LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 616.-15 MARCH, 1856. From the Edinburgh Review. fourth story, writing a drama or a novel." 1. Bibliothèque Contemporaine. 2e Série. This ideal was never realized, because the bookDe Stendhal. Euvres complètes. Par-sellers and theatrical managers would not, or is: 1854-55. En vente. 2. Vies de Haydn, et Mozart, et de Métas tase. Nouvelle édition. 1 vol. 3. Histoire de la Peinture en Italie. Nouvelle édition, entièrement revue. 1 vol. 4. Rome, Naples, et Florence. Nouvelle édition. Préface inédite. 1 vol. 5. De L'Amour. Seule édition complète. Augmentée de Préfaces et de Frag ments entièrement inédits. 1 vol. 6. Vie de Rossini. Nouvelle édition, enti 1 vol. èrement revue. 7. Racine et Shakespeare: Etudes sur Le Romantisme. Nouvelle édition, entièrement revue et augmentée d'un grand nombre de Fragments inédits. 1 vol. 8. Promenades dans Rome. Nouvelle édition. 2 vols. 9. Mémoires d'un Touriste. Préface et la 10. Le Rouge et Le Noir. Chronique du omb. 1 vol. could not, .bid high enough for dramas or 66 exception to this general indifference. THE literary career of Henri Beyle, who wrote under the pseudonyme of M. De Stendhal, deserves to be commemorated, if only as a curious illustration of the caprice of criti-it." cism; or it may well be cited in proof of the Could he wake from the dead and see his occasional readiness of contemporaries to fore- friends' faces now, his characteristic smile of stall the judgment of posterity, when there is irony, rather than loud laughter, would be the no longer a living and sentient object for their form in which his feelings might be most apjealousy. His habits were simple, his tastes propriately expressed; for those friends have were of a nature to be easily and cheaply not waited till 1880, the earliest era at which gratified, and his pecuniary wants were con- he expected to be read; they have barely exsequently of the most modest description. He ceeded the time prescribed by Horace -nonwould have been content, he tells us, to rub umque prematur in annum· for testing the on with 4000 francs a year at Paris; he would soundness of a work. Beyle died in 1842, have thought himself rich with 6000; and and few beyond the very limited circle of his in an autobiographical sketch he says, "The intimates then seemed aware that a chosen only thing I see clearly is, that for twenty spirit had departed, or that a well of valua years my ideal has been to live at Paris in a ble thought and a fountain of exquisite sensiDCXVI. LIVING AGE. VOL. XII. 41 bility had been dried up. One solitary garland of immortelles was flung upon his grave. An essay on his life and character, by M. Auguste Bussière, appeared in the "Revue dex Deux Mondes" for January, 1843; but the first paragraph was an avowal of the hazardous character of the attempt: and reminiscences by M. Merimée. M. SainteBeuve has devoted two papers, distinguished by his wonted refinement and penetration, to Stendhal, in the "Causeries du Lundi." An extremely interesting biographical notice, drawn up by M. Colomb, Beyle's most attached friend and testamentary executor, from private "We approach a task which is at the papers and other authentic sources of inforsame time both embarrassing and seducing, mation, is prefixed to the "Romans et Nouvthat of appreciating a man of talent whose elles; " and by way of preface or introducupright character and original qualities tion to the "Chartreuse de Parme," the seemed to promise a greater extent of influ- publishers have judiciously reprinted the longence than he has exercised on his contempora- neglected éloge of Balzac. As if to complicate ries. We shall encounter in this mind and the problem, Beyle's critics and biographers in this character odd specialities, strange ano-announce and claim him as "eminently malies, contradictions which will explain how, French," although he systematically ridiculed after having been more vaunted than read, the vanity of his countrymen, reviled their more read than relished, more decried than judged, more cited than known, he has lived, if the expression may be used, in a sort of clandestine celebrity, to die an obscure and unmarked death. Contemporary literature, it must be owned, has found before the tomb of one of its most distinguished cultivators, only silence, or words worse than silence. M. Beyle dead, all has been said for him. His remains have not seen their funeral attendance swell by those regrets which delight in display, and which come to seek under the folds of the pall a reflection of the lustre shed by the living." mous. 66 taste, disliked the greater part of their literature, and, deliberately repudiating his country as le plus vilain pays du monde que les nigauds appellent la belle France," directed himself to be designated as Milanese on his tombstone. Here is enough, and more than enough, to justify us in devoting our best attention to the social and intellectual phenomenon thus presented, to say nothing of the interest we naturally take in the reputation of an author who, in straitened circumstances, ordered the complete collection of " mon cher ” Edinburgh Review, and appealed to its extended circulation as an unanswerable proof that the English are more reasonable in politics than the French. A noble English