capital of the quondam Cisalpine Republic, his days were passed with tL .lontis, the Manzonis, the Byrons, and the Silvio Pellicos. On.his' return to France, he was appreciated by the Destutt de Tracys, the Lafayettes, the Balzacs, and many others, and was in the foremost ranks of the Romantic attack on the Classicists of the Restoration, and was perhaps, more than any other man, the writer who brought home Shakespeare to that public that had hitherto adored Racine. Such a man cannot be other than in- teresting, not only to the lover of literary, but even of general biogtaphy. Beyle was not a great moral writer like the Pascals and the Vauvenargues, but as an acute observer of French manners, he certainly was one of the most brilliant successors of the Ducloses and the Champforts. He has, moreover, sounded the deepest depths and sinuosities of that Italian national character of which the De Brosses and others have painted the surface so ably and so agreeably. Political revolutions have agglomerated rather than fused the component parts of old Italy ; and even if the fun- damental peculiarities of peoples did not change so slowly, the writings of Beyle on Italy would not be the less valuable. In- deed, it is to be remarked, that those who have had the fullest opportunities of observing how the Italian mind operates in every variety of conjuncture, have been the readiest to acknowledge the truth, felicity, and even profundity of the conclusions of Beyle on this distinct and peculiar nationality. It remains to me to state the very great obligations under which I find myself to the surviving members of the family of Beyle, who, with an amount of kindness and of true F-rench- courtesy which I cannot sufficiently acknowledge, placed at my disposal, with slight reserves, the whole of the intimate corre- spondence of Beyle with his family, no part of which has ap- peared in the collected edition of Beyle's letters published some years ago by his friend and executor, M. Colomb. It is difficult to overrate the value of such a treasure-trove to a biographer of Beyle. His sister Pauline was the most confided, beloved, and intimate of all his correspondents, and to this lady, PREFACE. Vll who appears to have been a person of considerable mental powers and accomplishments, Beyle photographed the inmost recesses of Jiis soul during the most active and stirring period of his life. After Beyle became an author, and placed himself in relations of acquaintance with men having a taste for letters, and, in some cases, persons of literary celebrity, there is no great difficulty in tracing his career. The publication of his works w; - 'fis prin- cipal business, and thenceforward the circumstances v his life were closely attached to the preparation and publication of these works. But until this correspondence was placed in my hands, the materials for the construction of Beyle's biography, from the period of his entrance into Government employment down to the fall of the Empire, were rather scanty. Here I saw at once how he served his apprenticeship to that knowledge of the human heart, as well as of literature and art, displayed in his subse- quent works ; and it is not difficult to trace, athwart the smoke of Marengo, Jena, Wagram, and Borodino, the profound future analyst of love and ambition, of tears and of laughter, or the light-hearted admirer of Cimarosa and biographer of Rossini, or the successor of Diderot as a fine-art critic, who so agreeably mingled general literature with special criticism of schools of painting. Nor must I forget my obligations to Beyle's townsmen, M. Pilot, the erudite historian of Grenoble, and conservator of the archives of Dauphin6, whose acquaintance I made through the kindness of the head of his department in Paris ; the accom- plished Francis Wey, who had, in days gone by, more than once broken a lance with Beyle in the literary arena. This gentleman greatly assisted me by the light he threw on the early days of Beyle. I beg leave also to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy of M. Gariel, the conservator of the library of Grenoble, in whose official care are the unpublished manuscripts of Beyle, and who, having been a collector of matter on his brilliant fellow-Dauphi- nois, was so good as to place his stores at my disposition, seasoned with more than one interesting anecdote of Beyle, which the reader will find in the course of the work. I have, moreover, carefully gone over Colomb's various contri- butions to a knowledge of Beyle, as well as the Memoirs of him by M^rim^e, Bussiere, and Rochas, and the technically slighter but really racy notices of Beyle by Balzac, Arnould Fremy, Louis Enault, Charles Mouselet, and others, who have offered the public VUl PREFACE. their reminiscences of, or criticisms on, Beyle througli the medium of periodicals. In the Appendix will be found translations or condensations of some of the principal passages of the notices of Beyle by those accomplished critics and biographers. M. Vice-President Bigillion, of the Delphinal Court of Grenoble, had the goodness to show me the original autograph wills of Beyle, and furnished me with copies of them. As some consuls are not without literary tastes in their leisure hours, I have also to acknowledge the great kindness with which M. Colnaghi, late consul at Milan, Captain Kelly, now resident there, and Her Majesty's consul at Civita Vecchia, aided me in places where Beyle resided so long. To which names I beg leave to add that of Professor Balbi, the accomplished son of my old friend the late Cavalier Adrian Balbi, of geographical and statistical celebrity. I think it right to state, that the numerous extracts from the letters and works of Beyle are not literal extracts, but very close condensations, with rigorous attention to the conveyance of the exact meaning. Beyle was a spontaneous writer, and, like all such writers, inclined to diflfusion and repetition. I apprehend that neither the memory of Beyle nor the patience of the reader will suffer by the method adopted. For myself, I have had one object in view, not to produce an elegant composition while writing this biography, but to throw the greatest possible light on the career of one of the most ori- ginal writers and eccentric individuals of the past generation. Goethe used to say to young authors, "Never present yourself to the public unless you have something curious and new to say to it." My end will be attained should the work be found not unworthy to correspond with this dictum. A. A. P. Ragusa, 1874. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Grenoble, the Birthplace of Beyle — His Parentage and Education — Barnave, Chepy, and the Revolutionary Period — Domestic Anxie- ties — Completes his Education — Goes to Paris at the close of 1799, 1 CHAPTER n. Paris in 1800 — Beyle's Connection with the Daru Family — Becomes Supernumerary Clerk in the War Office — Accompanies the Army to Italy during the Campaign of Marengo — Becomes an Officer of Dragoons — Quits the Army, and Returns to Paris, ... 8 CHAPTER HI. 1803 — Paris during the Consulate — Talma and the French Theatre — Beyle studies Declamation — His Correspondence with his Sister — Precocity of Beyle's Intellect — His Pecuniary Straits — Project of Marriage — His Studies of Parisian Society, . . . .15 CHAPTER IV. Paris in 1804 — Beyle's enthusiastic Admiration of Napoleon, and his Antipathy against Louis XIV. — The Coronation Period of Napo- leon I. — Engages his Sister to sketch Human Character at Gre- noble — His Literary Projects and Studies, 23 CHAPTER V. Some Account of the Tender Attachments of Beyle — Rupture of Pro- posed Marriage — In 1805 he follows an Actress to Marseilles, and becomes a Clerk in a Counting-house there, . . . .29 CHAPTER VI. 1806 — Re-enters the Public Service — Campaign of Jena — Residence in Berlin — Impressions of Iffland andthe German Theatre — Makes the acquaintance of Ancillon — Is ordered to Brunswick as Receiver of Domain Revenues — Sends Wolfenbuttel Manuscripts to the Im- perial Library of Paris — Preparations for his Sister's Marriage, . 39 CHAPTER VIL Brunswick in 1807-8 — Beyle Studies German — Berthier Visits Bruns- wick — Hunting-party at Salzdahlum — Pecuniary Difficulties of Beyle, senior — Youthful Recollections and Tender Attachments, 47 CHAPTER VIIL 1809 — Campaign against Austria — Goes by Strasburg to Bavaria — Impressions of an Army on its March — Nocturnal Adventures — French Army enters Austria, 60 X CONTENTS. PAOB CHAPTER IX. Beyle's Residence in Vienna after the Battle of Wagram — Death of Haydn — Beyle is present at his Requiem — Beyle's Impressions of Vienna in 1809 — A Trip to Hungary — The Emperor Francis, . 65 CHAPTER X. Paris in 1810 — Gaiety of Society — Marriage of Napoleon with Maria- Louisa — Beyle's Mode of Existence — Paris Amateur Theatricals — Ballroom Fire, and Death of Princess Schwartzenberg, . . 69 CHAPTER XI. 1810 continued — Made Auditor of Council of State — Is Attached to the / Household of Napoleon I. as Inspector of the Buildings and Furni- ' ture of the Crown — Plan of Prizes for Philosophical Essays — OfiB- cial Inspection of Sevres — Impressions of Isabey the Painter — In- spection of Versailles and Trianon — Presentation to Maria- Louisaj^ 77 CHAPTER XII. 1811 — Beyle Pursues his Studies of French Society — Obtains Leave of Absence from the Duke of Cadore — Revisits Italy— Interview with a Milanese Lady — Revives his Impressions of Italian Art — His Longing to be Established in Italy, 84 CHAPTER Xin. 1812 — Beyle joins the Expedition to Russia — Beyle's Impressions of August Wilhelm Schlegel — Passage of the Niemen — Commissariat Difficulties — Burning of Smolensko — Beyle's Disappointments and Hypochondria — Burning of Moscow — Retreat from Moscow, . 90 CHAPTER XIV. Arrival in Paris after Retreat from Moscow — Unsuccessful Efforts to J obtain Employment in Italy — Campaign of Liitzen and Bautzen in 1813 — Adventures in Saxony — Controller of the Emperor's Household in Silesia — Serious Illness — Convalescence in Dresden, 99 CHAPTER XV. 1813-14 — Beyle goes on Sick-leave to Italy — His Social Relations in Milan — Crisis of the French Empire — Beyle's Mission to Grenoble — Proceedings on the Swiss Frontier — Fall of the Empire, . 105 CHAPTER XVI. 1814 — Beyle Loses his Employments and Emoluments — Publishes hia Lives of Haydn, Mozart, and Metastasio — Motives for Retiring to Italy — Settles in Milan — His Reduced Circumstances — First Im- pressions of Milan, Ill CHAPTER XVIL Residence in Milan in 1814-16 — Theatre della Scala — Beginning of the Career of Rossini — Literary Society of Milan — Monti, Manzoni, Grossi, and Silvio Pellico — Lord Byron's Residence in Milan — Recollections of Byron — Buratti, the Comic Poet of Venice, . IIG CHAPTER XVIIL Tour through Italy —Correggio — Bologna — Goes by Florence and Rome to Naples — Meeting with Rossini — Henry Brougham, . .126 CONTENTS. XI PAGE CHAPTER XIX. 1817 — Returns to Paris — Publishes " Rome, Naples, et Florence" — Publishes " Histoire de la Peinture en Italie " — Criticism of Edinburgh Review and of Journal desJDehats — Returns to Milan, 132 CHAPTER XX. 1819-20— Death of Beyle's Father— Musical Society in Milan— Beyle Revisits Bologna — Queen Caroline and her Scandals — Beyle calumniously represented as a Spy — Meyerbeer — Mercadante — Count Gallenberg — Lord Byron — Count Guiccioli, . . . 139 CHAPTER XXI. 1821 — Beyle's Admiration of Sir "Walter Scott as a Writer — His un- just Judgment of Scott as a Man from Ignorance of Scottish Feel- ing — A Letter of Byron to Beyle vindicating the Character of Scott — Beyle Expelled from Milan by the Austrian Authorities, 149 CHAPTER XXII. 1821-22 — Beyle Returns to Paris — The Literary Drawing-rooms of the Restoration — Beyle's Dislike of Madame de Stael's Writings, and Admiration of Benjamin Constant — Count Daru during the Re- storation — Beyle visits London — Projects a Literary Journal in Paris — Publication of "De I'Amour," . . . . 154 CHAPTER XXIH. 1823— Publication of "Racine et Shakespeare" — English Actors in Paris — De Jouy, Author of the " iSremite de la Chaussee d'Antin " — Victor Hugo in the Bud — Lamartine — Chateaubriand, . .161 CHAPTER XXIV. 1823-24 — Beyle goes to Rome — Matliieu de Montmorency — BeylePub- lishes his " Life of Rossini " — Rossini's Personal Impressions of Beyle — Beyle seeks Employment as a Fine-Art Critic, . .167 CHAPTER XXV. 1824 — Classicists and Romanticists— Beyle's Opinions of Louis David — Of Eugene Delacroix — Of Sir Thomas Lays^^rence — Of Constable — Of Leopold Robert— Of Chantrey— Of Horace Vernet, . .176 CHAPTER XXVL 1825-26 — Beyle Writes a Pamphlet against the Material Tendencies of the Age — Is Lampooned in Satirical Verses — His Relations with Paul Louis Courier — Revisits England— Publishes his Novel of *' Armance" — It is badly received by the Press, • . , 182 CHAPTER XXVII. Beyle Revisits Rome — His Acquaintance with Canova — Is taken for a Different Person — Roman Society — Cardinal Consalvi — The Di- mid off Amateur Theatricals — Torlonia the Banker, . . .189 CHAPTER XXVin. 1828-29— Sketches of Charles X., of the Duke and Duchess d'Angou- leme, and of the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe — Fur- nishes Notes on Roman Cardinals for Charles X. — Hypochondria — Meditates Suicide — Publishes his " Promenades in Rome," .194 XU CONTENTS. PAQK CHAPTER XXIX. ^ Revolution of 1830 — Beyle's Friends in Power — He is named French Consul at Trieste — Publishes the Novel * * Le Rouge et le Noir " — Beyle's Analysis of the Novel-reading Public in France — Criti cal Examin ation of "Le Rouge et le Noir/ ' , , . ~ . 199 CHAPTER XXX. Beyle leaves Paris for the Consulate of Trieste — His Dislike of his New Post — Visits Venice, and Acquaintance with the Comic Poet Burrati — The Austrian Government refuses Beyle the Exequatur, 205 CHAPTER XXXI. 1831-33 — Beyle is named French Consul at Civita Vecchia — Periods of Beyle's Life — Account of the Impression which Beyle made on the Population of Civita Vecchia — He suffers from Malaria — Carnival in Naples — " Chroniques Italiennes," . . . .212 CHAPTER XXXII. 1834-35 — Letter from Beyle to the Son of Lafayette on the Death of his Father — Relieves his Ennui by Excavation of Tombs— Finds a Bust of Tiberius — His Health Declines — Sufferings from Gravel, 219 CHAPTER XXXIIL ^ 1835-36 — Frequent" Absences from his Post noticed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs — Explanations of his Frequent Visits to Rome and Albano — Italian Energy — Beyle's projected Autobiography, 225 CHAPTER XXXIV. 1836-37— Beyle Returns to Paris on Sick-Leave — Description of the Person and Habits of Beyle at this Period from Contemporary Testimony — Ducoin — Rochas — Charles Monselet — Arnould Fr^my — Romain Colomb — Ary Scheffer and Horace Vernet, . 231 CHAPTER XXXV. 1837-38 — Tour through France — Normandy — Brittany— Marseilles — Lyons Gastronomy — Bordeaux and its Wines — Tours and B^r- anger — Publishes the " M^moires d'un Touriste," . . . 236 CHAPTER XXXVL v 1838 — Beyle Publishes the " Chartreuse de Parme " — It is most Fa- vourably Reviewed by Balzac — ^Balzac's Personal Relations with Beyle — Beyle's warm Acknowledgments of Balzac's Eulogies, . 240 CHAPTER XXXVII. 1839 — Returns to Civita Vecchia— The Duke de Bordeaux in Rome — Exasperated by the Egyptian Question of 1840 — Has an Apoplectic Fit in 1841 — Becomes an Invalid — Goes to Rome for Medical Treatment — Returns to Paris — His Death and Burial, , .248 CHAPTER XXXVIIL The Wills of Beyle — Posthumous Anecdotes, 252 Critical Examination of Beyle's Principal Works, . . . 255 Afpenpix, . 819 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE {OTHERWISE DE STENl CHAPTE^'^;' -?Q^^\> Grenoble, the Birthplace of Beyle — His Parentage and Education — Barnave, Chepy, and the Revohitionary Period — Domestic Anxieties — Completes his Education — Goes to Paris at the close of 1799. Beyle used to say that it was as wrong to apply to the gene- rally speaking uninteresting French landscape the epithet of " La Belle France," as to speak of stern, puritanical England as " Merry England." But there are certainly parts of France to which the epithet may be applied, and to none more so than the Dauphind. In the neighbourhood of the Isere, where the ruggod Alps and sombre forests alternate with rich slopes of pasture and vineyard, is the city of Grenoble, once the Gratianopolis of the decline of the Roman Empire. The interior of Grenoble has little architecture to recommend it save a court of justice in that style of the revival of which there are many charming specimens in France, from Anet to Chenon- ceaux, from the sumptuous palace to its miniature in the domestic hotels of Rouen and other ancient towns. With the exception of this palace of justice and its noble halls, with their luxuriant wood- carving of free cinque-cento character, the interior of the town is plain and dull almost to the lugubrious. But what human pen can describe the glorious exterior and environs of the place ? Salzburg alone of the European cities seems at all comparable to Grenoble in picturesque situation. The dark blue Isere, slightly speckled with foam, rushes down its inclined plane with the Z MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. rapidity of an alpine torrent. On one bank is the bulk of the town, on the other rises the castle, a mountain stronghold of great extent and formidable aspect from its precipitous and almost inaccessible sides. The wide plain of the Graisivaudan, smiling with culture, is seen far and near, dotted with villas and villages. Hills verdant with forests of waving oak and chestnut bound this plain ; and beyond and above these the high and hoary Alps are visible in all the towering grandeur of jagged jjeak and primeval rock, rising out of snows which at noontide have tender shadows of the faintest azure, and at sunset succes- sive gradations of effulgence from brightest gold to those richer orange tints that herald in approaching night.