Chapter X: Book IX: 247 (2)

Blenheim[332] was distasteful to me; I suffered so much the more from an ancient reverse of my country in that I had had to endure the insult of a recent affront: a boat going up the Thames caught sight of me on the bank; seeing a Frenchman, the oarsmen gave cheers; the news had just been received of the naval battle of Aboukir: these successes of the foreigner, which might open the gates of France to me, were hateful to me. Nelson[333], whom I had often met in Hyde Park, wrapped his victories in Lady Hamilton's[334] shawl at Naples, while the _lazzaroni_ played at ball with human heads. The admiral died gloriously at Trafalgar[335], and his mistress wretchedly at Calais, after losing beauty, youth and fortune. And I, taunted on the Thames with the victory of Aboukir, have seen the palm-trees of Libya edging the calm and deserted sea which was reddened with the blood of my fellow-countrymen.

Stowe Park[336] is famous for its ornamental buildings: I prefer its shades. The cicerone of the place showed us, in a gloomy ravine, the copy of a temple of which I was to admire the original in the dazzling valley of the Cephisus. Beautiful pictures of the Italian school pined in the darkness of some uninhabited rooms, whose shutters were kept closed: poor Raphael, imprisoned in a castle of the ancient Britons, far from the skies of the Farnesina[337]!

At Hampton Court was preserved the collection of portraits of the mistresses of Charles II.: you see how that Prince took things on emerging from a revolution which cut off his father's head, and which was to drive out his House.

At Slough we saw Herschel[338], with his learned sister[339] and his great forty-foot telescope; he was looking for new planets: this made Peltier laugh, who kept to the seven old ones.

We stopped for two days at Oxford. I took pleasure in this republic of Alfred the Great[340]; it represented the privileged liberties and the manners of the literary institutions of the Middle Ages. We hurried through the twenty colleges, the libraries, the pictures, the museum, the botanic garden. I turned over with extreme pleasure, among the manuscripts of Worcester College, a life of the Black Prince, written in French verse by the Prince's herald-at-arms.

Oxford, without resembling them, recalled to my memory the modest Colleges of Dol, Rennes and Dinan. I had translated Gray's[341] _Elegy written in a Country Church-yard_:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day[342],

which is imitated from Dante's

Squilla di lontano
Che paja'l giorno pianger che si musre[343].

[Sidenote: Oxford.]

Peltier had hastened to trumpet my translation in his paper. At sight of Oxford I remembered the same poet's _Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College_:

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow,
. . . . . .
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames,...
. . . . . .
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed
Or urge the flying ball?

Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day[344].

Who has not experienced the feelings and regrets here expressed with all the sweetness of the muse? Who has not softened at the recollection of the games, the studies, the loves of his early years? But can they be revived? The pleasures of youth reproduced by the memory are ruins seen by torchlight.

*

Separated from the Continent by a long war, the English at the end of the last century preserved their national manners and character. There was still but one people, in whose name the sovereign power was wielded by an aristocratic government; only two great friendly classes existed, bound by a common interest: the patrons and the dependents. That jealous class called the bourgeoisie in France, which is beginning to arise in England, was then not known: nothing came between the rich land-owners and the men occupied with their trades. Everything had not yet become machinery in the manufacturing professions, folly in the privileged classes. Along the same pavements where one now sees dirty faces and men in surtouts, passed little girls in white cloaks, with straw-hats fastened under the chin with a ribbon, a basket on their arm, containing fruit or a book; all kept their eyes lowered, all blushed when one looked at them:

"Britain," says Shakespeare, is "in a great pool, a swan's nest[345]."

Surtouts without coats beneath were so little worn in London in 1793 that a woman who was weeping bitterly over the death of Louis XVI. said to me:

"But, my dear sir, is it true that the poor King was dressed in a surtout when they cut off his head?"

The "gentlemen farmers" had not yet sold their patrimony in order to come and live in London; in the House of Commons they still formed the independent fraction which, acting in opposition to the Ministry, kept up ideas of liberty, order and property. They hunted the fox or shot pheasants in autumn, ate fat geese at Christmas, shouted "Hurrah" for roast beef, grumbled at the present, praised the past, cursed Pitt and the war, which sent up the price of port, and went to bed drunk to begin the same life over again next day. They were firmly convinced that the glory of Great Britain would never fade so long as they sang _God save the King_, maintained the rotten boroughs, kept the game laws in vigour, and sent hares and partridges to market by stealth under the name of "lions" and "ostriches."