poet, after an ordinary night's sleep, awoke and found himself faBeyle must have slumbered thirteen Marie-Henri Beyle was born at Grenoble, years, dating from the commencement of his on the 23d of January, 1783, of a family last long sleep, before he could have calcu- which, without being noble, was classed and lated on a similar surprise on waking. But lived familiarly with the provincial aristocracy. his hour has come at last, and come sooner One of his earliest preceptors was a priest, than he anticipated. We have now (1855) who appears to have sadly misunderstood and before us popular and cheap editions of almost mismanaged his pupil. "Beyle," says M. all his books (thirteen volumes), in addition | Merimée, "was wont to relate with bitterto two closely printed volumes of correspond-ness, after forty years, that one day, having ence, and three volumes of novels from his torn his coat whilst at play, the Abbé enunpublished MS., bearing striking evidence trusted with his education reprimanded him to the assiduity with which every scrap of severely for this misdeed before his comrades, his composition has been hunted up. We and told him he was a disgrace to religion have, moreover, a somewhat embarrassing and to his family. We laughed when he superfluity of biographical notices from sur- narrated this incident; but he saw in it simviving friends, who, whatever their amount ply an act of priestly tyranny and a horrible of agreement with Balzac in 1840, have no injustice, where there was nothing to laugh objection to respond to the popular demand at, and he felt as acutely as on the day of its for Beyle testimonials in 1855. Prefixed to occurrence the wound inflicted on his selfthe "Correspondence " is a condensed and love." It was one of his aphorisms that our pithy series of clever, polished, highly illus-parents and our masters are our natural enetrative, and by no means enthusiastic, notes mies when we enter the world; the simple He served for about half a year as aide-de-camp to General Michaud, and received the most flattering certificate of courage and conduct; but before the expiration of a year (on September 17th, 1801) he was ordered to rejoin his regiment, then in garrison at Savigliano, in Piedmont, in consequence of a regulation forbidding any officer under the rank of lieutenant to be employed as aide-de-camp. matter of fact being, that his own character, a regiment of dragoons as quartermaster; ̧ tendencies, and aspirations had been invaria- and, in the course of a month, received a bly opposed to the plans, wishes, and modes commission as sub-lieutenant. of thinking of his family. They were clearly wrong in endeavoring to force him into uncongenial paths of study; nor was he likely to be cured of his inborn wilfulness, or his morbid sensibility, by harsh treatment. On the establishment of the Ecole Centrale, in 1795, they had no alternative but to send him there; and such was his quickness or diligence, that when the day arrived for the examination in "grammaire générale," not one of the pupils ould compete with him, and he received all the prizes that had been proposed. His life in a provincial town differed widely from that of the brilliant staff-officer, which, divided between Brescia and Bergamo, with During the four following years he sus- frequent excursions to Milan and the Isles, tained his reputation by carrying off all the and thickly sown, says his biographer, with first prizes in all the courses that he attended ; | various and romantic sensations, realized his and at the end of that time, in 1798, he con- conceptions of perfect happiness. So soon as centrated his energies on mathematics for the treaty of Amiens afforded him an honor(according to M. Colomb) the strange reasonable pretext for quitting an inactive and unthat he had a horror of hypocrisy, and rightly exciting course of life in the army, he flung judged that in mathematics it was impossible. up his commission, very much to the disgust A more intelligible and more likely motive of his patrons, and went to reside with his was his laudable ambition to be admitted into parents at Grenoble. Of course this experithe Polytechnic School, for which he was ment failed, but he made himself sufficiently about to become a candidate after much anx- disagreeable to extort an allowance of 150 ious preparation, when a sudden change took francs a month from his father with leave to place in his prospects; and we find him in live at Paris, where, in June, 1807, he took 1800, at the age of seventeen, a supernumer-up his elevated abode (au cinquième) in the ary in the ministry of war. He was indebted for this employment to the Daru family, which was distantly related to his own; and when, early in the same year, the two brothers Daru were despatched to Italy on public duty of an administrative kind, they invited Beyle to rejoin them there on the chance of some fitting occupation for him turning up. He made the journey from Geneva to Milan on horseback, following so close on the traces of the invading army, that he had to run the gauntlet before the fort of Bard, which, overlooked from its insignificance, had well-nigh frustrated of so equivocal a description, that Renouvier, the most brilliant of Napoleon's early campaigns at starting. Our young adventurer entered