* The inhabitants of Grenoble have been always renowned for their sprightly character. Nor have men of solid renown been wanting to the native city of Beyle. The knightly Bayard, the acute metaphysician Condillac, the once renowned mechanical genius Yaucanson, the eloquent Barnave, and others of minor note, such as the " Gentil Bernard," w^ere natives of the town in which, on the 23d January 1783, Marie Henri Beyle first saw the light. Beyle was born in the sphere most favourable for a man of letters — that section of the middle class in which mental culture is conjoined with easy material circumstances. His father was an advocate at the bar of the Parliament of Grenoble, and his mother the daughter of M. Gagnon, an eminent physician. Beyle lost his mother when only seven years of age, and the grandfather, M. Gagnon, appears to have been moved by tender affection for his deceased daughter to take her children home to liim. The father, M. Beyle, senior, who lived much at his pro- perty at Claix, in the environs of Grenoble, saw the children when he was in town, and had them to spend their summer holi- days with him at his country-house. Beyle, senior, was a man of literary culture, and had a well- stored library of French, Italian, and English classics. He was sincerely attached to the House of Bourbon, and at the same time liberal in his political opinions. But the new democracy filled * The "Graisivaudan," or " Qratianswood " (Qratiani Valdus Densns), was the scene of the exploits of Lesdigui6re, that great soldier of the Protestant cause, who, like his master and friend, Henri IV., turned Catholic for reasons of state. In his last days he was Constable of France. The plantations around his palace, with terraces and marble statues, are at ihe present time the public garden of Grenoble. PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION. 3 him with disgust, hence his preference for a philosophic retirement at Claix with his books and his flowers. His views on human life were considered profound, but in practice he was sybaritic in his habits, and careless in money matters, so that certain imprudent pecuniary investments told in the sequel unfavourably on the patrimonial interests of the family. We have no records of the capacity of Beyle's mother ; but the maternal grandfather, M. Gagnon, having been a physician in good practice, was acquainted with physical sciences. He was the founder of the library of Grenoble, and considered the most literary person in the town, so that Beyle's own subsequent studies on human passions and on temperaments were no doubt due to hereditary qualities. In the family, Beyle's favourite became in the sequel his sister Pauline, a young lady of remarkable intelligence and culture, but somewhat original and independent in her ways. She was three years younger than Beyle. In one of his later letters to her which has passed through my hands, I find his reminiscences to go back to childhood. How he did not love her much in in- fancy; how they had to suffer from a crabbed ill-natured aunt called Seraphine ; how Beyle once beat his sister, and took refuge in the library of Claix ; and how the father came in and threatened the little boy with, " Wretched child, I will eat you !" and how their favourite walk was by the pond-side, with magnificent views of the mountains beyond Voreppe. Whatever befell Beyle in after-life, whether in the whirl of Paris amusements, in the more momentous excitements of Napoleon's victories and reverses, or in the art studies and soft delights of his long Italian retirement, he always had a tender recollection of his beloved sister, and of Claix, with its modest house and garden, and its landscape of green fields and noble mountain profiles. Beyle's first preceptors were priests, who during the revolu- tionary period found themselves fallen on evil tongues and evil days of persecution, even to the risk of life, and therefore some- times suddenly quitted the tuition of the youthful Henri. In the case of Beyle, the boy was father to the man : he was not of a lymphatic, but of a nervous and sanguine temperament, full of curiosity and desire of excitement. One of his peculiarities in after-life was to assume many shapes and adopt many pseu- donyms. Like Swift, he frequently addressed the public, not as a professed author, but as a member of some most unliterary trade or profession ; and this propensity to the pseudonymous showed itself in early life. 4 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. In order to escape claustral discipline, Beyle wrote a letter in a feigned name to his grandfather, pointing out that it would be proper to send the youthful Henri to the " Temple D^cadaire " of the philanthropists, where the young men were enrolled for the new Spartan sort of education of the young France of that age of social and political novelty ; but the cheat was discovered by a hunchbacked writing-master,, who denounced it, to the ire of the grandfather. In spite of this instance of secretiveness, the character of Beyle appears to have been generous and elevated. When all the senior members of the Colomb family were thrown into prison during tlie revolutionary Reign of Terror, the subsequent friend of Beyle, then a little boy, remained alone at home with a nurse, and on the following day was taken to the house of Beyle's grandfather. After dinner the boy slumbered, and yet overheard a conversa- tion in the family as to whether it was safe to incur the suspi- cions of the " Commune " by harbouring the child of those in prison on political grounds. The ill-natured aunt wished to send off the boy Colomb ; but Beyle, not knowing that he was anxi- ously overheard by the friend of his future life, pleaded the cause of the other boy in such a manner as to strengthen their nascent friendship. As the business of this book is not only the life of Beyle, but some little elucidation of the political history of the times in which he lived, we may premise that in 1 760 commenced the sharp debates and contests between the Parliament of Dauphin^ and the Government of Louis XV. as to taxation and the despotic registration of laws. The agitation of twenty-eight years later brought matters to a point, led as it was by such men as Monnier and Barnave. But the legal resistance to despotism bad results which the moderate Monnier never anticipated. The revolu- tionary spirit took possession of Grenoble. On the 7th June 1788 took place the first attack of the people on the troops, with tiles taken from the roofs of houses, and called " La journ^e des tuiles " (Pilot's " Departement de I'lsdre Faits Historiques "). Bernadotte, then a sergeant in the " Regiment Royal Marine," was wounded in the head on this occasion. It was the first overt act of revolution, not only in Grenoble, but of France itself, and has been characterised as such by several eminent historians. During the four following years the inhabitants followed with intense interest the progress of events in Paris ; but the Republic GRENOBLE DURING THE KEVOLUTION. in Grenoble, although completely victorious, was not sanguinary ; and many tears were shed when Barnave, their brilliant Girondin townsman, perished on the Paris scaffold on the 28th of JSTovem- ber 1793. In order to revolutionise the Dauphine in the Jacobin sense, the Commune of Paris sent one Chepy, a native of Cham- pagne, to Grenoble. He was then a man of thirty-eight years of age, with a rubicund countenance, a lively eye, and a sonorous voice. He spoke with fluency, and even with purity, and a literary elegance of style. His title was that of " Commissary of the Executive Power." Chepy began his work by ferreting out all the depots of church silver in private houses, aided by a committee of twenty- one persons. He ordered the arrest of the Bishop as an enemy to philosophy. But Rivier, the president of the committee, said that religion was necessary to prevent the common people from committing robbery and murder. But he was informed that a *' bas peuple " did not exist in France, as all w^ere equal. This man, who passed the night in weeping on account of the un- just arrest of the Bishop, was next day most ungallantly taken to task for having spoken to a citoyenne under arrest with his hat off ! Sixty-five arrests and sixteen summonses to give explanations now followed^ With these arrests commenced " the Reign of Terror " in Grenoble ; not actual guillotine massacres, but the acute apprehension that they were about to supervene — a most awful condition of the mind for pacific citizens. There were no burnings of chateaux in Dauphin^, but Grenoble was melan- choly and deserted. In the Graisivaudan the peasants would not take the assignats, and hid their grain ; hence successive mobs and riots in the town, with plundering of flour stores and bakers' shops. On the 6th of December 1793, the cathedral was converted into a " Temple of reason and truth," Chepy in a Phrygian cap being the chief preacher on the occasion.* This not ineloquent popular tribune, after all his fine harangues, occupied the obscure post of chancellor of the French Consulate at Rhodes, and at the close of the Empire was commissary of police at Brest. * I give a specimen of a priest of this curious period. "V. A, ex- chartreux est depuis la revolution pretre constitutionnel abjure le £ai>a- tisme, part pour la defense de la patrie, et pour donner le coup de grace au monstre encore palpitant vient de faire proclamer son mariage." — (Albin Qras,, "Deux Annies de I'Histoire de Grenoble.") 6 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. The reader may imagine the temporary alarm of the Beyle, Gagnon, and Colomb families. But at Paris, Heurion, the Jacobin deputy of the Is^re to the Convention, pleading with Robespierre, stated that he would be personally responsible for the democratic sentiments of Grenoble, and it was thus saved from having a bloody tribunal. A son of the Duke de Rohan and two priests were the only persons executed in Grenoble during the " Terror." It was in the house of his birth, at the corner of the Grande Rue and the Place Grenette, that the youthful Beyle was a con- temporary and spectator of those events which he followed with an admittedly precocious intelligence. On the establishment of a central school, his priestly tutors were sent away ; a free-think- ing education succeeded to the ecclesiastical one, and until the close of his life Beyle was a determined sceptic. M. Colomb, his schoolfellow and friend through life, gives a lively sketch of Beyle in these youthful days, which we condense for the British reader, who may not be familiar with proper names of persons and places in Grenoble. " Beyle had a keen relish for reading, and a great desire to possess books. One of his first acts of independence was to purchase the works of Florian, on which he spent a louis d'or of twenty-four francs, which was all his capital at that time. He devoured in secret the simple romances of the good-natured Florian. How our young hearts beat with new sensations de- rived from the perusal of 'Estelle,' ' Galat^e,' 'Gonsalve,' and ' Numa'! " We had patriotic sentiments of admiration for the victories of the Republican armies, but, on the other hand, we had the Royalist opinions of our parents. One evening of January 1797, between seven and eight o'clock, Beyle and I with ten other comrades found ourselves opposite the tree of fraternity, which had a superscription painted on canvas — " Hatred to Royalty. Constitution of the year IH." One of us fired at the painted canvas with heavy lead drops, so as to completely disfigure the emblem. This threw our families, who were already ill-famed with the Commune, into a mortal anxiety, for some pe(^ple thought that there was a great con- spiracy against the Republic ; but the authorities treated it as having been done for a wager, and made light of it, consequently no arrest took place. HIS EDUCATION. 7 "Among the pupils of the Central School was a youth of fair complexion, vulgar face, athletic form, and rustic manners, who was nicknamed Goliath by the schoolboys. Beyle, who from his punchy form was called the walking turret \J,a tour ambulante]j cracked his jokes on this man, who on one occasion would no longer stand them, and a conflict of fisticuffs ensued. The com- batants were separated by their comrades, but a duel with pistols was arranged in the fosse of the rampart. The pistols were loaded, and four or five hundred persons were present to see the affair ; but it ended in a burlesque interruption of all possibility of bloodshed by the interference of the bystanders." Beyle at this time studied Latin, belles lettres, drawing, mathematics, and the higher principles of grammar. The prin- cipal professors of the new Central School had been selected by his grandfather, M. Gagnon, and therefore, with his natural talents, he made great progress, and gained most prizes. M. Gagnon took the most lively interest in his studies, the father continuing to live at Claix, in the environs, occupied with rural affairs. Beyle had a turn for mathematics ; but it was especi- ally in literature that his progress was rapid ; and M. Bussiere mentions that, when he was fourteen years of age, his school companions renounced the contest with him in belles lettres in recognition of his superiority, so that he gained the prize of lite- rature without a contest. He studied mathematics in Grenoble down to the autumn of 1799 ; and as his father wished him to complete his studies at the newly-created Polytechnic School of Paris, which was speedily rising to a European celebrity, he left Grenoble for the French capital. MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. CHAPTER II. Paris in 1800 — Beyle's Connection with the Daru Family — Becomes Supernumerary Clerk in the War Ofi&ce — Accompanies the Army to Italy during the Campaign of Marengo — Becomes an Officer of Dra- goons — Quits the Army, and Returns to Paris. Beyle arrived in Paris on the 10th November 1799, as the cen- tury was about to close. Paris was then in the high tide of the eaiety and laxity of the newly re-constituted society of the Directorial period. The huge nightmare of the Revolution had disappeared, and the astounding, almost incredible, victories of the youthful Bonaparte raised the public joy and enthusiasm to fever height. If the boy is father to the man, the man is the descendant of the boy. In Beyle's tender years we find the factors of his subsequent most cherished opinions. From the " Temple D^cadaire " dates his confirmed opposition to all reli- gious belief; and from the natural enthusiasm for the great soldier of the Republic grew that Bonapartist idolatry that shut its eyes to even the crimes and the errors of the First Empire. In Paris his tastes showed themselves to be rather literary and artistic than scientific. M. Bussi^re says that he went to Paris more pre-occupied with the pleasure of hearing Italian music than with mathematics; and what a triad of mathematicians then taught in Paris — Laplace, Lagrange, and Legendre ! It was a distant relationship with the Daru family that launched the youthful Beyle into the society of the Directorial period. The Darus were in the seventeenth century highly respectable tanners in the Rue du Boeuf of Grenoble ; and, as in the case of a majority of the modern noblesse of France and England, the descendants of those enriched by trade and manu- facture passed through the grades of the legal profession to the hiL:her branches of administration. In the middle of last cen- tury the Daru of that day held the considerable post of secre- tary of the " Intendant " of Dauphin^, and afterwards settled with his family in the same capacity in Languedoc. Half a cen- THE DARU FAMILY. 9 tury later, during the Directory, we find ** M. Daru, p^re, " living at Paris with his two intelligent and active sons, Pierre and Martial Daru, who had been especially noticed and employed by Carnot in his career of Minister of War and organiser of victory at the eventful period of the renovation of the military adminis- tration of France. They were both at this time in Camot's office, and the former became one of the most important person- ages of the Consulate and the Empire — Napoleon's Commissary- General of those grand armies that for a few brief years swept victoriously over Europe. Successively Count of the Empire, Senator, Peer of Louis XVIII.'s creation, and President of the French Academy, this man inspired universal respect by his punctuality and integrity as a man of business, by the concilia- tory amenity of his character in situations of great difficulty while serving the most unscrupulous of masters, and by an elastic intelligence and large general knowledge, which was not only displayed in his official functions, but made his conversa- tion relished by that brilliant, literary, scientific, and artistic society of Paris which an Alexander von Humboldt has painted with such graphic felicity. The man who has few allies must storm the world's ramparts himself. How rarely have those who possess allies, escorts, guides, adjutants, and supporters, the consciousness of their ad- vantages ! Among these latter was Beyle. The Darus repeat- edly, during Beyle's career, got Fortune to knock at his door, but with disappointing results. If we consider the influence which such men could use, and in fact did use, for Beyle, the importance of such a connection is obvious. But Beyle, incon- stant, wayward, and with the temperament of an artist, does not seem to have practically appreciated that which most ordinary prosaic men of the world would have grasped at. Beyle was a man of genius, but he had a hundred irresistible impulses which could not be squared with reason.* Yet he was conscious of his own defects, and showed at a subsequent period that he could analyse the mental processes of the prudent and the self- commanding with the rarest felicity. After getting over a supposed menace of chest-disease, Beyle lodged in the house of M. Daru in the Rue de Lille, which had * Rochas, his fellow-townsman, paints him aa "a man of mobility, with a passion for the unexpected and the novel "(" homme de cette mobility, aussi passionn^ pour I'lmprevu et le changement "). — Rochas, '* Biographie du Dauphin^." 