XI. 1821. had elapsed since the fall of the Empire; and achieved CHAP. for its arms a more durable, if a less brilliant conquest than the genuis of Napoleon had been able to effect. Like Mr Canning, he was a type of the "literary character." Mr Disraeli could not, in all history, discover two men whose productions and career evince in more striking colours its peculiarities, its excellencies, and defects. His imagination was brilliant, his disposition elevated, his soul poetical. Descended of an ancient and noble family-bred in early life in a solitary chateau in Brittany, washed by the waves of the Atlantic, the gloomy imagery which first filled his youthful mind affixed a character upon it which subsequently was rendered ineffaceable by the disasters and sufferings of the Revolution.* He had the spirit of chivalry in his soul, * FRANCOIS RÉNÉ DE CHATEAUBRIAND was born on 4th September 1769, the same year with Marshal Ney, and which Napoleon declared was his own. His mother, like those of almost all eminent men recorded in history, was a very remarkable woman, gifted with an ardent imagination and a wonderful memory, qualities which she transmitted in great perfection to her son. His family was very ancient, going back to the tenth century; but, till immortalised by Francois Réné, they lived in unobtrusive privacy on their paternal acres. After receiving the rudiments of education at home, he was sent at the age of seventeen into the army; he was engaged in the campaign of 1792, under the Prince of Condé, and the Prussians under the Duke of Brunswick, against Dumourier. He there, as he was marching along in his uniform as a private, with his knapsack on his back, accidentally met the King of Prussia. Struck with his appearance, the king asked him where he was going: "Wherever danger is to be found," was the reply of the young soldier. By that answer," said the king, touching his hat, "I recognise the noblesse of France." His regiment soon after revolted, in consequence of which he resigned his commission, and came to Paris, where he witnessed the storming of the Tuileries on 10th August 1792, and the massacres in the prisons on 2d September. Many of his nearest relations, in particular his sister-in-law, Madame de Chateaubriand, and his sister, Madame Rosambo, were executed along with Malesherbes, shortly before the fall of Robespierre. Obliged now to leave France to avoid death himself, he escaped to and took refuge in England, where he lived for some years in extreme poverty and obscure lodgings in London, supporting himself entirely by his pen, and, like Johnson, often scarce able, even by its aid, to earn his daily meal. He there wrote his first and least creditable work, the Essai Historique, many passages in which prove that even his ardent spirit had for a time been shaken by the infidelity and dreams of the Revolution. But he soon awakened to better feelings, and regained amidst suffering his destined and glorious career. Tired of his obscure and monotonous life, and disconcerted by the issue of a love affair in England, he set out for XI. 1821. CHAP. but not the gaiety of the troubadour in his heart. Generous, high-minded, and disinterested in the extreme, he was so inured in youth to the spectacle of woe, that it was stript of most of those terrors which render it so appalling to less experienced sufferers. Like the veteran who has seen his comrades for years fall around him, the America, with the Quixotic idea-indicative, however, of a mind as aspiring as that of Columbus-of discovering by land the long-sought north-west passage to the Pacific. He failed in that attempt, for which, indeed, he was possessed of no adequate means; but he saw the Falls of Niagara, dined with Washington; and in the solitudes of the Far West inhaled the spirit, while his eye painted on his mind the scenes, of savage nature. Many of the finest descriptions and allusions which adorn his works are drawn from the scenes which then became impressed on his memory; and, combined with those of the East, which he afterwards visited, constitute not the least charm of his writings. Finding that there was nothing to be done in the way of geographical discovery, with his limited means, in America, he returned to England in 1798, from whence, on the pacification of France, on the fall of the Directory and accession of Napoleon, he returned to Paris, and began his literary career. He was now in the thirty-second year of his age, and the mingled ardour, information, and poetic fervour of his mind appeared in their full perfection in the works which he gave to the public. Attala and Réné, a romance, of which the scene was laid in and the characters drawn from America, exhibited in the most brilliant form the imagery, ideas, and scenery of the Far West, seen through the eyes of chivalrous genius; while