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when compared with those which were de manded by M. de Labourdonnaye and M. Hyde de Neuville. We have always heard, and are inclined to believe, that the government was not disposed to treat even the regicides with severity. But on this point the feeling of the Chamber of Deputies was so strong, that it was thought necessary to make some conces sion. It was enacted, therefore, that whoever, having voted in January 1793 for the death of

wisdom and goodness which had dictated the charter. He who had voted for the death of Louis, he who had moved the decree for the trial of Marie Antoinette, he whose hatred of monarchy had led him to make war even upon the sepulchres of ancient monarchs, assures us with great complacency, that "in this work monarchical principles and attachment to the House of Bourbon are nobly expressed." By this apostacy he got nothing, not even any additional infamy; for his character was al-Louis the Sixteenth, had in any manner given ready too black to be blackened.

During the hundred days he again emerged for a very short time into public life; he was chosen by his native district a member of the Chamber of Representatives. But though that assembly was composed in a great measure of men who regarded the excesses of the Jacobins with indulgence, he found himself an ob-sided there, forgotten by all mankind, till the ject of general aversion. When the President first informed the Chamber that M. Barère requested a hearing, a deep and indignant murmur ran round the benches. After the battle of Waterloo, Barère proposed that the Chamber should save France from the victorious enemy, by putting forth a proclamation about the pass of Thermopyla, and the Lacedæmonian eustom of wearing flowers in times of extreme danger. Whether this composition, if it had then appeared, would have stopped the English and Prussian armies, is a question respecting which we are left to conjecture. The Chamber refused to adopt this last of the Carmagnoles.

The Emperor had abdicated. The Bourbons returned. The Chamber of Representatives, after burlesquing during a few weeks the proceedings of the National Convention, retired with the well-earned character of having been the silliest political assembly that had met in France. Those dreaming pedants and praters never for a moment comprehended their position. They could never understand that Europe must be either conciliated or vanquished; that Europe could be conciliated only by the restoration of Louis, and vanquished only by means of a dictatorial power entrusted to Napoleon. They would not hear of Louis; yet they would not hear of the only measures which could keep him out. They incurred the enmity of all foreign powers by putting Napoleon at their head; yet they shackled him, thwarted him, quarrelled with him about every trifle, abandoned him on the first reverse. They then opposed declamations and disquisitions to eight hundred thousand bayonets; played at making a constitution for their country, when it depended on the indulgence of the victor whether they should have a country; and were at last interrupted in the midst of their babble about the rights of man and the Sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers of Wellington and Blucher.

A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, so bitterly hostile to the Revolution, that there was no small risk of a new reign of terror. It is just, however, to say that the king, his ministers, and his allies, exerted themselves to restrain the violence of the fanatical royalists, and that the punishments inflicted, though in our opinion unjustifiable, were few and lenient

in an adhesion to the government of Buona-
parte during the hundred days, should be ban-
ished for life from France. Barère fell within
this description. He had voted for the death
of Louis; and he had sat in the Chamber of
Representatives during the hundred days.
He accordingly retired to Belgium, and re-
year 1830. After the Revolution of July he
was at liberty to return to France, and he fixed
his residence in his native province. But he
was soon involved in a succession of lawsuits
with his nearest relations-" three fatal sisters
and an ungrateful brother," to use his own
words. Who was in the right is a question
about which we have no means of judging,
and certainly shall not take Barère's word.
The courts appear to have decided some points
in his favour and some against him. The
natural inference is, that there were faults on
all sides. The result of this litigation was,
that the old man was reduced to extreme
poverty, and was forced to sell his paternal
house.

As far as we can judge from the few facts which remain to be mentioned, Barère continued Barère to the last. After his exile he turned Jacobin again, and, when he came back to France, joined the party of the extreme left in railing at Louis Philippe, and at all Louis Philippe's ministers. M. Casimir Périer, M, de Broglie, M. Guizot, and M. Thiers, in par ticular, are honoured with his abuse; and the king himself is held up to execration as a hy. pocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Barère had no scruple about accepting a charitable donation of a thousand francs a year from the privy purse of the sovereign whom he hated and reviled. This pension, together with some small sums occasionally doled out to him by the de. partment of the Interior, on the ground that he was a distressed man of letters, and by the department of Justice, on the ground that he had formerly held a high judicial office, saved him from the necessity of begging his bread. Having survived all his colleagues of the renowned committee of public safety, and almost all his colleagues of the Convention, he died in January 1841. He had attained his eighty. sixth year.