10 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. formerly belonged to Condorcet. His principal expense wac from the attraction of the bookstalls ; for he was from youth a helluo lihrorum, and bookstall-hunting was to the end of his life a favourite occupation. After the 18th Brumaire he was employed as a supernumerary clerk in the Ministry of War, Pierre Daru having become the secretary of the department. Beyle's orthography was not always perfect, and M. Daru pinked him as a gainer of literary prizes who had omitted to study the essen- tial and preliminary. Painting was one of the accomplishments studied by the future admirer of Correggio, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo. Regnault, had a not inconsiderable reputation even in the days of David, and Gu^rin was his master ; but Beyle does not appear to have pursued it seriously. The excitements of a mili- tary career and the attractions of literature stopped at the out- set further prosecution of this charming art. The men of Paris appeared flat and prosaic to the young and romantic Beyle, full of enthusiastic admiration of poetry, of art, and of those beauti- ful alpine scenes which he had left behind him in his native Dauphine. He was, moreover, too sincere : if a dullard or a bore fell in his way, he was rather too unscrupulous in showing impatience. But there was in the Paris of this period much to attract an intelligent young man. Through the Darus, Beyle visited several literary societies, and admired the beauty of Madame Constance Pipelet, a rival of the Eecamiers and Talliens of the period. This lady, by second marriage, became Princess of Salm Dyck. Madame Tallien became by a second marriage Princess of Chimay ; and Madame R^camier was offered the hand of a Prince of the House of Prussia, had she consented to a divorce from the good-natured R^camier, which she declined to hear of. But the campaign of Marengo approached, and Beyle's con- cluding labours in the Ministry of War were at the very period when Carnot w^as secretly forging those bolts which the young conqueror was about to launch in Lombardy, after the showy but really disappointing results of the Egyptian campaign. Beyle, it may be well imagined, joyfully accepted the invitation of the Darus to join them in this venture across the Alps; and, indeed, his first temporary settlement in Italy, in the heyday of Napo- leonic success, gave an impress to the whole of the future life of Beyle. When all other illusions had vanished and been dis- pelled, that of an existence in the capital of Lombardy, or on CAMPAIGN OF MARENGO. 11 the shores of its lovely lakes, remained uppermost in his mind as the thing most to be hoped for and desired. In April 1800 Beyle quitted Paris for Dijon and Geneva, and from the latter city he was taken charge of during the pas- sage of the Alps by an old captain, a friend of Daru, who improved him in equitation and in a knowledge in the odds and ends requisite for campaigning ; and, as he climbed the heights, the imagination of the future historian of Italian painting and song seems to have made excursions of the most delightful de- scription. In this expedition arts and arms were combined to inflame the fiery youth and the dilettante. He exclaims, with enthusiasm, " I had an execrable lot from seven to seventeen years of age ; but, since I have passed the St Bernard, I no longer complain of my destiny ! " Beyle was first under fire when the army had to pass the small town and fortress of Bard, the cannon of which, perched on a conical rock, completely commanded the narrow defile of the Doria, and for a time did deadly execution. But this was not an obstacle to stop such a general and such an army. The passage was forced, and Beyle entered Ivrea with Lannes ; and here Beyle was delighted to hear the first Italian opera in Italy, the " Matrimonio Segreto " of Cimarosa, which to Beyle was one of the greatest pleasures of his life. In one of his letters to his sister Pauline, he mentions not Ivrea, but Novara, as the place where the first audition of the *' Matrimonio Segreto " gave him so much pleasure. Colomb, who had many of his papers, mentions Ivrea. Be this as it may, warlike adventure and music were the excitements of his soul at this time, and to these we may add painting. Milan, as might be expected, made a great impression on the youthful Beyle. Although not in recent centuries the seat of a sovereign dynasty, Milan retained, nevertheless, something of the grand air of a capital, from the number of its wealthy fami- lies, the noble proportions of its domestic architecture, the abundance of shop luxuries, the crowds of foot-passengers, and the number of handsome private equipages that thronged its streets. Its cathedral, and last, not least, its public amusements — in particular La Scala, one of the most renowned opera-houses of Europe — were sufficient to delight Beyle, in addition to what every Transalpine enjoys after reading all one's youth about Italy — viz., the curious and peculiar pleasure of feeling 12 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. one's-self actually within the first large Italian town after passing the Alps.* On the 14th of June 1800, Beyle was, in his professional capacity as clerk of commissariat, present at a spectacle of a different description — the battle of Marengo — if not one of the greatest, at least one of the most rapid, brilliant, and deci- sive, of the marvellous Napoleon legend, which repaired the ugly rents made in the newly acquired possessions of the Re- public during the hero's absence in Egypt, and which re-estab- lished the Cisalpine Republic. Beyle then entered the office of M. Peti^t, Governor of Lombardy, but getting tired of the desk, he in September following entered the Sixth Dragoons, and, after a month, received the Epaulette of sous-lieutenant, and as aide-de-camp of one of the generals of division under Brune, he made the campaign of the Mincio, the success of which, combined with that of Hohenlinden, forced Austria to sign the Treaty of Lune- ville, and paved the way for the brief general pacification of Europe in 1801. Beyle, according to the opinion of his military superiors, acquitted himself most creditably in his duties ; but his temper was lively, and a wound which he received in the foot was from a pink in a duel. Beyle was delighted with the large towns of Northern Italy, which are so full of fascination for an artistic soul. He was not afraid to stand the fire of the troops of the hereditary rival of France ; but it appears that he was neither true soldier enough, nor true philosopher enough, to withstand the ennui of the small garrison-town life of Savigliano in Piedmont, where he was quartered on the peace ; and, to the disgust of his protec- tors, and the displeasure of his family, he resigned his commis- sion and returned to Grenoble. The liberty of Paris and Milan, and the license and excitements of the Italian campaign, had spoiled Beyle for the enjoyment of the tranquil and methodical life of his father and grandfather. Goethe justly compares the really strong and patient man in the successful quest of happiness to the knight of the Middle * In a note on Beyle's residences in Milan, obligingly communicated to me from that city, I find that he was introduced to the Palazzo d'Adda by the Darus, and that after the peace he made a trip to the Boromean Islands with a son of the Austrian General Melas, and was shown the laurel on which Napoleon had carved with his own hand the word "bataille." SECOND RESIDENCE IN PARIS. 13 Ages, who submitted passively to all the acts of penance previously to that investiture which gave him possession of the avenues to rank, wealth, and power, and to the favour of his lady-love. " For him," says Goethe, " who knows how to wait with patience, perseverance, and strength of soul, all the blessings and enjoyments of human life are accessible." This was a truth which Beyle, the brilliant Frenchman, never knew, or at least never realised. Ennui in a thousand shapes was the demon of Beyle's existence ; sometimes in the form of a blank in social intercourse, or of the want of pabulum for his literary and artistic appetite, or in some indispenable ceremonial act to perform, or as often in the form of a bore, whose loqua- city or vulgarity might disturb his golden daydreams. Ennui tortured Beyle through life. Now, the man of strong masculine temperament never has a moment of ennui ; therefore, with these ever-recurring feminine vapours, Beyle was indisputably, however brilliant, eccentric, and original, yet certainly not a man of masculine and well-balanced mind. After various negotiations with his father, an arrangement was made by which Beyle was to remove to Paris, and an allowance of 150 francs a month was to be paid to him. This income of five francs a day admitted of no luxuries, but Beyle made it suflScient for his purpose, which was to renew his real education by the perusal of the greatest classic authors of the old or new period. Montaigne, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Cabanis, the great physiolo- gist, and Destutt de Tracy, the most popular philosophical writer of that day, were the favourite authors of Beyle during his second residence in Paris. It was the period of the reconstruction of French society after the revolutionary crash, and of reaction against the political and irreligious theories of the Revolution. The brilliant Rivarol, in his exile at Hamburg, the judicious and practical Mallet Dupan, the too magniloquent Chateaubriand, the justly esteemed Joseph de Maistre, and Bonald, had fought the battle either of temperate liberty or of Christianity with signal ability. In the seat of power was the youthful conqueror of Lombardy, with the fresh laurels of Marengo on his brow. He had outdone all the wonders of the Paladins of story; and even although unsuccessful in the East, the very boldness of his ventures in the countries of the mysterious and the marvellous had not dimin- ished his prestige He was the legendary and poetical hero of war ; in the prose of politics abroad and at home, the unscrupulous 14 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. Italian statesman of the school of the Machiavelli period. What an incarnation of the creative genius and unscrupulousness of that Italian race that produced Christopher Columbus and Caesur Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci and Gian Galeazzo Visconti ! Beside him was Talleyrand, with the distinction of the aristo- crat, and with the suavity and perfect self-command of the priest. What a superabundance of the wisdom of the serpent and of the art of saying the right thing at the right time ; but with too little of the distinctly uttered individuality and strength of principle and will which mankind invests with the noble attri- bute of character ! Where was the crowd of bedizened nobles that once thronged to the CEil de Boeuf? Gone to all the holes and corners of Europe, to grieve and lament, to project counter-revolutions and to sulphur matches for daily bread. Their gilded salons were still there, but peopled by enriched plebeians — a Barras or an Ouvrard — or bold and successful speculators of the " Black band," fierce Phrygian-capped orators, now Turcarets or bowing courtiers, and sumptuous self-satisfied amphytrions. But the aristocracy of beauty still held its sway, at the head of which was the R^camier, sans shield, sans gules, sans or, sans argent, but supreme in expression, complexion, grace, symmetry, and that cordial goodness which doubled all her charms. One of the most terrible of political tempests had swept over France, but fair weather and bright sunshine has returned to illumine the wreck of all this fleeting grandeur. The sufferers thought their misfortunes unique in human history. Error and delusion ! We open those curious pages of Aristotle, in which tlie sage of sages records the revolutions in those states that afterwards made up into vast conglomerates the Macedonian and Roman empires ; and in their countless revolutions we find faithfully recorded the perpetual doom of the rich when they are no longer strong enough to resist the poor. PARIS DURING THE CONSULATE. 15 CHAPTER III. 1803 — Paris during the Consulate — Talma and the French Theatre — Beyle studies Declamation — His Correspondence with his Sister — Precocity of Beyle's Intellect — His Pecuniary Straits — Project of Marriage — His Studies of Parisian Society. The reader mcay remember in Alexandre Dumas' curious novel of the " Mdmoires d'un Mddecin," a youth named Gilbert, who had the passion of the day for philosophising in season and out of season. The youthful Beyle reminds one of the spirit of that age. New Year's Day brings an effusion of affection to his sister Pauline, but tinted with that spirit of analysis which seems to envelop everything, even family ties. Addressing her from Paris on the 1st of January 1803, he writes : — " How can I fail to write to her to whom I might for ever talk? I make progress in my studies here, it is true, but how cold is science compared with feeling ! God, seeing that man is not able to feel, perpetually, has given him science, in order to divert him from the indulgence of passions during his youth, and to occupy him in his last days. Most unfortunate and worthy of compassion is the cold heart which can only imbibe knowledge. "I do not wish to remain for ever at Grenoble, because nothing is so painful to the soul like being surrounded by little- ness. I am lodged on a sixth floor, opposite the Colonnade of the Louvre. Every evening I see the sun, the moon, and all the stars set behind the galleries which have seen the great age [le grand siecle]. I can imagine seeing the shades of the Great Conde, of Louis XIV., of Corneille, and of Pascal hidden behind those great columns, and their unfortunate descendants receiving an asylum in the midst of them. When I arrive at Grenoble we will go to Claix [where his father lived], and I will explain Tasso to you if you know enough of Italian for that. . . . This reminds me of ' Zadig,' a little novel of Voltaire's, the object of which was to prove several philosophical truths as yet unintelli- gible to you ; nevertheless, you can ask our grandfather to read it, and explain the things in it beyond your capacity." 16 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. In person, the subsequently heavy, corpulent Beyle was in these youthful days a dancer at endless balls. ^* Send me more gloves," was the burden of one of his letters to his sister Pauline. Those youthful Parisian ladies, who then danced in classic semi- nudity, as a Tallien did, pestered him with commissions for gloves when they knew that he came from the staple city of this Alpine manufacture. Beyle again had a full opportunity of enjoying the theatre in the perfection of the so-called classic manner, which he afterwards, as a revolutionist, combated so rudely. Talma was in the zenith of his genius, and not as in his later period, when the caustic Paul Louis Courier described him as " a fat lover of sixty with a hoarse voice." With theatrical oratory in the legislative chambers, and the declamatory genius of Talma on the boards of the theatre, it is not surprising that the youthful Beyle had the mania of recitation, so that in February 1803 he burst a blood- vessel from declaiming alone in his room, after having caught cold the night before in waiting as one of the chilled queue of the theatre to witness a comedy in which the admirable Fleury played a leading part. This gave him a fright, and he wrote home to Grenoble with an uneasy apprehension of having a weak chest. But this fear was groundless. He grew to have a robust and almost herculean frame. In his letters of this period, we find him constantly acting as an intellectual tutor to his sister Pauline, and trying to teach the " young idea how to shoot" in the mind of that lady. t *' Men study in order to escape ennui, and our genius is often determined by the first object that presents itself. As a proof of this, I may mention the case of Vaucanson " [the celebrated mechanical genius of Grenoble], " a fine bust of whom is visible in the town library. His mother had for her confessor a monk whose cell was contiguous to the clock-tower. The boy had ennui while his mother was at confession, and this vacancy of mind led the young Vaucanson to study the movements of the pendulum. He approached the mechanism of the clock, and from step to step came to understand it. He planned a similar machine, and carried it out with a knife and pieces of wood so as to have a going clock, and thus from one step to another he ultimately came to make the celebrated mechanical flute-player." In this letter Beyle gives some well-known anecdotes of Shakespeare, whose name he informs his sister is pronounced " Ch^quespire." CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS SISTER. 