The Anglican clergy was learned, hospitable, and generous; it had received the French clergy with true Christian charity. The University of Oxford printed at its own cost and distributed gratis among the curés a New Testament, according to the Latin Vulgate, with the imprint, "_In usum cleri Gallicani in Anglia exulantis._" As to the life of the English upper classes, I, a poor exile, saw nothing of it but the outside. On the occasion of receptions at Court or at the Princess of Wales's[346], ladies went by seated sideways in Sedan chairs; their great hoop-petticoats protruded through the door of the chair like altar-hangings. They themselves, on those altars of their waists, resembled madonnas or pagodas. Those fine ladies were the daughters whose mothers the Duc de Guiche and the Duc de Lauzun had adored; those daughters are, in 1822, the mothers and grandmothers of the little girls who now come to my house to dance in short frocks to the sound of Collinet's clarinet, swift generations of flowers.

[Sidenote: English statesmen.]

The England of 1688 was, at the end of the last century, at the apogee of its glory. As a poor emigrant in London, from 1793 to 1800, I heard Pitt, Fox[347], Sheridan[348], Wilberforce[349], Grenville[350], Whitbread[351], Lauderdale[352], Erskine[353]; as a magnificent ambassador in London to-day, in 1822, I could not say how far I am impressed when, instead of the great orators whom I used to admire, I see those get up who were their seconds at the time of my first visit, the pupils in the place of the masters. General ideas have penetrated into that particular society. But the enlightened aristocracy placed at the head of this country since one hundred and forty years will have shown to the world one of the finest and greatest societies that have done honour to mankind since the Roman patricians. Perhaps some old family, seated in the depths of its county, will recognise the society which I have depicted and regret the time whose loss I here deplore.

In 1792[354] Mr. Burke parted from Mr. Fox. The question at issue was the French Revolution, which Mr. Burke attacked and Mr. Fox defended. Never had the two orators, who till then had been friends, displayed such eloquence. The whole House was moved, and Mr. Fox's eyes were filled with tears when Mr. Burke concluded his speech with these words:

"The right honourable gentleman in the speech he has just
made has treated me in every sentence with uncommon harshness
... by declaring a censure upon my whole life, conduct, and
opinions. Notwithstanding this great and serious, though
on my part unmerited, attack.... I shall not be dismayed;
I am not yet afraid to state my sentiments in this House
or anywhere else.... I will tell all the world that the
Constitution is in danger.... It certainly is indiscretion
at any period, but especially at my time of life, to provoke
enemies, or to give my friends occasion to desert me; yet
if my firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution
places me in such a dilemma, I will risk all; and as public
duty and public prudence teach me, with my last words
exclaim, 'Fly from the French Constitution!'"

Mr. Fox having said that there was "no loss of friends," Mr. Burke exclaimed:

"Yes, there is a loss of friends! I know the price of my
conduct; I have done my duty at the price of my friend; our
friendship is at an end.... I warn the two right honourable
gentlemen who are the great rivals in this House, that
whether they hereafter move in the political atmosphere as
two flaming meteors, or walk together like brethren hand in
hand, to preserve and cherish the British Constitution, to
guard against innovation, and to save it from the danger of
these new theories[355]."

A memorable time in the world's history!

Mr. Burke, whom I knew towards the close of his life, crushed by the death of his only son, had founded a school for the benefit of the children of the poor Emigrants. I went to see what he called his "nursery." He was amused at the vivacity of the foreign race which was growing up under his paternal genius. Looking at the careless little exiles hopping, he said to me:

"Our boys could not do that."

And his eyes filled with tears. He thought of his son who had set out for a longer exile.

[Sidenote: William Pitt.]

Pitt, Fox, and Burke are no more, and the British Constitution has undergone the influence of the "new theories." One must have witnessed the gravity of the parliamentary debates of that time, one must have heard those orators whose prophetic voices seemed to announce a coming revolution, to form an idea of the scene which I am recalling. Liberty, confined within the limits of order, seemed to struggle, at Westminster under the influence of anarchical liberty, which spoke from the still blood-stained rostrum of the Convention.