We have now laid before our readers what we believe to be a just account of this man's life. Can it be necessary for us to add any thing for the purpose of assisting their judg ment of his character? If we were writing about any of his colleagues in the committee of public safety, about Carnot, about Robespierre, or St. Just, nay, even about Couthon, Collot, or Billaud, we might feel it necessary to go into a full examination of the arguments

in bringing about a reaction, of which none of them saw, and of which none of us may see, the close; and, having brought it about, they marvelled at it; they bewailed it; they exe crated it; they ascribed it to every thing but the real cause-their own immorality and their own profound incapacity for the conduct of great affairs.

which have been employed to vindicate or to | Terror. Violence, and more violence, blood, excuse the system of Terror. We could, we and more blood, made up their whole policy. think, show that France was saved from her In a few months these poor creatures succeeded foreign enemies, not by the system of Terror, but in spite of it; and that the perils which were made the plea for the violent policy of the Mountain, were, to a great extent, created by that very policy. We could, we think, also show that the evils produced by the Jacobin administration did not terminate when it fell; that it bequeathed a long series of calamities to France and to Europe; that public opinion, These, however, are considerations to which, which had during two generations been con- on the present occasion, it is hardly necessary stantly becoming more and more favourable for us to advert; for, the defence which has to civil and religious freedom, underwent, dur- been set up for the Jacobin policy, good or bad, ing the days of Terror, a change of which the it is a defence which cannot avail Barère. traces are still to be distinctly perceived. It From his own life, from his own pen, from his was natural that there should be such a change, own mouth, we can prove that the part which when men saw that those who called them- he took in the work of blood is to be attributed, selves the champions of popular rights had not even to sincere fanaticism, not even to compressed into the space of twelve months misdirected and ill-regulated patriotism, but more crimes than the kings of France, Mero- either to cowardice, or to delight in human vingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian, had per- misery. Will it be pretended that it was from petrated in twelve centuries. Freedom was public spirit that he murdered the Girondists? regarded as a great delusion. Men were will- In these very Memoirs he tells us that he al ing to submit to the government of hereditary ways regarded their death as the greatest princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of calamity that could befall France. Will it be priests; to any government but that of philo- pretended that it was from public spirit that he sophers and philanthropists. Hence the im- raved for the head of the Austrian woman? perial despotism, with its enslaved press and In these very Memoirs he tells us that the time its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than spent in attacking her was ill-spent, and ought the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obse- to have been employed in concerting measures quious than the old parliaments. Hence the of national defence. Will it be pretended that restoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, he was induced by sincere and earnest abhorthe Chamber of 1815, with its categories of rence of kingly government to butcher the living proscription, the revival of the feudal spirit, and to outrage the dead; he who invited Nathe encroachments of the clergy, the persecu-poleon to take the title of King of Kings, he tion of the Protestants, the appearance of a new breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full light of the nineteenth century. Hence the admission of France into the Holy Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers of the tri-colour against the liberties of Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions with which, even at the present day, the most temperate plans for widening the narrow basis of the French representation are regarded by those who are especially interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Half a century has not sufficed to obliterate the stain which one year of depravity and madness has left on the noblest of causes.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the manner in which writers like M. Hippolyte Carnot defend or excuse the Jacobin administration, while they declaim against the reaction which followed. That the reaction has produced and is still producing much evil, is perfectly true. But what produced the reaction? The spring flies up with a force proportioned to that with which it has been pressed down. The pendulum which is drawn far in one direction swings as far in the other. The joyous madness of intoxication in the evening is followed by languor and nausea on the morrow. And So, in politics, it is the sure law that every excess shall generate its opposite; nor does he deserve the name of a statesman who strikes a great blow without fully calculating the effect of the rebound. But such calculation was infinitely beyond the reach of the authors of the Reign of

who assures us, that after the Restoration he expressed in noble language his attachment to monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon? Had he been less mean, something might have been said in extenuation of his cruelty. Had he been less cruel, something might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicide and court-spy, for him who patronized Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in gasconades of Jacobinism, and gasconades of servility, what excuse has the largest charity to offer?

We cannot conclude without saying some thing about two parts of his character, which his biographer appears to consider as deserving of high admiration. Barère, it is admitted, was somewhat fickle; but in two things he was consistent, in his love of Christianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so, ve must say that England is much more beholden to him than Christianity.