17 A few days later Beyle writes convinced that the poor nations have been the most greedy of glory, and have more abounded in great men than the opulent nations. He maintains, with the ardour of a reader of the New Testament, of Plutarch, and of Cornelius Nepos, that virtue, happiness, and poverty form a trio that have close companionship. This Horatian sybarite began life, after the cessation of his scholastic studies, with the most rigorous Spartan philosophy. On the 19th March, he begs his sister to avoid all running after conceits in style, " for there is nothing so disagreeable as to see people hunting after clever phrases." He counsels much perseverance in study. " I believe that there are few men who have so little natural capacity for languages as I have ; but I felt the necessity of an effort, and two years hence I will be well acquainted with Greek, Latin, English, and Italian." Beyle does not appear to have pushed Greek very far, but he became an excellent Italian scholar, thanks to Italian opera and the great classics of Italian poetry, which he knew almost by heart. At a subsequent period of life, he complained that he had little enjoyment left in the perusal of these masterpieces, because every line told him what was coming. In English his knowledge was considerable, and, after the Peace, he became a regular reader of the Edinburgh Review ; but he always wrote English with Gallic locutions. In his confidential correspondence with his sister at a latter period, as well as in his own manu- script notes, there is much English, so as occasionally to form a curious mosaic. The object was, no doubt, to thwart indiscreet curiosity. Beyle was at all periods of his life a gr«at admirer of natural scenery and of beautiful gardens, but not of " Les Jardins" of the Abb6 Delille. On this subject he WTites to his sister in March 1803 : — "Arrange to go to Claix as soon as I shall have arrived at Grenoble, for I love the fields, and not town mud. Man is happiest in the midst of trees, and there all the people, especially the Orientals, who are connoisseurs in pleasure, have placed their paradise : the Moslems will inhabit beautiful gar- dens after death. In * Telemachus,' the Elysian fields have arbours. Adam and Eve dwelt in a garden. Let us therefore draw near to the country, and let us enjoy the authors who de- scribe it, but not the Tartuffe lovers of nature, like the Abb^ Delille. Bernardin de St Pierre, on the contrary, is a true lover of rural life." 4 18 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. Anecdotes of genius and virtue, but rather too well known for quotation, fill up much of his correspondence in the months of April, May, and June 1803. The " Sorrows of Werter " and the poems of Andre Chenier appear to have been the favourite read- ing of the then sentimental Beyle, who was later to be one of the heads of the most realist school of French writers. The prosaic details of life, as in the " Diary " of a Pepys or in Swift's " Letters to Stella," come sparingly before the reader of this intimate correspondence. His mind was always soaring to the abstract, even in writing to the most intimate and familiar of his friends ; but there are occasional exceptions. In one letter we are reminded of the costume of the period, in an order to send him black silk for the breeches of his dress suit. In a sub- sequent letter we find that his immediate circumstances were as straitened as could well be imagined in the case of an educated young man entering the world. One letter reminds one of B^ranger's amusing account of the man who has only one pair of trousers, and the tours perjldes that this one pair of small- clothes is apt to play with the wight who has no change. In the case of Beyle, it was a pair of shoes whose upper leather gave way ; and he relates how it required all his ingenuity to insert a little black paste under the hole to hide it. He adds, " I owe money to the boarding-house where I dine, and where I 'm not known. I also owe money to my doorkeeper and to my tailor. Long ago my w^atch was in pawn. I have gone nowhere for a fortnight back for want of twelve francs. I neglect M. Dam, General Michaud, and Mdlle. Duchenois. What reasons for despair ! " In regard to light literature, he says that he reads a novel a month, because it moves his soul ; and he recommends a list, in which I find those which were fashionable in the days of black silk breeches — " Adele de Senanges," the works of the Abb^ Prevost, ifcc. He adds, that ** the only one to be refused to a young lady is * Gil Bias ; ' but it is requisite to know it, not only from its celebrity in literature, but in order to get a knowledge of the w^orld from the truth and the felicity of the characters, such as the Archbishop advised by Gil Bias to make no more homilies. There is nature for you ! " Study and literature thrust ideas of a military career into the background. In the summer of 1803, Beyle refused an offer to be aide-de-camp of General Michaud, '' who had a superb sphere of inspection — Lisle, Dunkirk, Ostend, and Calais. It CaRRESPONDENCE WITH HIS SISTER. 19 cost me an effort to decline going with this good and great man, whom I like so much, and who has so much confidence in me." Paris, with its art, its theatres, and its society, delighted Beyle^ although he afterwards preferred Italy. The Louvre was now enriched with all the spoils of Italian galleries ; but Beyle had the foible of the period for the works of French painters, such as Gu6rin, whose works English eyes have seldom admired, not only from an absence of cbiaroscuro, but from poverty of colour, and abundance of theatrical poses and strange gestures, although undoubtedly Gu^rin attained eminence through his drawing, his occasionally felicitous dramatic invention, and his classical erudition. Twenty years later Beyle was an enemy of David, Guerin, and all the classics, and the sturdiest advocate of painters turning their backs on Greek and Roman story, and reproducing modern life and actuality. But Beyle was not insensible to the defects of Parisian life, how- ever fond of the town he might have been ; and there are yearnings for the frank simplicity of those provincials who were occasion- ally the objects of his pleasantry, as in the following, of the spring of 1803 : — " Why art thou not here, my good Pauline 1 for in that case my wishes would be satisfied. The civilisation of the great towns expels the pleasures of the heart. I have many acquaint- ances, but one is always in representation, and one must be clever and agreeable. Now, without simplicity there is no happiness, and nothing freezes like dignity. But one finds more good sense than elsewhere ; the women are not gossips, as in the provinces ; they are in the society of great men of all descripti >ns ; they have just ideas of all things, and appreciate the 'Phedre' of Guerin with as much zest as an ice at Frascati's : their defect is a want of feeling. There are many dry souls in the world, people who have never had in their lives a moment of unctuous sadness and tenderness, such as you and I have felt. They have two passions — vanity and love of money. We people of sensibility have an enjoyment in sadness. Passing through the Rue des Orties, so silent and narrow, I met a woman of forty, but older looking from misery, and a child. She sang a song suited to the taste of a corps de garde. I reflected that her song, which was of equivocal taste and morality, produced on the auditor an impression opposite to that of sympathy ; the song was an ex- tinguisher of pity. I thought to myself, ' Hfer bad morals have 20 MEMOIRS OF HEKRY BEYLE. reduced her to misery';' and yet I repented at having given nothing to this poor mother." With February 1804 came a project of marriage to a young lady of fortune ; but Beyle, whose career in subsequent years was to be a man of letters, did not think proper to avail himself of this opportunity of establishment in life, which would have allowed him to follow whatever studies he chose, without those pecuniary straits which subsequently, in 1829, brought him to the verge of suicide. On the other hand, with his wayward and in- constant nature, it is to be doubted if he could have procured domestic happiness to the lady in question ; and with regard to Beyle himself, he certainly was not a man of mercenary calcula- tions. On three distinct occasions he could have married with pecuniary advantages, and after half-a-dozen interesting approxi- mations, on which we shall have more to say anon, he died a bachelor. He writes in February 1804 — " I must choose a profession, and the only one that is suitable is the military career, for it is the one that causes me the smallest amount of ennui. I might render myself^ independent, but by placing myself under the yoke of another. This morning I had to breakfast with me a man who gave me to understand that I might have a certain young lady wlio has at present 300,000 francs, and who will have 500,000 ; but I do not yield to the temptation, for I should be the slave of society and all its usages. I should have a fine house, and perhaps not a hole where I could quietly read Corneille or Alfieri. Nevertheless the proposal has rather upset me. If it should be managed, I should travel four months a year. " I have made the acquaintance of a man of four-and-thirty, who has great learning and profound sensibility of soul. 1 had true pleasure in conversing with him. He has just returned from Italy, where he passed seven years. We speak of Alfieri, Monti, Pindemonte, Cesarotti, 140 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. mentions that in Milan Rossini's social headquarters would be at the piano of Elena Vigano. The subsequently famous Giuditta Pasta was then in Milan, working seven hours a day to- acquire that mastery of vocalisation which astonished and de- lighted us in our younger days, in addition to those noble dramatic powers which made her the incomparable Medea, Semiramide, and Norma of her age and generation. Of the decadent Grassini, who was the queen of opera before Catalani, and the great prima donna during the Italian campaigns of Napoleon, we learn that she was to receive £400 for singing two months at Brescia. In December 1819, Beyle writes, " I pass my evenings with Rossini and Monti : all things considered, I prefer extraordinary to ordinary men. I pass here for an ultra anti-Rossinian [pro- bably for his publication on Haydn and Mozart]. Rossini is very droll, and has wit [esprit]. He composes music as Bombet [i.e., Beyle himself] writes his letters — without knowing how. Schiller, on the contrary, wrote admirable tragedies, containing ideas on the sublime worthy of M. Cousin," Beyle's admiration of men of genius was not confined to those generally acknowledged as such, but also comprised those who, having made a great impression on their immediate circle, had not attained European fame, and yet called forth enthusiasm in their more restricted sphere. Have we not seen the same thing at home? — the popular Wesleyan preacher, whose name is better known to small citizens of small towns in Lancashire or York- shire than those of Bossuet or Channing ; the fluent Cicero of the Northern Circuit, the Hastings of Snugborough, or the unappre- ciated Junius of some broadsheet in a remote province of the United Kingdom. Few of our readers have heard of Razori, although not unfrequently mentioned with eulogy, and even with admiration, in purely Italian society of forty years ago. Beyle's sketch of him is distinct and graphic, although overdone. " Poor as Job, as gay as a lark, and as great as Voltaire, Razori has an iron will. I place in the first rank of the men I have known, Napoleon, Canova, and Lord Byron, then Razori and Rossini He is a physician, an inventor, a poet, and a writer of the first merit. He means to live on literature, and is now translating from the German. His conversation is astonishing, and he has a haggard but superb countenance, with lineaments fit for a cameo. If he was at Paris, he would trouble a little the concert of reciprocal eulogies that your savants offer each other with such touching concord." AFFAIRS IN SPAIN. 141 The reading that Beyle liked most was that of men who had had opportunities of seeing human affairs, and who were at the same time *' non-dupes." First of all he places the recognised men of genius, and then the sharp shrewd men of the world, such as Saint Simon, Bezenval, and Duclos, although the first was, with his pretensions in matters of futility, in many respects a ridiculous personage.* Modern Spanish history was a subject with which Beyle occupied himself at this time. Wliether he projected any work on the subject does not appear, but he read through De Pradt Escoiquiz I'lnfantado, Cevalhos, Rocca, and Azanza. Some time before the Spanish Constitutional outbreaks, there were already signs of Ferdinand VII. beginning to find out that it was hatred of the Emperor Napoleon which had replaced his dynasty on the throne of Spain, and not purely loyalty to his sacred person ; in short, that discontent began to brew among his liberal subjects, notwithstanding the eminent qualities of this monarch of pious memory, who had with his own royal hand honoured the ancient craft of tailors by an act of frater- nity in embroidering a petticoat for the Holy Virgin. But the result of Beyle's reading, although favourable to the Constitutional principle in Spain, yet was, in all that regarded the previous French occupation, sufficiently curious to us English people. He is shocked at the Spanish nation not appreciating the magnanimity of the Emperor Napoleon I. ; and he con- siders that the Emperor was " the dupe of his goodness of heart," and this after the too notorious transactions of Bayonne. In a long letter to M. Colomb, in which he develops his ideas on this subject, he maintains that the Spaniards threw away a splendid opportunity in not accepting Joseph as king. It does not strike Beyle that other nations might hesitate to be beholden to Napoleon, as the self-elected benefactor of the human race, for their constitutional liberty. According to Beyle, the object of the sub- jugation of S[>ain by Napoleon was to endow a corrupt people with the constitution of the United States of America ! According to our notion, the greatest of all human liberties is the liberty of Europe, when menaced by such traditional crushers as the Napoleons the First and the Nicholases the First ; and the most necessary and most elementary of all liberals are those Wellingtons, Bliichers, Von Steins, and Stratford de Redcliffes, * What rank will the " Memoirs of Talleyrand " occupy if given uncon- tracted ? He certainly was a perfect type and model of the *' uou-dupe." 142 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. who have said to those traditional crushers " So far, and no further." The completing and decorating liberals, with their domestic reforms, are welcome to come afterwards, and occupy the second rank ; but in the first rank are those of whom we have spoken. The greatest moralist of his age is the statesman who has most fearlessly applied the principles of international law to policies that are aggressive or illegal. In 1819 party spirit ran high everywhere; in France, where many people were more royalist than royalty itself; in England, the times were out of joint with Habeas Corpus Suspension Acts, ^1nd the recent scenes of blood and violence ; in Germany, where Kotzbue fell by the hand of a youthful democrat; and in Spain and Italy, where sanguinary revolutions were about to break out a year later. The press, where it was not absolutely gagged, partook of the asperity or scurrility of political parties to an extent that would appear surprising in an age like ours, when a relative amount of sober taste prevails in the leading organs of public opinion. This scurrility and personality was also in full possession of the domains of literature. Not only did the Cobbets and Paul Louis Couriers attract general attention from the power and piquancy of their writings, but the style of a modern Edinhurgh lieview or a Revue des Deux Mondes would have appeared apathetic and somnolent to those who wrote in the Edinhurghs, the Quarterlies, and the Blackwoods of those days, not to mention the lampoons of the most oflfensive description in pamphlet and caricature. Beyle gives literary reasonings according to the fashion of 1819. " This man is not of my opinion, therefore he is a fool ; he criticises my book, therefore he is an enemy. He is my enemy, therefore he is an infamous man, a robber, an assassin, a forger," &c., &c. At the same time Beyle was for the complete liberty of the press, because " a collection of bayonets and guil- lotines could no more stop an opinion than a collection of louis d'ors could stop the gout." Next year, in March, Beyle wrote a letter to Thomas Moore, with three copies of his "History of Painting in Italy ;" and I think it not improbable that he had made the acquaintance of Moore through Byron. Certainly these two gay, sensuous, and amiable men were made to be pleased with each other. They both hated British cant, not with the ferocity of Byron, but as laughing philosophers. Beyle thus writes to Moore, in March 1820 — ** The friends of the charming author of * Lalla Rookh ' must be persons who feel the influence of the arts. Thej no doubt QUEEN CAROLINE. 143 form a peart of the happy few for whom I write, very sorry that the rest of the human canaille should read my reveries. Pray present the three copies enclosed to your friends. I have read ' Lalla E-ookh ' for the fifth time, and am surprised such a book should appear in England, which has been corrupted by Hebrew ferocity." Beyle was not felicitous in this expression. Puritanism may harden and siseel the hearts of men, and remove them from amene arts, but it does not corrupt a nation as excessive luxury, with its accompanying relaxation of the nervous system, is sure to do. " Sseviors armis luxuria incubuit," was the motto chosen by a distinguished modern painter for his now famous representation of a nation falling into corruption. Beyle revisited Mantua, Bologna, and other towns, in 1820, and the account he gives of the Roman administration is positively comic ; it might pass for an account of an old Turkish seraglio, with its eunuchs and sultanas. He declares that they have gTQdii finesse, but that " they would rather pass through the keyhole, than go through the trouble of examining twenty pages of accounts full of figures." The ordinary rent of land was 8 per cent. Loans usually produced 15 per cent., and a man who took only 12 per cent, was considered to act with delicacy. More than one English observer of Italian economical affairs has been surprised by the very large sums left by Bolognese bankers, but the opportunity for rapid accumulation here indi- cated accounts for such fortunes ; to which must be added the large sums gained by tobacco and other monopolies, and an osten- sibly economical mode of living in order to veil such large gains from public criticism. The affairs of Queen Caroline of England occupied the Italians at this time. Bergami] had made his fortune out of her, by taxing all her bills to his secret profit. Beyle says that he had seen letters of four or five pages of her writing, in bad French, "full of fire, of ideas, of pride, and of courage." Beyle thinks that the lax and easy society of Italy would have overlooked her having a handsome colonel for her lover, but would not tolerate the idea of a menial having a criminal inter- course with a queen. Beyle styles her a " heroine of a corps de garde.