DANGEAU'S MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF FRANCE.*

A CONTEMPORARY journal, in a paroxysm of displeasure, has thought fit, in a recent number, to censure the voracity of the public for scandalous gossip. In this somewhat acrimonious animadversion we cannot altogether agree; and, as the party inculpated happens to be our very particular friend," we feel ourselves moved to avoid the inky imputation of ingratitude,-the hic niger est of the poet,-by protesting against so much of the charge as will relieve that injured innocent, our aforesaid friend, at least from the odium of the accusation.

That the public are fond of memoirs abounding in personal anecdote we freely admit;-"'tis true, 'tis pity," &c.: but that they are more fond of such high-relishing condiments than any other public, past, present, or to come, we utterly deny. Nay, we will go still further, and advance that, if they really were so, it would only prove an additional progress in refinement and civilization. Among the idle and dissipated of all communities, scandal and detraction will be sought after for their own sake; and the baser and more vulgar it is, the more greedily will it be swallowed. But when works of a personal tendency are eagerly bought up by the public at large, the circumstance shews less a depraved taste among persons not otherwise corrupt, than a laudable curiosity in the mass of the people to become acquainted with the morals and manners of their superiors, to measure themselves by the soi disant models of perfection, and to extract from life a code of philosophy for themselves, instead of trusting the musty apophthegms of omre pretending authorities.

The passionate desire of penetrating into the human heart, and wresting from it the secret of every situation, rank, and predicament in the scale of fortune, is part and parcel of human nature. It would be as reasonable to find fault with the stomach for its carnivorous digestibilities, which are confessedly barbarous and ferocious, as to be angry with this equally inherent and inevitable tendency. In the very teeth then of the reviewer's censure we profess our regret for the destruction of the Byron manuscript; not because, like Discord, in the golden pippin, we "doat on a sweet bit of mischief," but because we are curious about every thing that tends to illustrate human nature. That the public were most anxious to receive the legacy, there can be no doubt : nor could it well be otherwise. They had been taught by the political opponents of the poet to consider his intellect and disposition as exceptions to our common nature, and to make his personal adventures matter of daily remark; and it was impossible that, thus stimulated, they should not look with eagerness for every means for passing a correct judgment on so singular and so much disputed a topic.

Of all the different species of writing, memoirs are at once the most enticing and the most instructive. Placing facts before us, in all their freshness, with all their localities and personalities, they make us, as it were, present at the transactions they relate. They are to history and

* Memoirs of the Court of France from the year 1684 to the year 1720, now first translated from the Diary of the Marquis de Dangeau. With historical and cri

tical Notes. 2 vols. 870.

philosophy what actual dissection is to anatomy; and any excessive fastidiousness concerning the moral turpitude of the tale, is as misplaced as a disgust at the putrefaction and foul air of a dissecting-room. For our own parts, we are sufficiently advanced in life and in reading to be a little tired of the dry details of carnage and of revolutions, divested of all circumstance, and delivered in their most naked generalities. Still more are we weary of those kind-hearted historians who take the trouble of manufacturing systems for their readers, driving through our brains like Queen Mab, and suggesting to us how to think and feel upon every questionable position in kingcraft and diplomacy. History at best gives but events illustrated by guesses at their supposed causes; memoirs paint men.

It is, doubtless, very true that a courtier or a lord of the bed-chamber, who sits down to chronicle the events of the day, will indulge his partialities and his piques; and that, at best, he is not the very surest of judges in matters of deep concernment. But then, on the other hand, his nearness to the actors leaves him less in danger of error concerning facts; and the less he is able to grapple with state mysteries, the less he is likely to mislead his readers by alembicated systems. The simplest explanations of facts are generally the nearest to the truth; and we should prefer an account of the game from the dullest looker-on, to the best narrative of an hearsay witness. Besides, memoir writers seldom stand alone; and their mistakes and infidelities are generally corrected by the diaries of" those of the adverse faction."

That the memoirs of high aristocratic writers should be full of intrigues, vices, and even worse than vices, may be matter of regret to those who would believe, at all costs, that high station must produce an high-toned morality. But if such things exist in nature, we cannot conceive a single benefit to be derived from their concealment.

And it is worthy of remark, that the very censure of which we complain, follows close upon the most felicitous deductions in favour of liberty, derived from the cynical or naïve confessions of a scandalous royal memoir writer. Had no such chroniclers ever existed, or had their pages fallen into the hands of some hysterical moralist who had committed them all to the flames, the innate vice and corruption of the ancien regime would remain unknown; and man would yet have to acquire by bitter experience another practical lesson on the connexion between equal rights and diffusive virtue.

