of money. He afterwards voted against the establishment of the empire, but as his conduct was always upright, he never gave any umbrage to the government. During the prosperity of the empire, he never asked for any thing; but after the misfortunes of Russia, he demanded employment, and got the command of Antwerp, where he acquitted himself very well. After Napoleon's return from Elba, he was minister of the interior; and the emperor had every reason to be satisfied with his conduct. He was faithful, a man of truth and probity, and laborious in his exertions. After the abdication, he was named one of the provisional government, but he was joué by the intriguers by whom he was surrounded. He had passed for an original amongst his companions when he was young. He hated the nobles, and on that account had several quarrels with Robespierre, who latterly protected many of them He was member of the committee of public safety along with Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just, and the other butchers, and was the only one who was not denounced. He afterwards demanded to be included in the denunciation, and to be tried for his conduct, as well as the others, which was refused; but his having made the demand to share the fate of the rest, gained him great credit. (Vol. i. p. 186— 188.) The characters of Fouché and Talleyrand are strongly and unfavourably drawn. The following anecdote, if not probable, is at least amusing. Madame Talleyrand was a very fine woman, English or East Indian, but sotte and grossly ignorant. I sometimes asked Denon, whose works I suppose you have read, to breakfast with me, as I took a pleasure in his conversation, and conversed very freely with him. Now all the intriguers and speculators paid their court to Denon, with a view of inducing him to mention their projects or themselves in the course of his conversations with me, thinking that even being mentioned by such a man as Denon, for whom I had a great esteem, might materially serve them. Talleyrand, who was a great speculator, invited Denon to dinner. When he went home to his wife, he said, my dear, I have invited Denon to dine. He is a great traveller, and you must say something handsome to him about his travels, as he may be useful to us with the emperor.' His wife being extremely ignorant, and probably never having read any other book of travels than that of Robinson Crusoe, concluded that Denon could be nobody else than Robinson. Wishing to be very civil to him, she, before a large company, asked him divers questions about his man Friday! Denon, astonished, did not know what to 6 think at first, but at length discovered by her questions that she really imagined him to be Robinson Crusoe. His astonishment and that of the company cannot be described, nor the peals of laughter which it excited in Paris, as the story flew like wildfire through the city, and even Talleyrand himself was ashamed of it. (Vol. i. p. 434-436.) rand," said he, "to proceed on a mission "At one time I had appointed Talleyganize the best method of accomplishing to Warsaw, in order to arrange and orthe separation of Poland from Russia. He had several conferences with me respecting this mission, which was a great surprise to character at the time. Having married one the ministers, as Talleyrand had no official of his relations to the Duchess of Courland, Talleyrand was very anxious to receive the appointment, in order to revive the claims of the Duchess's family. However, some money transactions of his were discovered at Vienna, which convinced me that he was carrying on his old game and the intended mission. I had designed at determined me not to employ him on one time to have made him a cardinal, with which he refused to comply. Maknees before me, in order to obtain permisdame Grand threw herself twice upon her sion to marry him, which I refused; but through the intreaties of Josephine, she succeeded on the second application. afterwards forbade her the court, when I discovered the Genoa affair, of which I told you before. Latterly," continued he, Talleyrand sunk into contempt." (Vol. i. p. 446, 447-) I The last character which we can afford to take out of these volumes, is that of his Majesty of Prussia. I asked him, if the king of Prussia was a man of talent. "Who," said he, "the king of Prussia ?" He burst into a fit of laughter." He a man of talent! The greatest blockhead on earth. Un ignorantaccio che non ha nè talente, nè informazione. A Don Quixote in appearance. I know him well. He cannot hold a conversation for five minutes." (Vol. i. p. 102.) "When," continued Napoleon, “I was at Tilsit, with the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia, I was the most ignorant of the three in military affairs. These two sovereigns, especially the King of Prussia, were completely au fuit, as to the number of buttons there ought to be in