Mr. Pitt was tall and thin, and wore a sad and mocking look. His utterance was cold, his intonation monotonous, his gestures imperceptible; nevertheless, the lucidity and fluency of his thought, the logic of his arguments, suddenly lighted with flashes of eloquence, raised his talent to something out of the common. I used often to see Mr. Pitt, when he went from his house on foot across St. James's Park, to wait upon the King. George III.[356], on his side, arrived from Windsor after drinking beer out of a pewter pot with the neighbouring farmers; he drove through the ugly court-yards of his ugly palace in a dowdy carriage followed by a few Horse-guards. That was the master of the Kings of Europe, as five or six City merchants are the masters of India. Mr. Pitt, in a black coat, a steel-hilted sword at his side, his hat under his arm, climbed the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. On his way he found only three or four unemployed Emigrants: casting a scornful look in their direction, he went on, with his nose in the air, and his pale face.

The great financier maintained no order in his own affairs, had no regular hours for his meals or his sleep. Over head and ears in debt, he paid nobody, and could not bring himself to add up a bill. A footman kept house for him. Badly dressed, with no pleasures, no passions, greedy only for power, he scorned honours, and refused to be more than plain William Pitt.

Lord Liverpool, in the month of June last, 1822, took me to dine at his country-place: when we were crossing Putney Heath, he showed me the little house in which died, a poor man, the son of Lord Chatham, the statesman who had taken Europe into his pay and with his own hand distributed all the millions in the world[357].

George III. survived Mr. Pitt, but he had lost his reason and his sight. Every session, at the opening of Parliament, the ministers read to the silent and moved Houses the bulletin of the King's health. One day I had gone to visit Windsor: a few shillings persuaded an obliging door-keeper to hide me so that I might see the King. The monarch, white-haired and blind, appeared, wandering like King Lear through his palace and groping with his hands along the walls of the apartments. He sat down to a piano, of which he knew the position, and played some portions of a sonata by Handel[358]: a fine ending for Old England!

I began to turn my eyes towards my native land. A great revolution had been operated. Bonaparte had become First Consul and was restoring order by means of despotism; many exiles were returning; the upper Emigration, especially, hastened to go and collect the remnants of its fortune: loyalty was dying at the head, while its heart still beat in the breasts of a few half-naked country-gentlemen. Mrs. Lindsay had left; she wrote to Messrs, de Lamoignon to return; she also invited Madame d'Aguesseau[359], sister of Messrs, de Lamoignon, to cross the Channel. Fontaines wrote to me to finish the printing of the _Génie du Christianisme_ in Paris. While remembering my country, I felt no desire to see it again; gods more powerful than the paternal lares kept me back; I had neither goods nor refuge in France; my motherland had become to me a bosom of stone, a breast without milk: I should not find my mother there, nor my brother, nor my sister Julie. Lucile still lived, but she had married M. de Caud and no longer bore my name; my young "widow" knew me only through a union of a few months, through misfortune and through an absence of eight years.

Had I been left to myself, I do not know that I should have had the strength to leave; but I saw my little circle dissolving; Madame d'Aguesseau proposed to take me to Paris: I let myself go. The Prussian Minister procured me a passport in the name of La Sagne, an inhabitant of Neuchâtel. Messrs. Dulau stopped the printing of the _Génie du Christianisme_, and gave me the sheets that had been set up. I separated the sketches of _Atala_ and _René_ from the _Natchez_; the remainder of the manuscript I locked into a trunk, of which I entrusted the deposit to my hosts in London, and I set out for Dover with Madame d'Aguesseau: Mrs. Lindsay was awaiting us at Calais.

[Sidenote: I return to France.]

It was thus that I quitted England in 1800; my heart was differently occupied from the manner in which it is at the time of writing, in 1822. I brought back from the land of exile only dreams and regrets; to-day my head is filled with scenes of ambition, of politics, of grandeurs and Courts, so ill suited to my nature. How many events are heaped up in my present existence! Pass, men, pass; my turn will come. I have unrolled only one-third of my days before your eyes; if the sufferings which I have borne have weighed upon my vernal serenity, now, entering upon a more fruitful age, the germ of _René_ is about to develop, and bitterness of another kind will be blended with my narrative! What shall I not have to tell in speaking of my country; of her revolutions, of which I have already shown the fore-ground; of the Empire and of the gigantic man whom I have seen fall; of the Restoration in which I played so great a part, that Restoration glorious to-day, in 1822, although nevertheless I am able to see it only through I know not what ill-omened mist?