^^ It was in tliis year, 1820, that Beyle experienced one of the most disagreeable incidents of his residence in Milan — a report 144 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. that he was the spy of the French Government. He observed that several people did not salute him as usual, and then he re- ceived a letter from a friend revealing the cause of this coolness. This affair he considered as a terrible blow. Some people had been saying, " What is this Frenchman doing here 1 " And Beyle maintained that the Milanese did not precisely understand his philosophic mode of existence; and he thought that people had no right to criticise a man because he lived more comfortably at Milan with a few thousand francs a year, than in Paris with double the money. What most shocked him was, that he was told that if he went into a certain society, several people would walk out. Beyle wrote on this occasion to one of his Paris correspondents, " This is the most acutely felt blow which I have received in the course of my life," Political life abounds in such unjust and annoying calumnies, especially in countries where hostile secret systems of police are in conflict ; and the readiest to utter such calunmies are fre- quently those who really are themselves guilty of political cor- ruption. Besides the ignorant and incapable, who misjudge a man for having a laudable thirst for political knowledge, there are not a few people who have a positive enjoyment in the exer- cise of diabolical malignity when it is directed against people whose convictions, however sincere, are in diametrical opposition to their own. In Beyle's case, as in that of all really sincere and straightforward men, the impression does not appear to have been permanent. In August 1820, Beyle noticed that the Italian public was getting tired of Rossini. Writing to a friend in Paris, he says, " His reputation is more general than ever, so as to have extended to the lowest classes of society, but the inclination returns to 'Mozart and Cimarosa, or rather seeks novelty. Mer- cadante of Naples seems to me to be very pale. In October, we will liave in Milan an opera of M. Meyerbeer, a Berlin Jew burning with enthusiasm for music — an enthusiasm guaranteed against ridicule by an income of eighty thousand francs a year ; but, like the music of Mercadante, that of Meyerbeer produces no new sensations, notwithstanding the best possible inten- tions. He leads a solitary life, working fifteen hours a day at his music." This was certainly the period of the temporary decline of Bossini. After the splendid outburst with "Tancredi" and " L'ltaliana," he had reached the acme of his second manner in MERCADANTE. 145 '' II Barbi^re," '' Otello," " Cenerentola," and " La Gazza Ladra ;" but there were others below this high level, and others again, such as " Torvaldo e Dorliska," " La Gazetta," "Adelaide di Borgogna," " Edoardo e Cristina," and " Bianca Faliero," which, having here and there a good piece, were incapable of vitality from the haste and utter carelessness with which they were written. There were, again, considerable signs of the "Ercles vein" in ''La Donna del Lago " and " Matilda di Sciabran ; " but the real resumption of dominant power was not to be until "Zelmira" and " Semiramide." As for Mercadante, he was not destined to be a Kossini, but a respectable, and occasionally a distinguished, composer. That he had a happy vein for melody will be disputed by no one who remembers the number of very pretty airs in " Elisa e Claudio," "Donna Caritea," "Didone Abbandonata," and "La Testa di Bronzo." Moreover, we find in his masterpieces, "II Bravo," " La Vestale," and " II Giuramento,'' a considerable knowledge of the resources of the orchestra ; but he certainly had not the real force of original genius which Kossini and Bellini had, so as to constitute an epoch. When Beyle wrote the above lines, Mercadante had not taken his place in Italian music. He has now terminated his mortal career ; and although a very pleasing eclecticism cannot be denied him, it seems doubtful if his works will live, except in the records of musical historians. His great finale in the " Giuramento," beginning " Alaisa in queste eoglia," is certainly written with both science and inspiration, and appears to be his masterpiece. Had he always written on this high level, a robust longevity might be predicted for his compositions. The earlier part of the Italian career of Meyerbeer was suffi- ciently " pale," to use Beyle's expression relative to Mercadante. " Emma di Resburgo " and her sisters have not survived. But to every art there must be an apprenticeship ; and if Meyerbeer had not gone through the process of writing those forgotten Italian operas, he could not have come out with such splendour as in the " Crociata," not to mention his subsequent masterpieces, which made an epoch in the creation of what is called "grand opera." The fifteen hours a day of work mentioned by Beyle produced golden results. Beyle writes from Milan in December 1820, more than ten K 146 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. years before the production of " Robert le Diable " appeared, " Meyerbeer is a man like Marmontel or Lacretelle — some talent, no genius. When he writes a cantabile, he takes a popular air from the streets. He leads a solitary life, working fifteen hours a day at his music, and no longer plays the piano in society, although one of the first pianists in Europe. Rossini repeats his own ideas ; he is very corpulent, and eats twenty beefsteaks a day. As to Carafa, one good opera might be made out of the pieces of his various operas. The young Pacini, a handsome youth of eighteen, has made or stolen a sublime duet out of a scene in which Frederick the Great refuses the mistress of one of his officers a pardon for her lover, after being condemned to be shot." I give these extracts, not for the purpose of unfairly parading Beyle's making out Meyerbeer to be no more in music than a Marmontel or a Lacretelle in literature, but in order to show the sort of gossip current in Italy about men whose fame was then budding. The auditor of " Robert" and the " Huguenots" in after years would, no doubt, have revised his judgment. One of the best known names in Vienna, when tlie century was only a quarter old, was that of Count Gallenberg, who in the latter part of the reign of the Emperor Francis was the inspector of the Karnthner Thor Opera when it had attained the highest European reputation for its perfect rendering of the classical German opera in all its details and accessories of chorus, orchestra, and ballet. Not only were the masterpieces of Mozart and other composers given in perfection, but visitors to Vienna at that time enjoyed the mythological ballets of the Gallenberg period, one of the greatest treats for a dilettante in this enter- tainment. Beyle was applied to by a friend in Paris for some information about this person, and his answer was given in the following terms : — " Count Gallenberg is a noble German, born about 1780 ; he is the first composer of the century for ballet-music, and perhaps the first composer in this line who ever appeared. He is the type of a German composer ; science is all in all with him. He cannot perceive when a singer is false in intonation, but he can produce admirable instrumental music. He has produced pieces of pomp and majesty for ballet-scenes representing the triumphal march of a general into a town which he has taken, or a young prince leading the daughter of an emperor to the altar, which have not been surpassed by anybody." BYROK. 147 When Beyle makes out the type of a German composer to be a man all science without ear, we cannot help thinking of the exquisite ears that all the great German composers had, in addi- tion to their science. Certainly neither Simon Mayer in Beyle's time, nor Richard Wagner in ours, can be accepted as normal representatives of German composers. Beethoven's writing so much magnificent music after the accident that befell his tym- panum shows that nothing could annihilate the mind's ear, created when the physical organ was still in function.* Beyle's opinions on literature are worthy, generally speaking, of more respectful attention than those on music. But there are many things in. his correspondence at this period with which one cannot quite agree. He falls foul of Byron for his constant praising of Tasso, which, in a professed romanticist, he considered insincerity and affectation. In this he was surely in the wrong. How could a man like Byron, who often produced such perfectly melodious versification, fail to find much that he could warmly admire in Tasso 1 Byron's real and unfeigned admiration of Pope, and other poets of high polish, was in perfect accordance with his admiration of the *' Gerusalemme." Beyle writes, " Send me Byron's ' Marino Faliero,' who got decapitated. The said Lord addressed a word to a Miss M > at a ball at Venice, on which Colonel M sent him a chal- lenge ; but the affair was arranged. The phrase of Byron was * The Gallenbergs are a very old Carniolan family, and possess the hereditary office of chief huntsman (Oberst Jagermeister) to the sovereign in Carniola. They were elevated to the rank of count by Leopold I. A book has been published on the family, entitled " Genealogia Familise Comitum et Dominorum de Gallenberg Laibach, a.d. 1680." The com- poser, Weiizel Robert Count Gallenberg, the son of Count Joseph, governor of Gallicia, was bom in 1783 ; he was therefore an exact contemporary of Beyle, and nearly contemporary with Spohr, Auber, Spontini, and Kalk- brenner. He received a sound musical and general education ; and though it would be unfair to compare him with the professional masters of music, yet he takes a respectable place among the Coburgs, Carafas, "Westmor- lands, Poniatowskys, and other dilettanti of this century. He lived long in Italy, and after the peace of 1814, composed ballets for the celebrated impressario Barbaja during the run of tlie operas of the Rossinian period. He composed upwards of forty of these ballets, which had a vogue, not only in Italy and at Vienna, where he in 1829 became director-general of the Karnthner Thor Opera, but also in other countries. His last years were passed in retirement, and he died in Rome in 1839, aged fifty-six, three years before Beyle's own decease. His eldest son embraced the ecclesiastical career, and the second succeeded him as the representative of the family. 148 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. sbort, insignificant, and arch-decent ; but the breath of the mon- ster was thought enough to pollute the atmosphere of the pale, cold belle, Byron lives in the society of his fat and fair beauty of Pesaro." Of the husband of the female friend of Lord Byron, Count Guiccioli, Beyle says that he is " a bravo of the fourteenth century, capable of assassination." This is pure fudge. The author of this biography remembers having repeatedly met this gentleman at Madame Benzoni's, ten years after Byron's death, with the rest of the Venetian society of that day ; and the im- pression which he produced on us was that of a frivolous rich man, very fond of theatrical amusements. He went to the opera every night of its being open ; when there was no opera, he went to the comedy ; if there was no comedy, he went to the mario- nettes ; if there were no marionettes, he caused some theatrical representation to be got up in his own house, and then finished off at Madame Benzoni's or Madame Albrizzis. SIR WALTER SCOTT. 149 CHAPTER XXI. 1821 — Beyle's Admiration of Sir Walter Scott as a Writer — His Unjust Judgment of Scott as a Man from Ignorance of Scottish Feeling — A Letter of Byron to Beyle vindicating the Character of Scott — Beyle Expelled from Milan by the Austrian Authorities. Beyle had a great admiration of the author of "Waverley," both as a poet and as a novelist ; but Scott the Tory was an object of great antipathy to him, who was a Bonapartist by sympathy and habit, and a freethinker in politics and religion by conviction. Now and then Bonaparte is called a " tyrant," a " despot,'^ and the " robber of our liberties," &c., &c. ; but, as in the case of those whom we love, the almost unpardonable finds pardon after a short purgatory of affectionate disappointment In short, Beyle was so dazzled by the gloire at which he occasionally cynically snarls, that in his eyes Napoleon was a personage quite privileged and apart. It is therefore not sur- prising if Beyle's strong antipathies against British views and Tory prejudices should break out occasionally with reference to Scott, who was an enthusiastic and convinced Tory of the most ultra hue. At the same time it was not possible that so splendid a series of romances as that which issued from the inventive brain of Scott should not have created the most lively admiration in a man who, from his Italian reading, had much occupied him- self with those picturesque parts of history between the dark ages and more modern and civilised times, which have been compared by Scott himself to those undulating pleasant landscapes that lie between the stern and rugged precipice and the smiling plain. Whether the following letter ever came actually into the hands of Scott is not clear, but the draught of it was found among the papers of Beyle. " To Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh. *« PoRETTA, 18^^ February 1821. "Sir, — If it should suit you to get in Paris the books of which I have given a list below, I shall have found a manner of 150 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. showing the extreme pleasure which the perusal of the ' Abbot ' has given me. " What a pity that the author has not had occasion to paint the Middle Age of this wonderful Italy ! He would have found the first traces of the human soul in the direction of liberty. Instead of egotistical heroism and an absurd feudality, he would have found the picture of what the human mind could at that time effect for the general welfare. The ideas of that period were obscure and deficient in precision, but the souls of men possessed about the year 1400 a degree of energy such as we find nowhere else than in Italy. "Unfortunately, in order to get a knowledge of the Middle Ages, a man must bury himself in dusty manuscripts, which about the year 1650 were garbled and falsified by Jesuits. No writer has sought to produce a genuine collection of anecdotes painting the manners of that period. What would be the enthusiasm of Europe if the author of * Waverley ' were to reveal the life of Cola di Rienzi, or the exile of the first Cosmo di Medici I " Then follows a list of well-known historical works, illustrative of the close of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the revival. From other letters to his friends, one may see that it was through French spectacles that Beyle looked on Scott as a man with aristocratic prejudices, and he is evidently ignorant that the patri- archal relation which exists in Scotland to this day between landlord and tenant bears no resemblance to that which existed between a French aristocrat of the old regime and the peasantry {taillable et corveahle ct volant^ of the pre-revolutionary period. Even in spite of the revolutions that have occurred in France, there is to this day, although not in Paris, at least in all provin- cial towns, a sufficiently sharp line of demarcation between the noble and the non-noble society, to which there is nothing cor- responding in the country towns of Britain, where riches, ancient or modern, chiefly determine the gentleman element. Two years later, in 1823, the Toryism of Scott, and his support of the Beacon newspaper, a scurrilous and ephemeral print, along with the circumstance of his having asked George IV. at Leitli for the glass in which he had drunk, in order to be pre- served in his family, appear to Beyle damnatory of the great novelist as a man. Beyle concluded that Scott was like the herd of toadies and intriguers in a Continental monarchy, as viewed by the outer circle of democrats and levellers. He was incapable of understanding that the Toryism of Scott ^as quite sincere, SIR WALTER SCOTT. 151 and even passionate. He could no more understand siicli con- servation than a primitive Christian would appreciate the charac- ter of Diocletian, or a Calvinist be edified by the homily of a preacher of the League. Scott firmly believed that if the ruling power in Britain ceased to be in the hands of the aristocratic and country gentlemen class, that the public interests would grievously suffer. When Scott completed his university studies, and entered professional life, France was in the throes of revolution, and Scott formed his political opinions at a time when ninety-nine out of a hundred educated men in Britain looked on the Jacobins as having com- mitted the greatest political crimes recorded in history. Church and king, lords and landholding commons, were in Scott's eyes the guarantees, not only of oligarchical, but of popular interests. That Scott was not a political philosopher is shown by his writings, and by sundry foolish political speeches made at a time when Gatton and Old Sarum were not considered irrational institutions by perhaps a clear majority of the landholders of the kingdom ; but of the sycophantic nature which Beyle attri- buted to him there certainly was no trace, and his preferring such accusations argues an amount of ignorance in British politics which appears not one whit less narrow than the antiquated prejudices of Scott. Two years later, in 1823, a letter of Byron to Beyle, dated Genoa, the 29th May, is interesting as showing the opinion which the former had of Beyle, and is remarkable for his defence of Scott against the prejudices of Beyle. " Sir, — Now that I know to whom I am indebted for the flat- tering mention of my name in ' Borne, Naples, et Florence, in 1817, par M. de Stendahl,' it is proper that I should offer my thanks, agreeable or not, as they are worth, to M. Beyle, whose acquaintance I had the honour to make at Milan in 1816. You have done me too much honour by what you have said in this work ; but what has given me as much pleasure as your eulogies was my learning by mere accident that I received them from a person whose esteem I was really anxious to acquire. So many changes have taken place in our Milanese circle since that period, that I scarcely dare recall it to your memory. Death, exile, and the Austrian prisons have separated those whom we loved. Poor Pellico ! I hope that in his cruel solitude the muse occa- sionally consoles him, that we may be charmed some day when the poet will be restored with her to liberty. 