It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but we think that we do not flatter ourselves when we say, that Barère's aversion to our country was a sentiment as deep and constant as his mind was capable of entertaining. The value of this compliment is, indeed, somewhat diminished by the cir cumstance, that he knew very little about us. His ignorance of our institutions, manners, and history, is the less excusable, because, according to his own account, he consorted much, during the peace of Amiens, with Englishmen of note, such as that eminent nobleman Lord

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Greaten, and that not less eminent philosopher | mote the honour of our country; but that little Mr Mackenzie Cofhis. In spite, however, of he did strenuously and constantly. Renegade, his connection with these well-known orna- traitor, slave, coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, ments of our country, he was so ill informed hack-writer, police-spy-the one small service about us as to fancy that our government was which he could render to England, was to hate always laying plans to torment him. If he her: and such as he was may all who hate was hooted at Saintes, probably by people her be. whose relations he had murdered, it was be- We cannot say that we contemplate with cause the cabinet of St. James had hired the equal satisfaction that fervent and constant mob. If nobody would read his bad books, it | zeal for religion, which, according to M. Hipwas because the cabinet of St. James had polyte Carnot, distinguished Barère; for, as we secured the reviewers. His accounts of Mr. think that whatever brings dishonour on reli. Fox, of Mr. Pitt, of the Duke of Wellington, of gion is a serious evil, we had, we own, induiged Mr. Canning, swarm with blunders, surpassing a hope that Barère was an atheist. We now even the ordinary blunders committed by learn, however, that he was at no time even a Frenchmen who write about England. Mr. sceptic, that he adhered to his faith through the Fox and Mr. Pitt, he tells us, were ministers in whole Revolution, and that he has left several two different reigns. Mr. Pitt's sinking fund manuscript works on divinity. One of these was instituted in order to enable England to is a pious treatise, entitled, "Of Christianity pay subsidies to the powers allied against the and of its Influence." Another consists of French Republic. The Duke of Wellington's meditations on the Psalms, which will doubthouse in Hyde Park was built by the nation, less greatly console and edify the church. which twice voted the sum of £200,000 for the This makes the character complete. Whatpurpose. This, however, is exclusive of the soever things are false, whatsoever things are cost of the frescoes, which were also paid for dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatout of the public purse. Mr. Canning was the soever things are impure, whatsoever things first Englishman whose death Europe had rea- are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil reson to lament; for the death of Lord Ward, a port, if there be any vice, and if there be any relation, we presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr. infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended Cofhis, had been an immense benefit to man-in Barère. But one thing was still wanting, kind. and that M. Hyppolyte Carnot has supplied. Ignorant, however, as Barère was, he knew When to such an assemblage of qualities a enough of us to hate us; and we persuade our-nigh profession of piety is added, the effect selves that, had he known us better, he would have hated us more. The nation which has combined, beyond all example and all hope, the blessings of liberty with those of order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been false alike to the cause of order and to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for popular rights; we Something more we had to say about him. have had amongst us also the intemperance of But let him go. We did not seek him out, and loyalty. But we have never been shocked by will not keep him longer. If those who call such a spectacle as the Barère of 1794, or as themselves his friends had not forced him on the Barère of 1804. Compared with him, our our notice, we should never have vouchsafed fiercest demagogues have been gentle; com- to him more than a passing word of scorn and pared with him, our meanest courtiers have abhorrence, such as we might fling at his been manly. Mix together Thistlewood and brethren, Hébert and Fouquier Tinville, and Bubb Dodington, and you are still far from Carrier and Lebon. We have no pleasure in having Barère. The antipathy between him seeing human nature thus degraded. We turn and us is such, that neither for the crimes of with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos his earlier, nor for those of his later life, does of the fiction; and the filthiest and most spiteour language, rich as it is, furnish us with ade-ful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble creature quate names. We have found it difficult to relate his history without having perpetual recourse to the French vocabulary of baseness. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct in the Convention, without using those emphatic terms, guillotinade, noyade, fusillade, nitraillade. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct under the consulate and the empire, without borrowing such words as mouchard | and mouton.

We, therefore, like his invectives against us much better than any thing else that he has written; and dwell on them, not merely with tcmplacency, but with a feeling akin to gratitude. It was but little that he could do to pro

becomes overpowering. We sink under the contemplation of such exquisite and manifold perfection; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous it was in us to think of composing the legend of this beatified athlete of the faith, Saint Bertrand of the Carmag noles.

when compared with the Barère of history. But what is no pleasure, M. Hyppolyte Carnot has made a duty. It is no light thing, that a man in high and honourable public trust, a man who, from his connections and position, may not unnaturally be supposed to speak the sentiments of a large class of his countrymen, should come forward to demand approbation for a life, black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single virtue. This M. Hippolite Carnot has done. By attempting to enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it; and we venture to say that, from the eminence of infamy on which we have placed it, he will not easily take it down

MR.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, APRIL, 1830.]

THE wise men of antiquity loved to convey | worth the telling, lies on the surface. The instruction under the covering of apologue; writer evidently means to caution us against and, though this practice of theirs is generally the practices of puffers,-a class of people thought childish, we shall make no apology for who have more than once talked the public adopting it on the present occasion. A gene-into the most absurd errors, but who surely ration which has bought eleven editions of a never played a more curious, or a more diffipoem by Mr. Robert Montgomery, may well condescend to listen to a fable of Pilpay.

cult trick, than when they passed Mr. Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet.

A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow In an age in which there are so few readers that on a certain day he would sacrifice a that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising sheep, and on the appointed morning he went from the sale of his works, no man who has forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbour-not an independent fortune can devote himself hood three rogues who. knew of his vow, and to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men him and said, "Oh, Brahmin, wilt thou buy a of letters too often pass their lives in dangling sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice."-"It is at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and for that very purpose," said the holy man, all the faults which dependence tends to pro"that I came forth this day." Then the im- duce, pass into their character. They become postor opened a bag, and brought out of it an the parasites and slaves of the great. It is unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. melancholy to think how many of the highest Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, who and most exquisitely formed of human inteltouchest things impure, and utterest things un-lects have been condemned to the ignominious true, callest thou that cur a sheep ?"—"Truly," | labor of disposing the commonplaces of aduanswered the other, "it is a sheep of the finest lation in new forms, and brightening them into fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh, Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods."-"Friend," said the Brahmin, "either thou or I must be blind."

Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the gods," said this second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?" When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. "Sir," said he to the new comer, "take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur."-"Oh, Brahmin," said the new comer, "thou art drunk or mad!"

At this time the third confederate drew near. "Let us ask this man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, "Oh, stranger, what dost thou call this beast ?"- Surely, oh, Brahmin," said the knave, "it is a fine sheep." Then the Brahmin said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses,”—and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints.

Thus, or nearly thu.., if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Esop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is

The Omnipresence of the Deity, a Poem. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Eleventh Edition. London. 1830. 3. Satan, a Poem. By ROBERT MONTGOMERY. Second

Edition. London. 1830.

new splendour. Horace invoking Augustus in the most enthusiastic language of religious veneration,-Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread,Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron,-Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a mad-house,-these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which those must sub. mit, who, not possessing a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read.

This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the earlier part of the last century a marked change took place. The tone of literary men, both in this country and in France, became higher and more independent. Pope boasted that he was the "one poet" who had "pleased by manly ways;" he derided the scft dedica tions with which Halifax had been fed,asserted his own superiority over the pen sioned Boileau,-and glorified in being not the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale of his writings, realized a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscrib ing his Iliad, not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time, this would scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. Moore pays a compliment of this

engaged in a pursuit which never was, and never will be, considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters.

kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott | upon with a despicable ingenuity by people to Mr. Moore. The idea of either of those gentlemen looking out for some lord who would be likely to give him a few guineas in return for a fulsome dedication, seems laughably incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway would have done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway is said to have been choked with a piece of bread which he devoured in the rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or false, he was, beyond all question, miserably poor. Dryden, at near seventy, when at the head of the literary men of England, without equal or second, received three hundred pounds for his Fables -a collection of ten thousand verses,—and such verses as no man then living, except himself, could have produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a higher spirit, or a more scrupulous conscience, than his predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the literary character so much better than they had done.

From the time of Pope to the present day, the readers have been constantly becoming more and more numerous: and the writers, consequently, more and more independent. It is assuredly a great evil, that men fitted by their talents and acquirements to enlighten and charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the very sustenance of life. But though we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors from the time of Mecenas to that of Harley would not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English booksellers to authors during the last thirty years. Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing.

Whether the old or the new vice be the worse,-whether those who formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now contrive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply,-we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is high time to make a stand against the new trickery. The puffing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully practised, that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the purity of the national taste, or for the honour of the literary character, to join in discountenancing it. All the pens that ever were employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr. Eady,-all the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin-seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable, are adopted without scruple, and improved

It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan recounted, -direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. "Pathetic," "sublime," "splendid," "graceful, brilliant wit," "exquisite humour," and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower as thick and as sweet as the sugarplums at a Roman carnival. Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimita ble satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave face, and utter his pane gyric in the form of admonition! "Such attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned. Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that the writer of such transcendent talents,-a writer who is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should show so little tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom, it is clear, from every page of his work, that he must have been constantly mingling in socie ty." These are but tame and feeble imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant undertakes to tell the public, in bad English and worse French, how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dir ners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words "Advertisement," or "From a Correspondent," to such paragraphs. But this makes little difference. The panegy ric is extracted, and the significant heading omitted. The fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Reviews and Magazines, with "Times" or "Globe" affixed,

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