Milan at the beginning of June, 1800; and, on the 14th of that month, had the good fortune to be present, as an amateur, at the battle of Marengo. An armistice having been signed the next day, he took advantage of it to visit, in company with a son of General Melas, the Boromean Isles and the other remarkable objects in the vicinity. Hurried away, we suppose, by the military spirit which animated all around him, Beyle entered Rue d'Angivilliers, and without seeking for the director of the Salle Fabien, is reported to have given him nearly the same advice which was addressed to a British peer by a celebrated French fencing master, when his lordship was settling account with him at the conclusion of a long series of lessons at a napoleon per hour: Milord, je vous conseille décidément d'abandonner les armes." Beyle's figure was ill adapted for active exercises; but his nerves, which grew tremulous at the slightest touch of emotion, were firm as steel in the presence of danger; his place of intendent of the domains of the Emperor in Brunswick, which he held two years, profiting by his residence in the Duchy to study the German language and philosophy. Here, again, he gave signal proof of both moral and physical courage. He put down an insurrection in a town, the garrison of which had just quitted it, by the bold expedi in a hospital, and suddenly leading them against the crowd. An instance of his energy as an administrator is thus related by M. Merimée : eye was good, and he attained to such profi- | Daru (the father) procured for Beyle the ciency with the pistol as to be able once, when anxious to display his skill, to bring down a bird upon the wing at forty yards' distance. The reputation thus acquired (perhaps by a happy accident) was far from useless for a man of his character, who was then daily liable to be called to account for the indiscreet indulgence of his peculiar humor. Towards the conclusion of his career he writes: [ent of arming the invalid soldiers left behind "I ought to have been killed a dozen times for epigrams or mots piquants that cannot be forgotten; and yet I have received only three wounds, two of which are of little consequence, those in the hand and the left foot." One of his maxims was, to catch at the first occasion for a duel on entering life; and his receipt for a first duel, which he pronounced infallible, runs thus : "Whilst your adversary is taking his aim, look at a tree, and begin counting the leaves. One pre-occupation will distract from another of a graver kind. Whilst taking aim yourself, recite two Latin verses; this will prevent you from firing too quickly, and neutralize that five per cent. of emotion which has sent so many balls twenty feet above the mark." called " 66 According to his wonted mode of showing himself worse than he was, he affected to despise the enthusiasm that made the men of his epoch do such great things. "We had the sacred fire,' he observed, and I among the rest, though unworthy. I had been sent to Brunswick, to levy an extraordinary contribution of five millions. I raised seven millions, and I narrowly escaped being torn in pieces by the populace, who were exasperated at the excess of my zeal. The Emperor inquired the name of the auditor who had so acted, and said "C'est bien.' It would have been difficult to discover another auditor similarly circumstanced, who would have refrained from putting into his About this time (1803), Beyle formed the own pocket one, at least, of the two extra curious project of writing a comedy, in one millions; and it is far from clear that the act and in prose, to confute the critical can- Emperor would have trusted or respected him ons of the celebrated Geoffroy. It was to be less on that account, so long as the imperial Quelle Horreur! Ou l'ami du des- demands were fully answered. Napoleon potisme pervertisseur de l'opinion publique." commonly knew to a fraction the amount of He worked at it, from time to time, for ten or the illicit gains of his functionaries, as the twelve years; and then definitively abandoned famous contractor Ouvrard discovered to his it. In 1805 he renewed the experiment of cost. This man was once foolish enough to domestic life at Grenoble, which this time bet that Mademoiselle Georges would sup was curiously and characteristically inter- with him instead of keeping her known enrupted. He fell in love with an actress;gagement to sup, on a specified night, at the and, on her leaving Grenoble on a professional Tuileries. He overcame her scruples by a engagement for Marseilles, he pretended a bribe of 200,000 francs, and won his wager. sudden inclination for commerce, and became The day following, he was ordered to attend clerk to a Marseilles firm of dealers in colo- the Emperor, and was thus quietly addressed: nial produce, with whom he remained a year," M. Ouvrard, you have gained five millions when the lady married a rich Russian mag- by your contracts for the supply of the army nate, and Beyle returned to Paris. Having in Spain: you will pay two into the imperial contracted a fixed taste for intellectual pur-treasury without delay." This state of things suits, he was with difficulty persuaded by and tone of feeling must be kept in mind in his friends, the Darus, to attach himself appreciating a man like Beyle, who, after