front of a jacket, how many behind, and the manner in which the skirts ought to be cut. Not a tailor in the army knew better than King Frederic, how many measures of cloth it took to make a jacket. In fact," continued he, laughing, "I was nobody in comparison with them. They continually 1822. A Voice from St. Helena. tormented me with questions about matters belonging to tailors, of which I was entirely ignorant, though, in order not to affront them, I answered just as gravely as if the fate of an army depended upon the cut of a jacket. When I went to see the King of Prussia, instead of a library, I found he had a large room, like an arsenal, furnished with shelves and pegs, in which were placed fifty or sixty jackets of various modes. Every day he changed his fashion, He was a tall, and put on a different one. dry looking fellow, and would give a good idea of Don Quixote. He attached more importance to the cut of a dragoon or a hussar uniform, than was necessary for the At Jena, his salvation of a kingdom. army performed the finest and most shewy manœuvres possible, but I soon put a stop to their coglionerie, and taught them, that to fight, and to execute dazzling manœuvres and wear splendid uniforms, were very different affairs. If," added he, "the French army had been commanded by a tailor, the King of Prussia would certainly have gained the day, from his superior knowledge in that art; but as victories depend more upon the skill of the general commanding the troops, than upon that of the tailor who makes their jackets, he consequently failed." (Vol. ii. p. 48, 49.) It is a curious fact, and one mortifying enough to human greatness, that Napoleon declared, that the happiest days he ever passed were when he was but a private man, "living in a lodging near Paris." Being asked by Mr. O'Meara, what was his happiest point of time after his accession to the throne, he instantly replied, "the march from Cannes to Paris." This, our readers will doubtless recollect, was after the expedition from Elba. He declares, that he had no idea of departing from Elba at first; and that, on the contrary, he would have contentedly remained there, had it not been for the numberless violations of the treaty of Fontainbleau by the allies; amongst the most prominent of which he enumerates the following. He says, it was stipulated that all the members of his family should be permitted to follow him, and that this was violated by the almost instant seizure of his wife and child; that they were to have had the duchies of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla, of which they were deprived; that prince Eugene was to have had a principality in Italy, which was never given; that his mother and brothers were to receive pensions, which were withheld; that his own private property, and the It must by no means be under- Orange, who protected him against the ignorantacci, sent down by the Convention; he goes on to say, that Paoli always anticipated his elevation, and when he was a boy used frequently to pat him on the head and say, You are one of Plutarch's men. On the subject of his fall, in answer to a question from Mr. O'Meara, whether he did not consider Baron Stein as mainly instrumental to it? he said immediately"No-none but myself ever did me any harm; I was, I may say, the only enemy to myself; my own projects that expedition to Moscow, and the accidents which happened there, were the causes of my fall. I may, however, say, that those who made no opposition to me, who readily agreed with me, entered into all my views, and submitted with facility, were my greatest enemies; because, by the facility of conquest they afforded, they encouraged me to go too far." How happy would it be for the world if kings reflected upon this in time! In his exile, Napoleon seems to have solaced himself much with the idea that Marie Louise was still strongly attached to him, and he was repeatedly recurring to the mention of the King of Rome. I ventured, said Mr. O'Meara, upon another occasion, to express my surprise to Napoleon, that the Empress Marie Louise had not made some exertion in his behalf. "I believe," replied the Emperor, "that Marie Louise is just as much that more attention is paid to decorum in a state prisoner as I am myself, except the restraints imposed upon her. I have always had occasion to praise the conduct of my good Louise, and I believe that it is totally out of her power to assist me; moreover, she is young and timorous. It was, perhaps, a misfortune to me, that I had not married a sister of the Emperor Alexander, as proposed to me by Alexander himself, at Erfurth. But there were her religion. I did not like to allow a inconveniences in that union, arising from Russian priest to be the confessor of my wife, as I considered that he would have been a spy in the Thuilleries for Alexander. It has been said, that my union