152 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. " Of your works, I have only seen 'Rome,' the Lives of Mozart and Haydn, and the pamphlet on * Racine et Shakespeare.' I have not yet had the good fortune to lay hands on your ' His- toire de la Peinture.' There is in your pamphlet a portion of your observations on which I will take the liberty of making some remarks, that is to say, on the subject of Sir Walter Scott. You say that his character is little worthy of enthusiasm, at the same time that you notice his works as they deserve. I have known Walter Scott for a long time, and I know him well, and I have seen him in circumstances which put the real character of the man to the test : I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration, and that of all men he is the most frank, the most honourable, and the most amiable. With regard to his political opinions, I have nothing to say on the subject ; as they differ from mine, it is not easy for me to speak of them : but he is perfectly sincere in his opinions ; and sincerity may be humble, but cannot be servile. I therefore beg you to correct or to soften this passage. You might, perhaps, attribute this officious zeal of mind to an affectation of candour, because I am myself an author. Attribute it to whatever motive you choose ; but pray believe the truth, when I tell you that Sir Walter Scott is as excellent a man as a man can be, because I know it by experience. " If you grant me the honour of an answer, be so good as to send it as soon as possible, because circumstances may take me again to Greece, although nothing is as yet decided on the subject. My present address is Genoa ; and in case of absence, your letter would be sent after me. " I beg you to believe me, with a lively recollection of our short acquaintance, and the hope of renewing it some day, your most obliged and obedient servant, Byron." M. Ducoin, in his eloge of Beyle addressed to the Academic Delphinale, is fair in speaking of Beyle's misappreciation of Scott. *' Marivaux held Moliere in slight esteem. M. Ingres makes a gesture of displeasure if people praise Rubens." On Colomb's absurd observation that Scott's reputation had faded, M. Ducoin says, "I confess to not having perceived it. The editions of Scott translated into our language have never ceased to be multiplied. He is read with pleasure, he is quoted, he furnishes subjects to the stage, to i:)ainting, to engraving, and to music. Many of his characters remain as original types, known ♦ EXPELLED FROM MILAN. 153 to everybody. If that is a faded reputation, it must be admitted that few writers have to apprehend the misfortune of a similar degradation." In order to give this Scott-Byron story in a connected manner, we jumped over a couple of years ; but now we return to 1821, and its troubles for Beyle, political as well as personal. The accusation of being an agent of the French police was felt by Beyle to be a " tile fallen on his head." But bricks and tiles of this sort flew about lustily in 1821 ; for Italy was in a state of political earthquake, and the reciprocal civility or toler- ance of Austrians and Milanese disguising their dislike was at an end. Beyle being ultra-liberal, and living habitually in circles not friendly to Austrian rule, it is not surprising that he received notice to quit the Austrian States ; and with a heavy heart he left Milan for Paris, after nearly seven years' residence in the friendly capital of Lombardy. The Austrian rule displeased Beyle in two capacities ; not only as a Frenchman of that date, but as a half-nationalised and liberal Italian. He describes the Government as in general very good, but very much hated, so that even the functionaries had a persuasion that the Austrians would be sooner or later ex- pelled. " Depuis I'employ^ de six cent francs jusqu'a, M. de Bubna, General et Strassoldo President, tons trois sincerement croient que d'ici a vingts ans I'ltalie prendra une position natur- elle." This great change, first seriously attempted in 1848, and then unsuccessful, did take place in 1859, that is to say, eighteen years later than the date predicted by Beyle. " Le gouverne- ment a voulu appliquer a Tltalie les lois paternelles faites pour les lourds habitants du Danube ; enfin la legislation des anons et des oies appliquee h un peuple de singes malins et mechants." This is unjust to both Austrians and Italians. The heavy in- habitants of the Danube have much good-nature, and have not the caustic spirit of Frenchmen ; but a deficiency in intelligence or a want of thorough scientific culture is what nobody can say of German Austrians. The explanation of the riddle is in the bad luck that Austria had in accepting, as compensation for her sacrifices during the long French wars, provinces with a nationality which could not be assimilated with the rest of the empire, and this, least of all, in an age of passionate nationalism. ]54 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. CHAPTER XXII. • 1821-22 — Beyle Returns to Paris — The Literary Drawiug-rooms of the Restoration — Beyle's Dislike of Madame de Stael's Writings, and Admiration of Benjamin Constant — Count Daru during the Restor- ation — Beyle visits London — Projects a Literary Journal in Paris — Publication of ** De I'Amour." On arriving in Paris, Beyle had to renew Lis society, for tliat of the Empire had become dispersed, and many of its functionaries, civil and military — perhaps a majority of them — had accommoda- ted themselves to the Restoration, and to a normal state of peace and consequent state of prosperity. It is certain that Louis XVIII. and his favourite Minister, M. de Gazes, wished honestly to inaugu- rate the system of the two Chambers with temperate liberty, in spite of a democratic opposition and a Bonapartist opposition that allied itself with democracy. Their chief difficulty was with those beside and behind the throne, who were unwisely more royalist than royalty itself. The air which Europe breathed after 1814 and 1815 teemed with a spirit of reaction against liberal opinions, which led inevitably to the revolutionary movements of 1821, from which half of Europe suffered, and by which Beyle was so incon- venienced in quitting his new Milanese home. In France, a people for whom B^ranger wrote songs, and Paul Louis Courier wrote pamphlets, while Royer Collard and Benjamin Constant — reviled as ''ideologues," and condemned to mutism, under the First Empire — occupied their natural places as opposition orators, could not be considered as other than a relatively free people, controlled by those stronger checks and that more active execu- tive power which the Celtic races cannot dispense with to the same extent as those of Saxon "blood. The assassination of the Duke de Berry had forced the most conciliatory and really liberal M. de Cazes from power. The King unwillingly parted from his Minister, but made him a duke, with proportional pecuniary advantages ; so that people said, " Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will inherit the earth." The Pavilion Marsan (as the wing of the Tuileries is called THE RESTORATION. 155 ■which is situated next the Rue de Rivoli, and was then inhabited by the Comte d'Artois) was victorious, and moderate liberalism was in temporary discredit at court, in spite of all the hopes and wishes of the aged and valetudinarian monarch, who, within three years of his death, had neither the moral nor the physical courage longer to resist his brother and kindred. The free-thinking Beyle, with his foible for Bonapartism, found his natural place in the opposition, which then formed a galaxy of most of the first intellects in France. I say most; for Chateau- briand, the youthful Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and minor men such as Alfred de Vigny, were in the royalist ranks.* It was at the house of the illustrious Destutt de Tracy that Beyle met Lafayette, Benjamin Constant, and other celebrities of the period; and it is evident that his brilliant conversational powers, his special knowlege and fresh impressions of Italian art and liter- ature, added to the amiability and natural gaiety of his nature, made him a delightful drawing-room guest and table companion. If Madame R^camier's house, with Chateaubriand, Matthieu de Montmorency, Ballanche, &c., &c,, was the first bureau d' esprit of the royalists, the house of Destutt de Tracy occupied a similar place in the liberal camp. Madame de Stael was now in the tomb, but the settled hos- tility which Beyle had to the memory of this brilliant woman broke out on various occasions. In spite of his occasional dia- tribes on Napoleon, as the man who, by means of glory, bribed the French nation out of the dearly purchased right to consti- tutional liberty, Beyle was a Bonapartist at heart ; his intelli- gence might be with republicanism, but his sympathies had been with the exile of St Helena. Consequently for Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael there was no mercy. The style of the former was in some respects so exaggerated and ridiculous, that it made itself easily exposed to the shafts of the satirists ; but Madame de Stael's books, although written with more formality than Beyle's, have the same quality of a rich abundance of ideas and of felicitous illustration. The carelessness, the repetitions, and crudities of Beyle may even be unfavourably contrasted with the admirable arrangement and condensation of Madame de StaePs works ; yet the severe and classical De Stael appears pedantic * Victor Hugo, addressing the Comte de Chambord in the ** Annde Ter- rible/' says — " J'ai sur ton berceau, fragile et triomphant, Chants mon chant d'Aurore." 156 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. and affected to the spontaneous and romantic Beyle. Writing to his friend Colomb, he offers the following opinions on this cele- brated lady : — ''To thee, who hast lived in the society of Madame de Stael when her character of an exile rendered her interesting, I address some observations. She appears to me to be devoid of the modesty of sensibility, full of esprit and imagination, but without any in- struction except from the reading of Hume and Montesquieu witliout understanding them. Launched into the drawing-rooms of Europe with the first men of the age, she has picked up phrases on each of the great problems that have been in discussion for the last thirty years. Her true study w^as drawing-room success ; for good society is composed of people who devote that time to refined tastes which the others employ in making money. Good society is aristocratic, and for a banker's daughter to live with duchesses, Madame de Stael's parchments was her father's position as Minister. The heroic names of Mesdames Bertrand and Lavalette will be honoured by posterity, while those of Mesdames De Stael and De Genlis will be lost in the crowd of those ordinary souls who only admire virtue when it is employed for the benefit of political power. The spectacle which the society of Coppet presented was curious ; it was a public exhibition of conversation. " In her book on the Revolution she painted well the men in whose company she had dined — Siey^s, for instance. As for * Del- phine,' it is atrociously tiresome. She paints admirably the laws of society in 1780 ; but in order to paint the passions, one must have a soul which is generous and true, and this she had not, as witness her eulogies of aristocracy after the massacre of Nismes, and her calumnies of Bonaparte in St Helena. Her best work is ' L'AUemagne,' an analysis furnished by M. (August Wilhelm) Schlegel. It is an agreeable sketch, but must be false, for she did not know German. What should we think of an Englishman of letters who sought to judge our great writers without knowing French 1 " There are fragments of truth in this judgment, but also very gross injustice. That Madame de Stael posed too much for the admiration of the individuals composing the bureaux d^ esprit of Paris and Geneva may be most true ; but how does a man of Beyle's intelligence classify a woman of really superior intellect like Madame de Stael with the alternately slipshod and namby- pamby Madame de Genlis ? It may also be true that " L'AUe- BENJAMIN CONSTANT. 157 magne" is no more than a very agreeable sketch of the golden age of German letters and Weimar society; but what more do we ask from a woman 1 Is the female intellect intended by nature to innovate like that of a Fichte, or to be comprehensive like that of a Goethe, a Voltaire, or a Herder 1 If such was Beyle's opinion of Madame de Stael, his verdict on the man who was, during some of the most interesting parts of Madame de Stael's life, her right-hand man, was by contrast very favourable. At this period Benjamin Constant was a sort of Burke of the Chamber of Deputies, that is to say, not the most popular orator, bat he that was most appreciated by the intellectual few. In vehemence, simplicity, and telling effect he was greatly surpassed by General Foy. The Genevese Constant had not the boundless profusion of imagery of the Irish Burke, but he treated every subject in a philosophic manner, and with a glow of conviction and a spontaneous felicity of language that charmed his hearers. As a public man and political character, his life was one of integrity and consistency ; but in private life, particularly in money matters, he had not that morality or scru- pulousness which would have completed the great citizen. Like Fox, he was a gambler and in difficulties, but did not always get out of them as a gentleman should have done. In society he was the most agreeable talker of the metropolis, possessing the eminently French qualities of refined distinctions, evolved with perfect clearness, and with the most spontaneous colloquial ease and absence of all effort. Beyle's judgment of him and of his History of the Hundred Days' reign is upon the whole favour- able. " The Hundred Days was the reign of General Carnot, that is to say, the reign of the Republic. Napoleon was only Minister of War. The only act of a sovereign was the ' Acte Additionnel.' This dispelled all illusions, for it showed the ambitious man who wished to stifle in France all love of liberty. The few just principles in the * Acte Additionnel ' were put in, in spite of the Emperor and of his Minister, M. de Bassano, by M. Benjamin Constant. This courageous man, who in 1802 had combated Bonaparte at the tribunat, did not hesitate to second him in 1815 : this may be matter of blame, because M. Benjamin Constant is very poor. Bonaparte made him Councillor of State, with twenty-five thousand francs salary. Most of the colleagues of M. Constant at the tribunat, having abandoned the interests of the Republic, had great places and good appointments from 1802 158 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. to 1814. M. Constant regarded the domination of Napoleon in 1815 as an accomplished fact. This evil being admitted, he sought to diminish it." Beyle's former great protector, Count Dam, being a moderate and politic man, had accommodated himself to the Bourbon rule notwithstanding his former close relations with the Emperor and the Empire ; but he continued to occupy himself with letters, and to take a distinguished place in the literary society of the capital without distinction of party. He had been put into the House of Peers during the ministry of M. de Cazes in 1819, and in that year published a literary work by which he is most known, " The History of the Republic of Venice," in seven volumes, a pleasing compilation, that has been displaced as yet by no other similar work, although it is not, and cannot be, the definitive history of Venice, the archives of which are only now slowly emerging to light. But it is a work of labour by a man who, besides literary accomplishments, had been a conspicuous administrator and actor in the great events of the previous quarter of a century. Daru's place in literature was fully acknowledged, for he was during many years President of the French Academy, and, like Fontanes, a speaker of tact and dignity, who could say the right thing at the right time. He is also the author of a " History of Brittany," published at Paris in 1826, which I have not seen, and cannot speak of. Three years after that, in 1829, he died of apoplexy at his chateau of Meulan, at the age of sixty-two. He had done all in his power to push Beyle into opportunities of an easy material existence, but the wayward man of letters and man of genius followed his own road, as was, in fact, to be expected in the case of an individuality so independent, eccentric, and distinct from the ordinary run of prosaic and calculating mortals. Beyle paid a couple of visits to England at this time, and being very capable of writing miscellaneous criticisms on litera- ture and art, he succeeded in making arrangements' with Mr Colburn, the eminent London publisher, for a series of notices on works appearing in Paris, an occupation which lasted several years, and somewhat aided his income; and the post of a literary correspondent, running through the amusing or instructive books of the day, was rather an agreeable one. The splendid success of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews had more than once fixed Beyle's attention, and, as already stated, he was a regular reader of the former publication. There were no similar organs of opinion on literature in France at that (C THE ARISTARQUE. ' 159 period ; the modem and successful French Revues were established much later. The Mercure had had a European celebrity in its day, when Chateaubriand and other noted men were the contri- butors to it, but during the Restoration it was chiefly in the feuilletons of the Journal des Dehats that the intellectual public of France found literary criticism under the direction of the liberal and enlightened M. Bertin de Vaux, subsequently one of Louis Philippe's peers ; and in this organ first appeared the germs of many of those labours of the Guizots, Villemains, and Saint Marc Girardins which were subsequently expanded into works that have taken a permanent place in the classical literature of France. In February 1822, Beyle planned a literary journal, to be called the A ristarque, the prospectus of which shows his scope and intention, and of which the motto was " The naked truth " C La verity toute une "). *' The Aristarque, or General Indicator of books to be read. " Eh ! quoi ! another literary journal 1 With your leave, this one will differ from all others. Two citizens served the State previous to 1814 in different capacities, the one in France, the other abroad. The project is to escape ennui by giving a rigorously impartial account of the most remarkable books that have appeared in Europe, America, and the Indies. Jacques and Pierre are of opinion that no other q^ualities are needed but those employed in their former functions, that is to say, intelligence, sincerity, and courage. They are not men of letters, and in reviews and extracts will effiice their own individuality in favour of the author who is to be reviewed. " The two citizens who undertake the Aristarque travelled abroad from 1814 to 1822. They know between them the liter- atures of Germany, England, and Italy. They will be laconic, avoiding all pomp and emphasis in their style, and will take care to have no sentences that are longer than four lines," &c., &c. The Aristarque never saw the light, but in the year in which it was proposed — 1822 — that which is, perhaps, the most pro- found and original of all Beyle's works, " De 1' Amour," was published. It is an analysis of the ruling passion of the human heart, chiefly as it exists in Italy, and with instances mostly taken from Italian society. According to Beyle's friend, M. Colomb, the work was superinduced by a disappointment of a tender nature which he met with in Italy ; and there can be little doubt that this was the rebuff, which we already described, from the fair 160 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. Matilda of Volterra, no doubt mingled with tlie recollections of the phenomena attendant on his many years' attachment to " Angela," Mdlle. Viet, and other persons. Never before were the pleasures of hope, the tortures of jealousy, and the chagrin consequent on the failure to inspire a reciprocal sentiment, analysed with more natural acumen and expert science. Like many other works of genius, it was unsuccessful on publication. " It is a consecrated work " said the publisher to Beyle, " for nobody dares to touch it." We will say nothing more of it at the present time, as it is fully noticed in the concluding critical section of this work. RACINE ET SHAKESPEARE." 