With respect to wounding the feelings of the living, nothing can be more unjustifiable than wantonly and falsely to gibbet third persons in works of this description. But if great and marking personages will indulge in licentious and absurd habits, will make themselves ridiculous and contemptible, and if they find their way into the anecdotical manuscripts of their contemporaries, the public have the same interest in the publication, as they have in the pages of the Newgate Calendar.

If it be thought desirable that man should have been constructed with a window in his heart, it is doubly so that great men should be thus penetrable; and so far are we from perceiving the great sin or shame in the public avidity for scandalous tales, that we much question whether the most offensive of the recent publications in this genre will not work a great public good, by preventing the recurrence of that disgraceful vogue, which, for a while, placed peeresses and prostitutes in the

close vicinity of contiguous opera boxes, and which emptied the drawing-rooms of virtuous females, to crowd the orgies of their impure rivals with senators and statesmen. Is there not, indeed, much valuable instruction to be drawn from the exposé of idleness, extravagance, and heartless dissipation displayed in that very book, which are the fruits of our existing systems of education in the higher classes? Whatever exists is fair matter of history; and humanity has never benefited by that hypocritical prudery which dreads to discover in black and white the vice which it is content to tolerate in the powerful and the rich, so long as it is known only to exist through a veil, and not made matter of quotable record.

Among the numerous collections of passing anecdote, none are more pregnant with matter for amusement and for reflection than the Memoirs of the Marquis de Dangeau. The reign of Louis XIV. is still a riddle to the majority of English readers; and those of them who judge of that monarch and his court by the professed writers of histories, will form but a false and inadequate notion of the talents, the resources, the crimes, and the basenesses which made the destiny of France, not only on that day, but influenced it through all succeeding generations. Dangeau, who was constantly about the king's person, employed himself in writing a journal of whatever came to his knowledge in the court, from the dragoonings of the Hugonots to the royal inquiries after those who "heard mass irreverently," or even after still meaner and more unrepeatable details. In his days modern philosophy did not exist, and no suspicion had as yet entered the heart of man that kings might do wrong. Dangeau, therefore, in the simplicity of his ignorance, never paused to think how his anecdote would tell, but put down every thing together, good and bad, wisdom and absurdity, and left his reader to make the most of the narration. Lemontey justly observes that this character of the author and the peculiar style of his work form no inconsiderable part of the information it affords. Dangeau, it seems, had been a soldier and a diplomatist; he was a marked and leading personage at court, a patron of Boileau, and a wit among nobles, if he was but a noble among wits. The inapprehensive bonhommie with which he enters upon details of business, and the flat dry mode of his telling the most piquant facts, afford therefore curious evidence concerning the metal of which great men were then made, and are true signs of the times, proving that those who judge of the Augustan age of France by its Rochefoucaults and its Fenelons, measure the civilization of the country by men who were persecuted exceptions, and not examples and illustrations of the moral and intellectual condition of the people at large. Works have been written during the Revolution to stigmatize monarchical government and to blacken the Bourbons and their ancestors, which were justly discredited as the effusions of party malice: but the true enemies of legitimacy, the most dangerous and unanswerable of their opponents, are such writers as this Suetonius of the seventeenth century, these unwitting and unconscious "letters of the cat out of the bag," who record crimes and abuses" de gaieté de cœur," who denounce “ sans s'en douter," and conceal nothing, because they are not aware that they have any thing to conceal.

So convinced was Madame de Genlis of this truth, that on making

her compilation from Dangeau's endless MSS. she has taken especial care, to the full extent of her judgment and foresight, to omit every thing that was likely to tell ill for the party in power, with our more enlightened generation; and both by selection, curtailments and occasional retouchings of passages, has striven to soften down the great articles of impeachment they exhibit against the grand monarch. So ingeniously indeed has she contrived to extract the sweets, and to avoid the sting of her original, that Lemontey has been enabled to publish an octavo volume of articles omitted by her,—all illustrative of the spirit of "flagornerie" in which she compiled, and eminently curious from their traits of weakness, absurdity, and despotic misrule. In the work before us, the translator has judiciously incorporated the most valuable of Lemontey's selection with those of Madame de Genlis, which form the basis of his book; and he has thus given a much fairer and more instructive compilation than either of the originals.

It is impossible to dip into a page of this singularly interesting publication without meeting with traits, which, though history would not stoop to record them, are well worth whole volumes of history. The king's regular and daily progress from chapel to the apartments of the reigning Sultana of the day, exhibits an union of cant and contempt for decency for which no general expression would obtain credit. That Versailles employed in its structure 36,000 workmen, that the lead alone cost thirty-two millions of livres, and that the king, on receiving the account of its expense, just glanced his eye at the sum total and threw the memorandum into the fire, are fine illustrations of the boundless selfishness of the Dis æqua potestas, and contrast fearfully with the frequent anecdotes of the misery and starvation of the wretched people.

The destitution of Villeneuve, the king's barber, for immorality, is another good anecdote, and stands well beside the following extract, under date of February 12 and 13, 1689.

"Feb. 12. This morning M. de Maurevel, being at his town residence in Paris, was awakened by a great noise which he heard in his court-yard and in the street. It was occasioned by bailiffs, who had come to seize his horses, for a pretended debt of his tailor. He got up in his robe de chambre, and not being able to make this canaille (one of whom, seeing him at the window, fired at him,) listen to reason, he took his pistols, and killed two of them. The rest made a precipitate retreat. M. de Maurevel came here to give the King an account of the affair, and to ask justice and pardon from him, offering at the same time to go to prison. The King received him graciously, and told him to remain at Versailles till it was ascertained if the affair had happened as he related it. It is supposed that it will not be attended with serious consequences to him.

"13th. M. de Maurevel received the King's pardon, and the necessary protections for himself and people. He could not have been better treated."

The terms "pretended debt," and "canaille," are singularly impressive. The following, from Lemontey, is not in the translation. Aug. 6, 1689,

"The King has made a present to the Princess d'Harcourt of a man who has killed himself, from which she expects to make good profit. His name was Foucault, and he was said to be worth more than 20,000 livres of rent."

We entreat such of our readers who happen to be scandalized at modern anatomizings, not to suppose that this fair princess was given

to cut up her friends-that is out of the legitimate routine of female and courtly gossiping; or that the gallant monarch meant to indulge ber fondness for "otamies" by the present of a subject. By the "man" nothing more was intended than his effects; and no injury was meant to the feelings of sorrowing survivors, beyond what is implied in plundering them of their succession to feed a needy or hungry courtier.

The article dated Dec. 21, 1704, exhibits an equal act of folly and injustice.

"21st. The bills issued from the Mint are current in business. People are obliged to take them as cash, and the King pays interest on them to the day of their being repaid. But they will not be received in payment of demands on the part of the King. All these must be paid in cash. The smallest of these bills are for 500 livres."

Another omitted article of Lemontey's is as follows:

"The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry went to shoot on the plain of St. Denis, when they killed 1500 partridges. The Duke of Berry killed 300 and bagged 240, although he did not shoot as well as usual. He shot near 700 times, and yet was not at all inconvenienced by the effort."

Whatever the birds might have been, this anecdote, we grieve to say, deprives our modern converters of field-sports into butcheries, of all their claim to originality. It is a true touch of the corrupting influence of aristocracy on the human heart; and as such, we recommend it to the particular notice of Mr. Martin.

The account of the death of Vauban affords a good lesson on the danger of attempting reforms; but we must abstain from further citation, and finish by again thanking the translator for this interesting performance.

ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN.

Of all the remarkable men I have met, Hamilton Rowan, I think, is the one whose external appearance most completely answers to the character of his mind, and the events of his life. The moment your eye has taken in the whole of his fine athletic configuration, you see at once that nature designed him to be a great massive engine of a popular cause. When he entered life, he might easily have taken his place as a leading member of the aristocracy of his country. He had high connexions, a noble fortune, manners and accomplishments that would have graced a court-but his high and adventurous spirit could not have brooked the sedentary forms, and still less the despotic maxims, of an Irish state-career. He never could have endured to sit at a council-board, with his herculean limbs gathered under him, to deliberate upon the most expedient modes of trampling upon public rights. As a mere matter of animal propensity, his more natural vocation was to take the side of enterprise and danger-to mingle in the tumult of popular commotion, and leading on his band of citizen-soldiers" to the portals of the Castle, to call aloud in their name for the minister to come forth and resist at his peril the national cry for "Universal Emancipation."* This was his election, and his conscience coincided with his impulses. He became, as might be expected, the idol of the

* See his trial in Howell's State Trials for 1794.