with Marie Louise was made a stipulation in the treaty of peace with Austria, which is not true. I should have spurned the idea. It was first proposed by the Emperor Francis himself, and by Metternich to Narbonne. In presenting to the public these anticipations of a very interesting work, we have not felt ourselves called upon to exercise the office of a critic. Our object has been to give a general idea of the nature of the work, without engaging ourselves in political discussion. The Early French Pocts. ESTIENNE JODELLE. THE first of the French poets, who made a figure in tragedy, was Estienne Jodelle. He was, as we have seen, the intimate of Ronsard, and had a place in the French Pleiad. His Cleopatre, which was performed in the presence of Henry II. and his court, pleased that monarch so well, that he immediately made the author a present of five hundred crowns. On this occasion, a he-goat crowned with ivy, his beard and horns gilded, was led in mock procession to Bacchus; and the sacrifice accompanied by a dithyrambic effusion from the muse of Jan Antoine de Baïf; all this to the great scandal of the reformers. At the opening of this play, the ghost of Anthony appears, and ushers in the argument in the same manner as the ghost of Polydorus does in the He cuba of Euripides, and that of Ninus in the Semiramis of Manfredi and of Voltaire. Cleopatra then enters with Eras and Charmium, and tells them that she has seen Anthony in a dream, and that he calls her to follow him. She declares her resolution to die rather than be led in triumph by Octavius Cæsar. The other dramatis personæ are Octavius, Agrippa, Proculeius, and a chorus of Alexandrian women. Octavius expostulates with her for her conduct towards Octavia, the wife of Anthony. Cleopatra endeavours to appease him, by discovering to him her treasures. Seleucus, one of her vassals, who is present, declares she has not shown the whole of them, on which the Queen cuffs and drags him by the hair, and he flies to Octavius for protection. The 1822. indignation expressed by Cleopatra to Eras and Charmium against Octavius when he is gone out; her resolution to die, again repeated; her lamentation over Anthony; and the account given by Proculeius of her I shall extract a short passage de Eras. Ha mort, o douce mort, mort seule guarison Cleopatre. Mourrons donc cheres soeurs, ayant plustost ce coeur De servir a Pluton qu'à Cesar mon vainqueur, Te faschant de mon deuil estrangement mortel. Allons donc cheres soeurs; de pleurs, de cris, de larmes, Eras. Ha death! O, gentle death; death, only cure Speed then, oh speed thee: thou shalt have to boast * # # Cleopatra. Let us then die, sweet sisters; having rather F.245. Perhaps 'twill grieve thee to have dealt thus with me, Come then, sweet sisters; wailings, groans, and tears, There is in Maffei's collection an have nothing to do with the business of the piece. Yet there is some pathos in the description of Cleopatra's death. In the Didon, Jodelle's other tragedy, (which is written in the Alexandrine measure,) the speeches are long,and of ten tedious; but there is more of what we should call poetry in it than in the tragedies of Corneille and Racine, or than in the Didon of Le Franc de Pompignan, who is one of the best of that school. La Didone and la Cleopatra occur in the catalogue of tragedies written by Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio, to whose novels Shakspeare has been so much indebted. He was contempo rary with Jodelle, having been born in 1504, and deceased in 1569. L'Eugene, a comedy, revolts us by a mixture of low intrigue, indecency, and profaneness. Of the last, one sample will suffice. Avez vous en vostre maison Grand nombre de fils ?-Trois-Je prise Ce nombre qui est sainct. In his sonnets, the conceits are strained, and the language rugged. The following, I believe, is as free from these imperfections as any of the number. J'aime le verd laurier, dont l'hyver ni la glace Les poignans eguillons de sa fucille espineuse: I love the bay-tree's never-withering green, I love the holly and those prickles keen Sonnet xiiii. On his gloss'd leaves that keep their verdant prime; On tree or bower, and weave their amorous skreen. All three I love, which alway green resemble Th' immortal thoughts that in my heart assemble His Ode de la Chasse, au Roy, contains much that would interest those who are curious about the manner of sporting in that time. The lively minuteness with which he has delineated the death of the stag, would do credit to the pencil of Sir Walter Scott. Aux trousses ja les chiens ardans Le tiennent, il est ja par terre, Ils le tirassent de leurs dents, Les larmes luy tombent des yeux. Sa mort soit le pris glorieux. Les monts, les vaux et les bois rendent Les bruyans et hautains accors, Que les trompes dans l'air espandent, Now at his haunch the fleet hound hangs, F. 296. |