the Génie du Christianisme presented, on a larger scale, and in an immortal work, the combined fruits of study, observation, and experience, in illustrating the blessings which Christianity has conferred upon mankind. Such was the celebrity which these works almost immediately acquired, that they attracted the attention of Napoleon, who was anxious to enlist talent of all kinds in his service. He sent for Chateaubriand accordingly, and offered him the situation of Minister to the Republic of the Valais, as a first step in diplomatic service. He at once accepted it; but ere he had time to set out on his proposed mission, the murder of the Duke d'Enghien occurred, and while all Europe was in consternation at that dreadful event, he had the courage, while yet in Paris, to brave the Emperor's wrath by resigning his appointment. His friends trembled for his life in the first burst of Napoleon's fury; but he was sheltered by the Princess Eliza, and having made his escape from Paris, he turned his steps to the East, the historic land on which, from his earliest years, his romantic imagination had been fixed. He visited Greece and Constantinople, the isles of the Ægean and the stream of the Jordan, Jerusalem and Cairo, the pyramids, Thebes, and the ruins of Carthage. From this splendid phantasmagoria he drew the materials of two other great works, which appeared soon after his return to Paris ; Les Martyrs, which embodied the most striking images which had met his eye in Greece and Egypt, and the Itineraire de Paris à Jerusalem, which gave the entire details of his journey. The wrath of Napoleon having now subsided, as it generally did after a time, even when most strongly provoked, he was allowed to remain at Paris, which he did in privacy, supporting himself by literary contributions to the few reviews and journals which the despotism of the Emperor XI. 1821. image of death had been so often before his eyes, that it CHAP. had ceased to affect his imagination. He was ever ready at the call of duty, or the impulse of chivalrous feeling, to imperil his life or his fortune even in behalf of a cause which was obviously hopeless. "Fais ce que tu dois, advienne ce que pourra," was his maxim, as it ever permitted to exist, and by the sale of his acknowledged works, until 1814, when, as the approach of the Allies gave rational hopes of the restoration of the Bourbons, he composed in secresy, and published within a few days after their entry into Paris, his celebrated pamphlet, Buonaparte et les Bourbons, which had almost as powerful an effect as the victories of the Allies in bringing about the restoration of the exiled family. On the accession of Louis XVIII. parties were too much divided, and the influence of Talleyrand was too paramount, to allow of his being admitted into the Government; but, with his usual fidelity to misfortune, he accompanied Louis during the Hundred Days to Ghent, where he powerfully contributed by his pen to keep alive the hopes of the Royalists, and hold together the fragments of their shipwrecked party. On the second restoration the real or supposed necessity of taking Fouché into power made him decline any office under Government, although he was, at the earnest request of the Count d'Artois, created a peer of France in 1815. Subsequently the principles and policy of M. Decazes and the Duke de Richelieu were so much at variance with those which he professed, and had consistently maintained through life, that he not merely kept aloof from the Government, but became an active member of the Royalist Opposition, which, as usually happens in such cases, occasionally found themselves in a strange temporary alliance with their most formidable antagonists on the Liberal side. As they were in a minority in both Chambers, their only resource was the press, of the freedom of which Chateaubriand became an ardent supporter, as well from the consciousness of intellectual strength as from the necessities of his political situation. This added as much to his literary fame as it diminished his popularity with Government. Power has an instinctive dread, under all circumstances, of the unrestrained exercise of intellectual strength. He only obtained, under the semiliberal administration of the Restoration, the temporary appointment of an embassy to Prussia; and it was not till the Royalists in good earnest succeeded to power, on the downfall of the Duke de Richelieu's second administration, that he was appointed ambassador to London, in the beginning of 1822, a situation which, in the following year, was exchanged for that of Minister for Foreign Affairs, which brought him into direct collision with Mr Canning, in one of the most interesting and momentous periods of the history of France and England. He held that situation only for two years he had too much of the pride of intellect in his mind, of the irritability of genius in his disposition, to be a practicable minister under another leader. His noble and disinterested conduct in refusing the portfolio of Foreign Affairs on the accession of Louis Philippe, and preferring exile and destitution to power and rule obtained by the sacrifice of principle and honour, will form an interesting, and, for the honour of human nature, redeeming episode in a subsequent volume of this History.