once more to their fortunes. He complied, dealing with millions in times of commotion and confusion, died in exile because he could never muster capital enough to secure an annuity of £160 a year. however, and rejoined them in Germany, where he was present, as a non-combatant, at the battle of Jena, and witnessed the triumphant entry of Napoleon into Berlin in 1806. A few days after this event, Count In his capacity of auditor he was attached to the grand army during the invasion of Russia, and had his full share of the glories, dangers, and privations of the retreat. He was among the few, says M. Merimée, who, on this trying occasion, never forfeited the respect of others. One day, not far from the Beresina, Beyle presented himself, shaved and carefully dressed, before his chief. "You have shaved as usual, I see," observed M. Daru; "you are a brave man (un homme de cœur)." In a letter from Moscow he has given one of the most graphic and picturesque accounts we are acquainted with of the fire. It concludes thus: "We left the city lighted up by the finest conflagration in the world, forming an immense pyramid, which, like the prayers of the faithful, had its base on earth and its summit in heaven. The moon appeared above this atmosphere of flame and smoke. It was an imposing spectacle, but one ought to have been alone, or surrounded by men of mind, to enjoy it. That which has spoilt the Russian campaign for me, is to have made it with people who would have commonplaced the Coliseum and the Bay of Naples." IIe said he had not suffered so very much from hunger during the retreat, but found it impossible to recall to memory how he had procured food, or what he had eaten, with the exception of a lump of tallow, for which he had paid twenty francs, and which he always recollected with delight. Before setting out on this expedition he deemed it prudent to take especial precautions against the want of ready money. His sister replaced all the buttons of a surtout by gold pieces of twenty and forty francs, covered with cloth. On his return she asked if this expedient had answered. He had never once thought of it since his departure. By dint of taxing his memory, he recalled a vague impression of having given the old surtout to the waiter of an inn near Wilna, with the gold buttons sewed up as at Paris. This incident, observes M. Colomb, is truly illustrative, for Beyle was excessively given to precaution, without a parallel for forgetfulness, and reckless to the last degree. He abided faithfully by the declining fortunes of Napoleon, and did good service in the crisis of 1814; but he was destined never to enjoy the reward of his devotion; and when the crash came, he bore his ruin with so philosophical an air, that many superficial observers openly accused him of ingratitude and tergiversation. The best answer to such charges was his refusal to apply or lay him self out for office under the restored monarchy, although a fair opening was managed for him by his friends. In August, 1814, he left Paris for Milan, where he resided till 1821, with the exception of visits to Paris and London in 1817. At Milan he enjoyed in perfection the precise kind of life which suited him. The opera was a never-failing source of enjoyment; and there was no department of the fine arts from which he could not draw both instruction and amusement at will. The cosmopolite character of his taste may be inferred from the manner in which he speaks in a letter, dated October, 1818, of Vigano, the composer of ballets: success. "Every man who has an immense success in his own country is remarkable in the eyes of a philosopher. Vigano, I repeat, has had this For example, 4000 francs a year has been usually paid to the composers of ballets; he has 44,000 for 1819. A Parisian will exclaim, Fi, l'horreur! He may speak in good faith only I shall add aside, so much the worse for him. If Vigano discovers the art of writing gestures and groups, I maintain that, in 1860, he will be more spoken of than Madame de Staël. Therefore, I have a right to call him a great man, or at least, a very remarkable man, and superior, like Rossina or Canova, to all that you have at Paris in the fine arts or literature." In another letter, in which he repeats and justifies this opinion, he says, "I pass my evenings with Rossini and Monti: all things considered, I prefer extraordinary men to ordinary ones.' Amongst the extraordinary men with whom he associated on familiar terms at Milan was Lord Byron, who thus alludes to the circumstance in a letter to Beyle in 1823: "You have done me too much honor by what you have been so good as to say of me in your work; but that which has caused me as much pleasure as the praise is to learn at last (by accident) that I am indebted for it to one whose esteem I was. really ambitious to obtain. So many changes have taken place since this epoch in our Milan circle, that I hardly dare revive the memory of it. Death, exile, and Austrian prisons, have separated those we loved. Poor Pellico! I hope that in his cruel solitude his Muse consoles him sometimes, to charm us once again when her poet shall be restored again with herself to liberty." Beyle's account of their introduction and dinner with Monti is quoted in Moore's" Life of Byron." In March, 1818, he writes thus |