I end this book, which touches the spring of 1800. Arriving at the close of my first career, I see opening before me the writer's career; from a private individual I am about to become a public man; I leave the virginal and silent retreat of solitude to enter the dusty and noisy cross-roads of the world; broad day is about to light up my dreamy life, light to penetrate my kingdom of shadows. I cast a melting glance upon those books which contain my unremembered hours; I seem to be bidding a last farewell to the paternal house; I take leave of the thoughts and illusions of my youth as of sisters, of loving women, whom I leave by the family hearth and whom I shall see no more.

We took four hours to cross from Dover to Calais. I stole into my country under the shelter of a foreign name: doubly hidden beneath the obscurity of the Swiss La Sagne and my own, I entered France with the century[360].

[247] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in February 1845.--T.

[248] Cat. LXV. 9-11.--T.

[249] M. A. Dulau was a Frenchman, and had been a Benedictine at Sorèze College. He emigrated and opened a shop in Wardour Street, London.--B.

[250] OV., _Fasti_, VI. 772.--T.

[251] Charlotte Suzanne Marie de Bedée (1762-1849), whom Chateaubriand called Caroline, survived him, and died at Dinan on the 28th of April 1849.--B.

[252] Marie Anne Cuppi (1710-1770), known as the Camargo, and a famous dancer, was born in Brussels of a reputed noble Spanish family. She made her first appearance at the Opera in Pans in 1734, and continued to dance there until 1751, when she retired from her profession. Voltaire addressed a piece of verse to her.--T.

[253] David Hume (1711-1776). His History of England, published from 1754 to 1761, goes down to 1688, whence it is continued by Smollett.--T.

[254] Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771). That portion of his complete _History of England_ which embraces the period from the Revolution to the death of George II. is generally treated as carrying on Hume's History, and is printed as a continuation of that work.--T.

[255] Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), author of the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._--T.

[256] William Robertson (1721-1793), a "moderate" historian, author of a History of Scotland, a History of Charles V., and a History of America.--T.

[257] John Dryden (1631-1700), Poet-Laureate.--T.

[258] Alexander Pope (1688-1744). His house at Twickenham stood on the site of the modern Pope's Villa, now the property of Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P. The willow became rotten and was cut down.--T.

[259] The Rev. Hugh Blair ( 1718-1800), Professor of Rhetoric at Edinburgh University, and author of the _Lectures on Rhetoric_ and a collection of famous Sermons.--T.

[260] Dr. Samuel Johnson ( 1709-1783), author of the Dictionary and the _Lives of the English Poets._--T.

[261] Addison and Steele's _Spectator_ ran for nearly two years, from January 1711 to December 1712.--T.

[262] Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the great statesman. His _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ appeared in 1790.--T.

[263] François Duc de Montmorency (_circa_ 1530-1579) was Ambassador to England in 1572, when Shakespeare was still a child.--T.

[264] Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron (_circa_ 1562-1602), was Ambassador from Henry IV. to Elizabeth at the close of the sixteenth century. He was beheaded, 31 July 1602, at the Bastille, for conspiring against the King.--T.

[265] Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1560-1641), Henry IV.'s great minister.--T.

[266] Elizabeth, Queen of England (1533-1603), reigned from 1558 to 1603, and the plays produced by Shakespeare during her reign include _Love's Labours Lost_, the _Comedy of Errors_, _King Henry VI._, the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, the _Midsummer Alight's Dream_, the _Life and Death of King Richard III._, _Romeo and Juliet_, the _Life and Death of King Richard II._, _King John_, the _Merchant of Venice_, _King Henry IV._, _King Henry V._, the _Taming of the Shrew_, the _Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, Julius Cæsar, All's Well that Ends Well_, and _Hamlet Prince of Denmark._--T.

[267] James I. King of England and VI. of Scotland (1566-1625). In his reign were produced _Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, the Moor of Venice, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline_, the _Tempest_, the _Winters Tale_, and _King Henry VIII._--T.

[268] Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) flourished exactly three centuries before Shakespeare.--T.

[269] Bulstrode Whitelock (1605-1675), a prominent member of the Long Parliament, and author of the _Memorials of the English Affairs_, in which mention is made of the fact that the Swedish Ambassador complains, in 1656, of the delay caused in the translation of certain articles into Latin through their being entrusted to a blind man.--T.