161 CHAPTER XXIII. 1823— Publication of " Racine et Shakespeare " — Englisli Actors in Paris — De Jouy, Author of the " fir^mite de la Chaussee d'Antin " — Victor Hugo in the Bud — Lamartine — Chateaubriand. The reader has had many opportunities of seeing that the drama occupied a large space in the literary life of Beyle ; we conse- quently find that he was in the thick of the fray that took place between the Classicists and Romanticists : and, perhaps, of the pamphlets of that day *' Racine et Shakespeare," by Beyle, was the most remarked, if not by the general public, at least by the literary caste. " Racine et Shakespeare " appeared first in a publication called the Paris Monthly Review, in the year 1823. Paul Louis Couriei: aided Beyle with his advice, on the latter submitting the manuscript to his perusal. Certainly on any question of style no one was more competent to give him an advice than this celebrated writer, who was not only one of the greatest political humourists of this century, but, judging from the severe purity and correctness of his own writings, must have been most capable of criticism of style and arrangement, to say nothing of his masculine practical common sense on almost everything with which he occupied his mind. Beyle was a charming writer from the abundance of his ideas and the perfect naturalness and easy familiarity of his style, but he was not, like Courier, distin- guished by the closest condensation and the most austere purity. Beyle often repeats quite unconsciously, with a slight change of metaphor, what he has already, perhaps, twice over told the reader in the previous page. The only reproach one can make to the style of Paul Louis Courier is, that his purity is now and then tinctured with locutions, which, although indisputably accurate, seem to ordinary eyes somewhat archaic and pedantic. But he was a manly, nervous writer, and as remote from the spangles and Bengal lights of Chateaubriand as Beyle himself was. " Racine et Shakespeare " was simply an advocacy of that L 162 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. great change in the French drama which was called for by public opinion in consequence of the ennui produced, not so much by the familiarly known and much admired tragedies of Racine, as by the productions of those who imitated his anti- quated form without the sustaining power of his genius. Beyle reproduced with apropos and considerable ingenuity Dr Johnson's well-known arguments against the so-called " unities ; '' and in answer, M. Auger, of the Academy, as an advocate of the classics, commented severely on the presumption of the innovator, which drew forth a continuation of " Racine et Shakespeare " in the form of a most felicitous quiz of Academicians as conservators of obsolete traditions. The revolution in the French drama was greatly aided and impelled by this publication of Beyle, and followed by those extraordinary productions of Victor Hugo, which at once de- lighted and repelled the lover of the drama by their magnificent invention, their boundless powers of fancy, their metaphysical incongruity, and paradoxical monstrosity. In the winter of 1822-23, English actors made a trial of Shakespeare's tragedies and Sheridan's comedies in Paris under the direction of a manager named Penley ; and some years after- wards there seemed the probability of the establishment of an English theatre in Paris. But the first season was stormy, for more than one reason : there was the wounded self-love of the French nation after the close of the war, and the intense anti- pathy against the English in the general public. Then there was the opposition of a large part of the re- public of letters to the romanticism which sought to elevate the " insular barbarian Williams " to a parity with, or, perhaps, in the case of some audacious romanticist, to a superiority to the classic Racine. But in spite of the clamour, hisses, and opposi- tion which necessitated the employment of the police force to keep order, the English theatre maintained its ground, and Miss Smithson (subsequently Madame Berlioz) became a great favourite of the French public, although she did not succeed in London in becoming a successor to the Siddons and O'Neills. Edmund Kean and all the other great English actors of that period gave performances on the French boards, and the English theatre succumbed ultimately, partly through the French revolution of 1830, but in reality chiefly because France passed over to the romantic school, and because the old English standard pieces being used up, there were no longer English dramatists of suf- DE JOUY. 163 ficient genius to furnisli fresh material for the boards. On the contrary, the French stage was most prolific in men of rare dramatic power, even admitting conceptions of taste essentially different from the British standard. One of the chief opponents of the Shakesperian invasion was the well-known De Jouy, who had written the text-book of Spontini's *' Vestale," and who had subsequently produced the much less effective one of Rossini's " William Tell" in conjunc- tion with M. Hippoljte Bis. But by far the best thing which he had done was the "fcemite de la Chauss^e d'Antin," a series of familiar sketches of citizen-life in the manner of the Spectator J La Bruyere's " Characters," &c., (fee, — a book which attained European celebrity, and produced imitations in other countries, so that within a few years several other capitals of Europe had a hermit of this description. I can recollect, in my younger days, of a " hermit in Edinburgh," in addition to a " hermit in London." Castelli's celebrated sketches of Vienna citizen-life are a palpable imitation of Jouy. Beyle's account of him in his literary correspondence is not very flattering to a man anxious to take a high place in the temple of fame. ** M. de Jouy, one of the most noted persons of French litera- ture, was born at the little village of Jouy near Versailles. He was a very handsome man, and through his relations with the wife of the governor of Pondicherry, he rose in the army, and needing the predicate [particule] took the name of De Jouy. On a very hot day in India, he with a brother officer entered a temple and admired a vestal virgin ; but the natives sawed his brother officer in two, and put the vestal to death, De Jouy himself barely escaping with his life ; so he returned to France, but with a fair fortune and a good military reputation. He has written some pretty vaudevilles and two or three tragedies. One of them, * Tippoo Saib,' failed in spite of the infinite intrigues of the author ; the other, * Sylla,' had the greatest success, thanks to Talma, who imitated all the gestures of Napoleon. The French tragic authors are in great fear of Shakespeare, and the English manager has played them an ugly trick by bringing Shakespeare on the French stage. It would be curious if Miss Penley were to cause the masterpieces of Shakespeare to be relished. In such a case, adieu to the reputation of M. de Jouy, Arnauld fils, Lavigne, Ancelot, Bis, Guirand, &c., &c. Each of these gentlemen has produced two or three tragedies in the epic style ; the verses are ranting and grandiloquent, but the pieces are 164 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. mortally dull and tiresome. The personages act like people devoid of common sense, and the rhymes are copied from Racine. M. de Jouy is the fashionable bookmaker of the day ; he is a pleasant man, and, like his books, without depth — a quality that would be a defect in the true bookmaker. A book, to sell well, should have a pretty title, should be written on a fashionable sub- ject, and should be easily comprehended." The successes of M. Eugene Scribe began soon after the war of 1815 ("Une Nuit de Garde Nationale," in 1817), and they continued until well into the second half of the century. He certainly was the Lopez de Vega of his epoch ; and, as in the case of the Spanish dramatist, he will prove an inexhaustible mine to the future comedy and opera text-book writer. His long comedies have made most noise. Need we mention " Un Verre d'Eau " '' La Oalomnie," " La Camaraderie," " Une Chaine," and "Oscar." But what one finds really most enjoyable in Scribe are the vaudevilles produced between 1820 and 1830 — felicitous, but not elaborate in construction, and full of that which is deficient in his more lengthy, more ingeniously con- structed, and more ambitious works, viz., natural comic char- acters and comic situations, easily brought about, with occasional pathos of a simple and pleasing description. Such were " Une Visite k Bedlam," " Le Secretaire et le Cuisinier," " L'Ours et le Pacha," " Michel et Christine," " Michel Perrin," and a host of others. As for his opera-books, he created a new species of spectacle, in which he showed himself superior to all his rivals. Nevertheless, he appears to have rendered the sphere of opera perhaps too extended for the recreation of an evening, and so as to become rather too much of a task for the auditor. Something was wanted beyond the old Italian opera, with its too long and if^o undivided first act ; but the five-act opera-book seems to overshoot the mark, even when the music is of a high class. Scribe began his second manner by the comedie laiinoyantej or domestic drama, of *' Valerie," which is thus characterised by Beyle — " This sentimental comedy will have eighty representations, and why ? Because it is a departure from the style of the age of Louis XIV. It ran the greatest risk of being hissed the first evening; but the public not daring to hiss the delicious Mdlle. Mars, who plays the part of a blind young girl of eighteen, surmounted its prudery, and gave way to the pleasure of some- thing new. * Valerie ' is a romance of Madame Krudner's trans- LAMARTINE. 1 65 ferred to tlie stage. M. Scribe is a man of thirty, who has given ninety-five vaudevilles and comedies ; eighty have fallen into oblivion j fifteen or twenty are charming pieces. ' Valerie,' which is a sketch without depth, is as pretty on perusal as it is when seen on the boards, for fortunately it is in prose." As for Victor Hugo, who was then at his d^but, it will be seen that Beyle no more divined the future Victor Hugo in 1823 than Jefi'rey did the Byron of the future from the "Hours of Idleness." " This M. Hugo has a talent in the manner of Young, the author of the 'Night Thoughts.' He is always exaggerated without real glow. His party, the royalists, have procured him great success ; but it cannot be denied that he knows very well how to make French verses. Unfortunately he is somniferous." This will rather surprise the reader, who does not remember that it is Hugo merely in the first budding of genius. With regard to his subsequent career, great perversions of taste, elevations of the exception instead of the rule, and the planting of virtues in classes where they do not usually exist, and in individuals where they could not possibly exist, may be made a matter of reproach to Hugo ; but what a rich and exuberant imagination, and what a longevity of creative power in this remarkable man, who unfortunately stands no higher than M. de Lamartine in the sphere of practical politics ! What un- realisable philanthropic dreams in the midst of anarchy, state agony, and personal antagonism ! At that same period, when Louis XVIII. was quitting an uneasy throne for the other world, M. de Lamartine was one of the jeunesse doree of the Restoration, although destined in later years to be almost the apologist of Robespierre, and to have helped to precipitate the House of Orleans from the throne by the fascinating brilliancy of his pictures of the first revolution. Already he had begun to give utterance to a poetic genius in his earlier, and, as most people think, his most charming pro- ductions. The young garde du corps and diplomatic aspirant sang, while France listened enraptured to those strange unaccus- tomed and melancholy notes. His appearance in the sphere of literature and poesy after Byron was like the placid lake with the soft purple tints of twilight after the roar of troubled waters, the loud whistle of the mountain winds, and the thick mist fended by the lightning's flash. Lamartine's soul was full of hope and love, and those dulcet tones of his pleasing melancholy song, of so universal acceptation, went forth to nations that could 166 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. neither sympathise with the political leanings of a B^ranger, nor even comprehend in that exquisite poet a force of humorous allusion, so French, so local, and with every allowance for the compact beauty of the song- writer, so tinctured with polemic passion, and often with positive injustice. Would that a decep- tive self-esteem, had never drawn Lam'artine into that political career in which he shipwrecked his fortune and his happiness — in which he lived a parliamentary orator with a delusive rhetoric that never convinced, and a would-be administrator of the state who could not bring the pettiest matters of either public or private business to a practical conclusion. Beyle says of this great poet, " In spite of the reproaches which M. de Lamartine may incur [this alludes to his enthu- siastic royalism], he is nevertheless the second, or the first poet of France, according as we put M. de B^ranger, the song-writer, before or after him. M. de Lamartine reproduces with a divine grace the sentiments which he himself has experienced. That vague feeling of sadness shared in by the young men of fortune of our day is simply the result of superabundant leisure. Napoleon shook up the youth of his time, to whom a sombre ennui was unknown. Nevertheless at that time one of its most beautiful pictures has been produced — I mean the little romance of M. Chateaubriand entitled ' R^n^.' " This is one of the rare occasions on which Beyle has a good word to say about Chateaubriand. Beyle, the free-thinker of the eighteenth century school, and the fluent unaffected writer, the man who by pseudonyms hid his light under bushels, was the antipodes of the pompous and grandiloquent Chateaubriand, a haughty man, who condescended to patronise Christianity, a religion of humility propagated by fishers and carpenters. It is strange, however, that this admirer of Christianity more than once rendered ministerial combinations abortive, because, unfor- tunately, as he said of himself, " he was only efficient in first positions ! " But we agree with Beyle, that, in spite of the per- sonal vanity and weakness of the author, " R6n6 " will live. Nevertheless, few men who have made so much noise in their lifetime have passed to posterity with a greater decline in the value of their baggage. BEYLE IN ROME. 167 CHAPTER XXIV. 1823-24 — Beyle goes to Rome — Mathieu de Montmorency — Beyle Pub- lishes his " Life of Rossini " — Rossini's Personal Impressions of Beyle — Beyle seeks Employment as a Fine-Art Critic. Beyle passed the winter of 1823-24 in Italy, partly in the North and partly in Rome, and again made very short visits in the autumns of 1825 and 1826 to collect the materials for another work on that beautiful land, published some years later, with the title, " Promenades dans Rome." He usually dined at the restaurant called the Armellino, the haunt of artists. One of those who dined with him was Merca- dante, as he says, *' a little young man, with an intelligent face." Beyle adds, " He has a style of his own, and that is much ; all Rome sings airs of ' Elisa e Claudio.' " Of his compatriots at Rome Beyle writes, *' I could not have been better received by the ambassador of France. The most curious thing that I have seen is the young Frenchman travel- ling in Italy. They come to die of pleasure, and they die of ennui. They do not speak four words of Italian, and pretend to be capable of judging the Italians. It makes one die of laughing ; to which add the obligatory enthusiasm for Rome. Altogether it is very droll." The ambassador alluded to was Viscount Mathieu de Mont- morency, whom Charles X. subsequently made a duke, and who declined to change his name, although his brother was Duke de Montmorency-Laj^al. The brothers had returned from the emigration to Paris under tlie Directory in 1799, being among the first of the old noblesse to attempt to reconstitute the old society after the wreck. They were great admirers and very intimate friends of Madame Recamier. Beyle says of the ambassador, '* M. de Montmorency does the honours with perfect grace, for it never embarrasses. It is always a bore to see the master of the house approach you when two hundred guests are present ; but in this case the Duke makes himself to be no more than an additional amiable person joining 168 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. 