-Memoires d'Outre-Tombe, par M. le Vicomte de CHATEAUBRIAND, vols. i. to viii.; and Biographie des Hommes Vivants, ii. 144-149. XI. 1821. 7. CHAP. has been, and ever will be, of the really great and noble in every age and country. He evinced this intrepidity alike in braving the hostility of Napoleon in the zenith of his power, on occasion of the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, and in opposing the government of the Restoration, when it sought, in its palmy days, to impose shackles on the freedom of thought; and in adhering to it with noble constancy amidst a nation's defection, when it was laid in the dust on the accession of Louis Philippe. Chateaubriand's merits as an author-by far the most His merits secure passport he has obtained to immortality—will be as an orator. considered in a subsequent chapter, which treats of the literature of France during the Restoration. It is with his qualities as an orator and a statesman that we are here concerned, and they were both of no ordinary kind. Untrained in youth to parliamentary debate, brought for the first time, in middle life, into senatorial contests, he had none of the facility or grace of Mr Canning in extempore debate. This was of the less consequence in France, that the speeches delivered at the tribune were almost all written essays, with scarcely any alteration made at the moment. But, independently of this, his turn of mind was essentially different from that of his English rival. It was equally poetical, brilliant, and imaginative, but more earnest, serious, and impassioned. The one was a high-bred steed, which, conscious of its powers, and revelling in their pacific exercise, canters with ease and grace over the greensward turf; the other, a noble Arab, which toils have inured to privation, and trained to efforts over the sterile desert, and which is any day prepared to die in defence of the much-loved master or playmates of its childhood. Many of his speeches or political pamphlets contain passages of surpassing vigour, eloquence, and pathos; but we shall look in vain in them for the light touch, the aërial spirit, the sportive fancy, which have thrown such a charm over the speeches of Mr Canning. XI. 1821. 8. ter as a statesman. As a practical and consistent statesman, we shall find CHAP. more to applaud in the illustrious Frenchman than the far-famed Englishman. It was his good fortune, indeed, not less than his merit, which led to his being appointed His characMinister of Foreign Affairs in France at the time when its external policy was entirely in harmony with his recorded opinions through life. Mr Canning's evil star placed him in the same situation, when his policy was to be directly at variance with those of his. But, unlike Canning, Chateaubriand showed on other occasions, and on decisive crises, that he could prefer consistency, poverty, and obloquy, to vacillation, riches, and power. His courageous defence of the liberty of the press alone prevented his obtaining a minister's portfolio during the ministry of the Duke of Richelieu. His generous adherence to the fallen fortunes of Henry V. caused him to prefer exile, poverty, and destitution, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which he was offered on the accession of Louis Philippe.1 1 ChateauHe was in general to be found in direct opposition to the Memoires, ruling majority, both in numbers and influence, around him the sure sign of a powerful and noble mind. Power came for a brief season to him, not he to power; he refused it when it could be purchased only at the expense of consistency. briand, viii. 372. 9. Yet with all these great and lofty qualities, Chateaubriand was far from being a perfect character, and many His defects. of his qualities were as pernicious to him as a statesman as they were valuable to him as a romance or didactic writer. He had far too much of the irritability of genius in his temper that unfortunate peculiarity which is so often conspicuous where the force of intellect is not equal to the brilliancy of imagination, and which so generally disqualifies imaginative writers from taking a permanent lead in the government of mankind. He had a great store of historical knowledge at command, but it was of the striking and attractive more than the solid and the useful kind; and there is no trace, either in his speeches or writings, VOL. II. 2 M |