[270] Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), known as Molière, played the principal part in his own comedies. _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, one of the most farcical of these, was produced in 1669.--T.

[271] JOB. XIII. 15.--T.

[272] _An Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet William Shakespeare_, 1-2.--T.

[273] Michael Angelo Buonarotti (1474-1563) left a number of slight poems in addition to his vast works of sculpture, painting, and architecture.--T.

[274] Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) lost the use of his right leg when eighteen months old.--T.

[275] _Sonnets_, XXXVII. 3.--T.

[276] _Sonnets_, LXXI, I, 5-12.--T.

[277] Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), the voluminous author of _Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe_, and the _History of Sir Charles Grandison. Clarissa Harlowe_ was published in 1748.--T.

[278] Henry Fielding (1707-1754), author of _Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones_ (1749), etc.--T.

[279] Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), author of _Tristram Shandy_ (1759-1767), etc.--T.

[280] Goldsmith's _Vicar of Wakefield_ had appeared in 1766.--T.

[281] Godwin's _Caleb Williams_ was published in 1794.--T.

[282] Matthew Gregory Lewis (1773-1818), familiarly known as Monk Lewis from the _Monk_, his principal novel, published in 1795.--T.

[283] Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), _née_ Ward, author of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ (1794)--T.

[284] Mrs. Anna Lætitia Barbauld (1743-1825), _née_ Aiken, author of _Evenings at Horne_, etc.--T.

[285] Maria Edgeworth (1766-1849), author of _Moral Tales, Castle Rackrent, Tales of Fashionable Life_, etc., etc.--T.

[286] Madame Fanny d'Arblay (1752-1840), _née_ Burney, author of _Evelina_ (1778), _Cecilia_, and an interesting Diary and Letters.--T.

[287] Florio's MONTAIGNE, Booke III. chap. IX.: _Of Vanitie._--T.

[288] Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) published his tragedy of _Goetz von Berlichingen_ in 1773; Sir Walter Scott's translation appeared in 1799.--T.

[289] William Cowper (1731-1800), author of the _Task._--T.

[290] Robert Burns (1759-1796), the Ayrshire ploughman-poet.--T.

[291] Thomas Moore (1779-1852), the popular Irish poet, had published his translation of Anacreon at the time of which Chateaubriand writes. His Irish Melodies began to appear in 1807, and _Lalla Rookh_ was published in 1817.--T.

[292] Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) had published his _Pleasures of Hope_ in 1799.--T.

[293] Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), the banker-poet, was known at this time by the _Pleasures of Memory_, published in 1792.--T.

[294] George Crabbe (1754-1832) had published the _Library_ and the _Village._--T.

[295] William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Poet-Laureate (1843). The Lyrical Ballads, composed with Coleridge, whom Chateaubriand omits to mention, were published in 1798.--T.

[296] Robert Southey (1774-1843), Poet-Laureate (1813). _Wat Tyler_ and _Joan of Arc_ both appeared before the close of the eighteenth century.--T.

[297] James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) had not begun to write at this time.--T.

[298] James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), author of the _Hunchback_ and other once much admired plays.--T.

[299] Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773-1840), Lord Privy Seal in the ministry of his nephew Charles James Fox (1806), and author of some translations from the Spanish poets.--T.

[300] Canning was the author of a number of satirical poems, many of which appeared in the _Anti-Jacobin._--T.

[301] John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1829, and one of the founders of the _Quarterly Review_ (1809) and of the Athenæum Club (1824). He published occasional poems on British victories, such as Trafalgar and Talavera.--T.

[302] William Mason (1724-1797), a minor poet, author of the _English Garden_ and of two tragedies, _Elfrida_ and _Caractacus._--T.

[303] Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, and author of the _Botanic Garden_ and the _Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life._--T.

[304] James Beattie (1735-1803). The _Minstrel_ appeared in 1774 to 1777.--T.

[305] _Hours of Idleness_, "When I roved a young Highlander," 1-4.--T.

[306] _Hours of Idleness_, "Lines written beneath the Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow," 1-4, 17-18, 24-25, 30, 33-34--T.

[307] Arthur Young (1741-1820), a famous writer on agriculture, and Secretary to the Board of Agriculture on its establishment in 1793.--T.

[308] Arthur Young, _Travels in France during the Years_ 1787, 1788, 1789. The author passed by Combourg Castle on the 1st of September 1788.--T.

[309] _Martyrs_, book IV.--T.

[310] _Ad Familiares_, IV. 5: "In my return out of Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I amused myself with contemplating the circumjacent countries. Behind me lay Ægina, before me Megara; on my right I saw Piræus, and on my left Corinth. These cities, once so flourishing and magnificent, now presented nothing to my view but a sad spectacle of desolation" (MELMOTH's translation).--T.

[311] Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780-1857), the national French song-writer. The extract quoted occurs in the notes to Béranger's song, _À M. de Chateaubriand_ (September 1831), which is quoted in a later volume.--T.

[312] Abel François Villemain (1790-1870), perpetual secretary of the French Academy from 1835, and author of the notice of Lord Byron in the _Biographie universelle_, from which the above sentences are quoted.--T.

[313] Byron spent his childhood at Aberdeen.--T.

[314] MACPHERSON's _Ossian_ was published in 1760.--T.

[315] GOETHE's _Sorrows of Werther_ appeared in 1774.--T.

[316] Rousseau's posthumous work, published in 1782.--T.

[317] By Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1784).--T.

[318] Chateaubriand cannot have read the _Age of Bronze_: it is true that this poem was written in 1823, at Genoa, a year later than the earlier portion of these remarks. In Stanza XVI. of the _Age of Bronze, or Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, treating of the Congress of Verona (1822), occur the following lines:

There Metternich, power's foremost parasite,
Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight;
There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs;
And subtle Greeks intrigue for stupid Tartars.

And Byron appends the following note:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, who has not forgotten the author in the minister, receives a handsome compliment at Verona from a literary sovereign: 'Ah! Monsieur C., are you related to that Chateaubriand who-who-who has written _something?_' (_écrit quelque chose!_). It is said that the author of _Atala_ repented him for a moment of his legitimacy."--T.

[319] _De la Littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec l'état moral et politique des nations_, by Madame de Staël. As this book appeared in 1800, before _Atala_ and the _Génie du Christianisme_, Madame de Staël may well be excused for not mentioning Chateaubriand's name in it.--B.

[320] Teresa Contessa Guiccioli (1799-1873), _née_ Gamba, who became famous by her _liaison_ with Lord Byron. In 1831, widowed of both her husband and Lord Byron, she married the Marquis de Boissy, who had been an attache to Chateaubriand's embassy in Rome. The Countess Guiccioli published her Recollections of Lord Byron in 1863.--B.

[321] Anne Isabella Lady Byron (1792-1860), _née_ Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke-Noel, and heiress of her mother, Judith Noel, Viscountess Wentworth. She married Lord Byron on the 2nd of January 1815, and left him in January 1816, soon after the birth of their daughter Augusta Ada.--T.

[322] Alan IV. Duke of Brittany (_d._ 1112), known as Alan Rufus, son-in-law and nephew of William the Conqueror, was created Earl of Richmond and founded the borough of Richmond or Rich Mount.--T.

[323] See _Domesday Book.--Author's Note._

[324] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) created the Duchy of Richmond in favour of...

[325] Charles Lennox, first Duke of Richmond (peerage of England) and Lennox (peerage of Scotland) in 1675. He was the illegitimate son of the King and of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and Duchesse d'Aubigny. This last title of Aubigny was re-confirmed to the fifth duke by King Louis XVIII. in 1816.--T.

[326] Alice Perrers (d. 1400), married later to William de Windsor, became Edward III.'s mistress in 1366. She stole the rings from off his fingers when he was dying.--T.

[327] LA HARPE, _Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi martyr_:

"The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."--T.

[328] Queen Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), second wife of Henry VIII., executed on Tower Hill for adultery.--T.

[329] William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, K.T. (1724-1810), known as "Old Q.," the notorious veteran debauchee.--T.

[330] Peltier attacked Bonaparte in the _Ambigu_, which he published in London at the end of 1802. The First Consul, then at peace with England, asked for his expulsion, or at least his indictment before a British jury. Peltier was brought before the Court of King's Bench, was brilliantly defended by Sir James Mackintosh, and was sentenced to pay a trifling fine (21 February 1803).--B.

[331] Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) abandoned medicine for the law. He received an Indian judgeship in 1804, and in 1811 returned to England, entering Parliament in 1812. He was the author of some masterly writings, including the famous _Dissertation on Ethics in the Encyclopædia Britannica._--T.

[332] Blenheim was founded in 1704 and bestowed by Parliament on John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his military and diplomatic services. It was named after the signal victory at Blenheim over the French and Bavarian troops (2 August 1704).--T.

[333] Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson (1758-1805) destroyed the French fleet in the battle known indifferently as the Battle of Aboukir or the Nile (1 August 1798). For this he was created Baron Nelson by the King of England and Duke of Bronte by the King of Naples.--T.

[334] Emma Lady Hamilton (1763-1815), _née_ Lyon or Hart, the beautiful mistress of Charles Greville and of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, foster-brother to George IV., and Minister at Naples from 1764 to 1800. Sir William Hamilton married Emma Hart in 1791. Her intimacy with Nelson began in 1793, and their daughter Horatia was born in 1801.--T.

[335] 21 October 1805.--T.

[336] At that time the residence of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.--T.

[337] The Farnesina Palace, in Rome, where Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) died.--T.

[338] Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), the famous astronomer, had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.--T.

[339] Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), Sir William's sister, assisted him in recording his observations.--T.

[340] King Alfred (849-901), known as the Great, is said to have founded the University of Oxford in 872.--T.

[341] Thomas Gray (1716-1771).--T.

[342] _Elegy_, I.--T.

[343] _Purgatorio_, VIII. 5.--B.

[344] _Ode_, 11-15, 18-21, 28-30, 51-55.--T.

[345] _Cymbeline_, III. 4.--T.

[346] Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821) married the Prince of Wales, afterwards King George IV., in 1795. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated by mutual consent in 1796, after the birth of Princess Charlotte.--T.

[347] Charles James Fox (1749-1806) entered Parliament for Midhurst in 1768; held office under North, but left him and joined Burke in his opposition to the American War; was Foreign Secretary in the Rockingham Ministry; joined North's short-lived Coalition Ministry of 1783; and during the next fourteen years distinguished himself as the great and eloquent opponent of Pitt's Government. On Pitt's death, in 1806, he again came into office as Foreign Secretary, but himself died shortly after.--T.

[348] Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751-1816) had produced all his plays and was owner of Drury Lane Theatre when he entered Parliament in 1780 under Fox's patronage. In 1782 he became Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Rockingham's Ministry. His two most famous speeches were those impeaching Warren Hastings in 1787 and supporting the French Revolution in 1794.--T.

[349] William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the antagonist of the slave-trade, entered Parliament as Member for Hull in 1780. He first introduced his Abolition Bill in 1789; it was passed by the House of Commons in 1801 and by the House of Lords in 1807.--T.

[350] William Wyndham, first Lord Grenville (1759-1834), entered Parliament in 1782. In 1789 he was Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1790 Pitt made him Home Secretary and a peer; in 1791 he was Foreign Secretary, and Premier from 1806 to 1807.--T.

[351] Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815) entered Parliament in 1790 as Member for Bedford, and attached himself to Fox, to the maintenance of peace, and to the cause of the Princess of Wales. He cut his throat on the 6th of July 1815.--T.

[352] James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale, K.T. (1759-1839), entered the House of Commons in 1780 for Newport, and supported Fox. In 1789 he succeeded to the Scottish peerage and was elected a representative peer in 1790, and in 1806 created a peer of Great Britain and Ireland. He veered from Whig to Tory over the Queen Caroline question, and received the Thistle in reward.--T.

[353] Thomas first Lord Erskine (1750-1823) was Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales (1783), Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1802), and in 1806 became Lord Chancellor and a peer.--T.

[354] This should be 1791. _Vide note infra._--T.

[355] 21 April 1791, in the course of an excursion on the French Revolution during the debate on the Quebec Government Bill.--T.

[356] George III., King of England (1738-1820). His frequent fits of insanity began in 1810.--T.

[357] Pitt died at his house at Putney on the 23rd of January 1806.--T.

[358] George Frederick Handel (1684-1759), a German musician who attained and still maintains great vogue in England.--T.

[359] Marie Catherine Marouise d'Aguesseau (1759-1849), _née_ de Lamoignon, married to the Marquis d'Aguesseau, who became a senator of the Empire (1805) and a peer of the Restoration (1814).--B.

[360] 8 May 1800.--B.