1he group. There are three or four Roman ladies of the greatest beauty — Madame Dodwell, Princess Bonacorsi, &c., &c. These ladies have quite the assured, decisive, and trenchant tone which used to be the fashion at the court of France. Imagine the crowd of pretty women, with fourteen cardinals, surrounded by a cloud of prelates and abb^s. The French abb^s are rather embarrassed by these charms, so as to make one laugh ; but the Roman abb^s look at them with intrepidity." But Beyle confessed that Rome did not seduce him ; for he found himself isolated, and he considered that it was not worth while during a whole month to pay court to the tiresome people of the fashionable houses in order to be fourth aide-de-camp of one of those pretty ladies. He sighed for intimacy, and regretted Paris and Milan. The fact is, that Beyle was now occupied with a new passion. In his heart the Angelas and Matildas of Italy had given place to a lady who resided in Paris ; so Beyle's sojourn in Rome was on this occasion a very short one, and he returned home early in the spring of 1824. This latter amour is to us almost as ob- scure as the former ones. One or two short letters to the object of his admiration confirm the impression derived from his cele- brated work, that a man could not have written so profoundly on the dominant passion without having felt its acutest torments and delights. His self -anatomy, therefore, is always interesting. The following is taken from his collected correspondence, but the name and position of the new inamorata remain in the dark. He writes — " When I have seen you three successive days, my angel, it seems to me that I love you more and more, if that be possible. I love you so warmly to-day, that I must put it in writing per sfogarmi, that is to say, to deliver and relieve myself. "My good qualities are joined to bad ones, that are more disagreeable to myself than to others. When a conscript enters a dragoon regiment, he receives a horse ; and if- he has sense, he will soon learn the temper of the horse. But to know that a horse shies does not free the horse from the defect. So with myself and my temper, as I have remarked these two years. My defects were not prominent in Italy, where everybody is original, and does what he chooses, without caring about his neighbour. But in France, people always are asking what do our neighbours say ? Therefore do not have the smallest anxiety about me. I love you passionately. Is it possible that my SPECULATIVE POLITICS. 169 accursed originality should have given you an erroneous idea of my tenderness 1 " Excuse my anger the other day, at your having called me ' a litterateur.' I accepted the dinner, imagining it would be like those of four years ago ; but the leaden faces that surrounded you spoiled all. If I had said anything delicate to you, the leaden faces would have fallen foul of me. There is the misfor- tune of your position. Tiresome people cause you to lose your mornings, and human life is composed of the mornings ! " The following is French to the last syllable : — " Adieu ! Everything is insupportable to me since I know that you are no longer here. Yesterday I had a delicious dinner, where there were nine men of wit and myself. Unluckily I was not in the least brilliant. I spoke very little, and the little I did say was heavy. This catastrophe will agitate my great soul. Perhaps I will have to renounce love. How ca^ I recoiicile.' myself to not shining ] " "• ' T/' ',. In the intervals of love-making, speculative politics occasionally occupied Beyle. His philosophy was quite Horatian. He had considerable political intelligence, and was capable of taking a large view of modern history, and even of the political situation of the day, when Lis extreme adoration of Napoleon was for the moment forgotten ; but he did not like politics or political discussions to interrupt the harmony of life, or derange his enjoyment of art, literature, and society. Upon the whole, he thought politics to be rather an unpleasant intruder than an interesting visitor. This is curiously shown in a letter which he wrote to that well-known English table-talker, Mr Sutton Sharpe, whose acquaintance he had made on a previous visit to London, and with whom he now occasionally kept up a correspondence, mostly on political subjects. He writes, on the 15th June 1824, a letter which closes with a characteristic little " Beylism." " When we look aside from the serious results of the Revolu- tion, we are unpleasantly impressed with the present state of society in France. The grand seigneurs with whom one passed one's youth are now malignant old ultras. I thought this must be the effect of age ; but their children, who will inherit large fortunes and fine titles, are no better. All the philosophers of the eighteenth century would fain prove to me that a grand seigneur is an immoral and hurtful being. To this I answer, that I like a well-bred and gay grand seigneur, such as those whom I saw in my fiimily when I began to read. Society, deprived of 170 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. those gay, charming, amiable beings, seems to me to be the year deprived of its spring, But wisdom says to me that they are immoral beings, productive of unhappiness, ^ ' 192 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. of logic. Let us cliaritably set it down as one of those Beylisms which the good-natured man knew how to make an amend for by many strokes of liberality and justice on other topics. Consalvi, the popular cardinal and minister of Pius VII,, was the principal person of the Roman society in the years that immediately followed the restoration of the Pope to his capital, after the exile of Fontainebleau. He met a charming young man in the drawing-room of a diplomatist, who knew by heart twenty of the finest airs of the composer of the " Matrimonio Segreto," and sang them with perfect expression. Whatever the cardinal called for was sung at desire by no less an artist than the then youthful Rossini; and those airs recalling the tender friendship which Consalvi had for Cimarosa, brought the tears into his eyes. Consalvi interested himself for the family of Cimarosa after the composer's death, but his son appears to have been one of those unlucky wights for whom nothing could be done. Consalvi had employed Canova to execute a monu- mental bust of Cimarosa, which bore the inscription — *' A Domenico Cimarosa. Ercole Cardinale Consalvi." The millionaires Dimidoff and Torlonia could scarcely escape the sketch-book of such an observer as Beyle. The former is described as ''rich and benevolent, making a collection of heads by Greuze, and relics of St Nicholas," — a compound of a national Russian and an art dilettanti in Italy. He had a French vaude- ville company for himself and friends, but the puritanism of papal Rome took umbrage at such interjections as pardieu^ or at such profane names as St Leon, and at the Thursday night per- formances encroaching on Friday morning. Torlonia was an original figure. This speculator, who began selling ribbons by the yard, and became the banker of all the wealthy foreigners who crowded to Rome, used in his old age to relate the rivalry of Roman princes for the hand of one of his daughters. " Every winter," writes Beyle, *' the society is enlivened by some story of his coolness and sharp practice in money matters, and the rage of some Englishman dissatisfied with the rate of exchange. But he makes this up to his customers by charming balls, worth forty francs admission," cynically applying the Tor- lonia metallic standard to his social entertainments. These balls are mentioned by Beyle as having been on a scale of royal TORLONIA. 193 magnificence. The interior gallery facing the courtyard com- municated with the dancing rooms, which were a blaze of splen- dour, and in one place was a group of statuary by Canova, illu- minated by lights disposed by Canova himself. " Observe," says Beyle, " a little old man in a white waistcoat, in the midst of the most beautiful Roman and English ladies, who relates how, by an adroit ruse, he bought those splendid mirrors at Paris and London wholesale, in the character of a carver and gilder, who had a commission from Torlonia to purchase them with ready cash at a low rate." "Torlonia," said Lady N , '' should not be at his balls; his daughter should do the honours." These anecdotes must be taken with a grain of salt. When a man makes a fortune of such colossal proportions, he cannot escape being an object of malignant envy ; he may be laughed at, but in reality has the best reason to laugh at the expense of those who make him a subject of ridicule. As to the Government of that day, Beyle says pleasantly, but quite truly, " You have read Mill, Ricardo, Malthus, and all the authors of political economy. Figure to yourself the contrary to all the rules of administration which they recommend, and you will find them to be followed at Rome with the best intentions in the world."* Beyle supposed the great Italian revolution would take place between 1840 and 1848, and he adds, " Y aura-t-il cascade ou prnte douce ? " Well, he was not far wrong in his guess as to the practical beginning of the revolution, for the ground had been well prepared by Mazzini and the Giovine Italia. There, have been altogether five cascades : in 1848, in the following year, in 1859-60, in 1866, and 1870, the whole forming a pente accidentee rather than a pente douce. Rome is now the capital of Italy ; and of the temporal power, we may say, as Lord Sea- field at the Union, *' It is the end of an auld sang." * Travelling in Italy after the accession of Gregory XVI., I remember being told that Cardinal Macchi, one of his ministers, had opened the prisons and let loose on society many of the most infamous criminals, who had not served the time to which they had been condemned, from no other motive than to save a petty sum to the Roman exchequer. 194 MEMOIRS OF HENRY BEYLE. CHAPTER XXVIII. 1828-29— Beyle's Sketches of Charles X., of the Duke and Duchess d'Angouleme, and of the Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe — Beyle furnishes Notes on Roman Cardinals for Charles X. — Beyle Hypochondriac — Meditates Suicide — Publishes his " Promenades in Rome." December 1827 was within two years and a half of the revolu- tion of 1830, and the impressions of Beyle as to the personages and events of the close of the Restoration were most just and judicious. The Polignac ministry was not yet named, and there- fore Beyle was not held to foresee that which a majority of the intelligent men of Europe did foresee on that nomination. Beyle's observations in a letter to his London correspondent, Mr Sutton Sharpe, are nevertheless interesting, for we see clearly that the hearts of the French nation would have warmed to the Duke d'Angouleme as Louis XIX., if Charles X. had not thrown away his crown, with a shortsightedness rarely paralleled. Beyle gives in succession admirable portraits of the King, the Duke and Duchess d'Angouleme, and of Louis Philippe. In regard to the king, who was pronounced by one of his most intelligent and judicious councillors to be still the giddy Count d'Artois of 1789, he writes : — "A king incapable of connecting two ideas, being an old libertine used up by a stormy youth ; not exempt from acts of weakness, and even unscrupulousness ; adoring ultra principles, and despising all who are not noblesse, yet courting the people from fear. In other respects a good sort of a man, and without the hypocrisy of his brother " (Louis XVIII.) " A dauphin without education, of incredible ignorance, but a very honest man, honest even to heroism, if we consider that until six-and- thirty he lived in his little court, composed of the most foolish men in Europe, whose sole occupation was to calumniate the French people and the Revolution. This prince is quite reasonable. His esteem for Messrs Portal and Roye is notorious. His administration, if he reigns, will be Right CHARACTER SKETCHES. 195 centre. He will keep his oaths, and in this respect his sincere piety will be useful to France. The same sobriety characterises the conduct and conversation of his wife. Unfortunately she has a narrow understanding ; her mind can embrace little at once, and she gets other people to show her the essential parts of things, but when she has understood a thing she retains it. She regrets that the higher noblesse should have so little in- telligence, and that recourse must always be had to the third estate. " The Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis Philippe) has finesse, cunning, and some avarice, with a great fund of good sense. This administration, during the minority of the Duke de Bor- deaux, would be Left centre [centre gaitche]. He keeps aloof from the ultra party of the Faubourg St Germain, who look on him as a Jacobin. His mind has the cast of a moderate English Whig peer. " AH those French who have time to think, and possess pecu- niary means, are Left centre. They wish the execution of the charter, and slow and prudent progress without any shock. These people have great expectations from Louis XIX., and look on the government of Charles X. as a necessary evil. People expect Charles X. to declare himself against the charter if he could muster the requisite courage. People are attached to M. de Villele, as to a minor evil of the two. They are afraid of his having a successor belonging to the Jesuit cabal." The reader may in this see how justly Beyle judged of the situation, at a time when even the Duke de Guiche, the " Menin du Dauphin," said, " Ces Cagots nous perdront." Beyle was, as a matter of course, also well acquainted with the Italian, and particularly Roman politics ; and a year later, on the death of Pope Leo XII., Beyle was asked for notes on the diflferent cardinals likely to be the candidates for the tiara, and likely to suit or to disagree with French interests. These notes pleased Charles X., who, after a life of great gallantry and gaiety, was very proud of his function of eldest son of the Church, and took a strong personal interest in papal affairs. M. de Chateaubriand was at this time French minister at Rome, in succession to Mathieu de Montmorency ; and he owed this quite as much to the wish of the king to have him out of the way of domestic politics, as to other claims, literary, political, or personal. At first there was some idea of pushing the election of one of Beyle's favourites, but it was thought best not to interfere with 196 MEMOIRS OP HENRY BEYLE. the regular action of M. de Chateaubriand in his proper sphere. Cardinal de Gregorio, recommended by Beyle, failed by one vote, so that Cardinal Castiglioni became Pope Pius VIII. But we have been, in point of time, rather anticipating, and return to the regular course of our narrative. In the year 1828 Beyle suffered great depression of spirits ; for although habitu- ally gay, he had occasional attacks of the blue devils, so that he even meditated suicide. There can be no doubt that this was in part owing to pecuniary embarrassment, consequent on the tem- porary suspension of payment by a bookseller in London, but also owing to the heavy travelling expenses incident upon his repeated visits to Rome, to prepare his work on the subject of that city. Of course I use the word heavy in relation to Beyle's very small income. But this depression, there can be little doubt, must have been also increased by some physical and internal cause ; for Beyle had not a perfectly sound constitution, and did not seem to have a sufficient knowledge of his consti- tution to enable him to maintain the serenity of mind requisite for those who live by intellectual labour. At a more advanced stage of this biography we shall have something more to say of his health, at a time when his constitution began to break down. Beyle made, in the course of 1828, no less than four wills ; and in one dated the 14th November, he begs pardon of M. Colomb, his friend and executor, " for the annoyance to which he was to be subjected by an inevitable event." By another, of the 4th December, he begs M. Colomb to ter- minate the " Promenades in Rome," and to correct the proofs of the work, the printing of which had been begun. But Beyle got over the fit of low spirits, and with his own hands completed the correction of the proofs. The " Promenades dans Rome," which appeared in two volumes in 1829, was eminently successful, and cut short his atrabilious humours. His friend Colomb, as editor of an edition of the ** Letters of the President de Brosses," had much occupied him- self with Italy and Italian art, and therefore supposes himself able to give Beyle sound advice on the subject. The original idea was merely to give three hundred pages of descriptions of the principal monuments of Rome. In July 1828 Beyle gave Colomb the manuscript to read, who found in it the germ of a good work, and advised him to produce a complete picture of ancient and modern Rome, comprising the arts, politics, and society. The extent of such a work rather deterred Beyle, but "promenades dans ROME.' 197 Colomb promised to find the materials for such a work ; and at the publication Beyle wished, in the preface, to acknowledge the services which Colomb had rendered him. Colomb declined, as he states, from a conviction that Beyle would thrust him too much into the foreground. But I am not sure that the work has been the better of such additions as Colomb suggested. In fancy it is far inferior to " Kome, Naples, et Florence ; " and though much fuller of purely historical and archaeological matter, the verve of Beyle is too much attenuated by matters of a me- chanical nature. There was far more of the dynamical in the " De TAmour," the " Vie de Rossini," and " Rome, Naples, et Florence." For a mere guide to Rome, one goes to a tabulated handbook. In short, I believe that, with the best intentions, Colomb rendered no service to his friend, and that the genuine original, but more brief, " Promenades dans Rome " would have been a purer emanation of the genius of Beyle. As years rolled on, the gaiety of Beyle diminished, but he gained that full insight into the mechanism of society which we find in the pages of a Theophrastus or a La Bruylre. As the illusions of life disappeared, the mind became more sober, cool, and philosophical. " All is vanity and vexation of spirit " might be the motto of a few observations marked by acumen and preg- nant brevity, which I find in his private correspondence in November 1829, and which I condense. The subject is '' People who make themselves talked of by the public." Beyle classifies them as follows : — First, Those who shine by their wealth, fortune, honours, and prosperity; who are much talked of while they live, but who after death pass out of notice ; court favourites, millionaires of the financial circle ; celebrated roihes and dandies. In short, people who make a splash, not being men of genius. Secondly, Men of great fortune and honour, acquired by really superior qualities, such as soldiers and statesmen — Colbert, Turenne, Marshal Saxe, &c., ^^^'^^'"'!jUN2 7197. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY