The Press. — London, England, 1858-01-09 00:00:00

40 Murillo, however, always attracted me more than any other artist. His pictures are so dramatic that they take instant possession of the interest, and impress the heart far more than the creations of any other painter. The complexion of his women seems the reality of the warm, rich Andalucian skin —there is such vitality and clearness in the tints mingling and melting into each other like those of nature. There is a blending of the noble and the beau tiful, the graceful and the gentle, which is strangely fasci nating to me. And wo will add, to all who believe that art attains its highest end when, without soaring above, it refines, purifies, and hallows each common form of daily life. Memoirs of the Duke of St. Simon. Abridged from the French. By Bayle St. John. Vols. 111. and IV. London : Chapman and AMONGST the interesting works of the present season there is not ono more readable than this, the continuation of the new edition in English of St. Simon's history, translated by Mr. Bayle St. John. We think that the third volume of this work is equal in interest to any republication that has appeared for many years. To some of our readers its contents will be, as to ourselves, familiar from long ac quaintance, but there are many students of literature who are not acquainted with the mastefly delineation of the deathbed of Louis XIV. Lord Macaulay produced great artistic effect by his pictorial representation of the death of Charles 11. (and we may ask whether that of Cromwell would not have been a still finer subject ?), but many persons would think that the death of Louis XIV., as here de scribed by St. Simon, is still more striking, and we cannot forget that it is drawn from actual observation. The description of Louis XIV. and his manners, as depicted in this third volume, is full of interest, and abounds with choice specimens of the art of memoir writing. The estimate, also, of Louis XlV.'s character is singularly fair and philosophical, and some parts of it aro quite extraordinary when we see that St. Simon anticipated the judgment of posterity. The literary merit of these memoirs is im proved by Mr. St. John's style of condensa tion. As a writer, St. Simon appears better in this edition than in the original; his re dundancies are retrenched, his involved sen tences are made terse, and irrelevancies are avoided. Yet in the original memoirs these irrelevancies had their value, as authentica ting the detailed character of the whole narrative. The fairness of St. Simon, and his remark able impartiality, are brought out clearly in these memoirs. Louis XIV. resolved to legi timatise and give precedence to his natural children, and Father Daniel, as a precursory measure, was employed to write a history of the French Monarchy. St. Simon says of Father Daniel's history : Never was French so clear, so pure, so flowing, with such happy transitions; in a word, everything to charm and entice the reader; admirable preface, magnificent promises, short, learned dissertations, a pomp, an authority of the most seductive kind. As for the history, there was much romance in the first race, much. in the second, and much mistiness in the early times of the third. In a word, all the work evidently appeared composed in order to persuade people—under the simple air of s man who set aside prejudices with discernment, and who only seeks the truth—that the majority of the Kings of the first race, several of the second, some, even of the third, were bas tards, whom this defect did not exclude from the throne, or affect in any way. The distinction drawn by St. Simon between the manner and the matter of Father Daniel's history will be observei by our readers. When the decree appeared which gave legitimacy and wecedency to the illegitimate offspring of the King, St. Simon burst forth with energy : Foreign dukes and princes fumed, but uselessly. The Court uttered dull murmurs more than c3uld have been expected. Paris and the provinces broke out; the Par liament did not keep silent. Madame de Maintenon, de lighted with her work, received the adoration of her familiars. As fur me, I will content myself with but few reflections upon this most monstrous, astounding, and frightful de termination of the King. I will simply say, that it is impossible not to see in it an attack upon the Crown ; contempt for the entire nation, whose rights ere trodden under foot by it; insult to all the princes of the blood; in f tel. the crime of high treason in its most rash and most criuitual event. Yes! however venerable 011t1 may have rendered in the eyes of men the majesty of Kings and their awed persons, which are his anointed; however THE PRESS, JANUARY 9, 1858. execrable may be the crime known as high treason, of attempting their lives; however terrible and singular may be the punishments justly invented to prevent that crime, and to remove by their horror the most infamous from the infernal resolution of committing it,—we cannot help finding in the crime in question a plenitude not in the other, however abominable it may be. Yes ! to overthrow the most holy laws, that have existed ever since the estab• lishment of monarchy; to extinguish a right the most sacred—the most important—the most inherent in the nation; to make succession to the throne, purely, supremely, and despotically arbitrary; in a word, to make of a bastard a crown prince,—is a crime more black, more vast, more terrible, than that of high treason against the chief of the State. That passage (along with many others) shows that St. Simon had strong feelings, and could rise and fall with the importance of his sub ject. The honour paid by Louis XIV. to his natural children was a calamity for France. It was exactly the sort of error which would have been fastened upon by a sensitive and highspirited race like the French. We cannot concur with the note that Mr. St. John ap pends:— I have endeavoured to preserve the tone of majestic indignation which St. Simon indulges in on this inadequate occasion. After all, the King merely exercised the imperial right of adoption ; and it is perfectly immaterial whether the persons chosen were his natural children or not. The Duo dn Maine was not a very estimable person, though we must remember that St. Simon visits on him the sins of his father ; but the Comte de Toulouse seems to have been more respectable than any member of the Royal family then living, legitimate or not. We cannot understand, in such a case, " the " right of adoption." That " right " may be exercised in private families as to succession of personal estates, or even the representation of a particular family, but it is nothing to the point to plead the merits of the individuals so favoured. And the right by adoption claimed by Louis XIV. gave vast offence to the aristo cracy of France, and shocked public opinion. The evils of military favouritism, we sup pose, have existed in all countries. In our previous notice of these memoirs we cited some of them. Ia the present portion of them we find it said : The King taxed the infantry regiments, which bad risen to an excessive price. This venality of the only path by which the superior grades can be reached is a great blot upon the military system, and stops the career of many a man who would become an excellent soldier. It is a gangrene which for a long time has eaten into all the orders and all the parties of the State, and under which it will be odd if all do not succumb. Happily it is unknown, or little known, in all the other countries of Europe ! The " gangrene" spoken of by St. Simon was well known to other countries. More than half a century after St Simon wrote the above censures, Cumberland, in his capital play of The West Indian, put such :language as might have come from an English St. Simon into the mouth of Major O'Flaherty. St. Simon thoroughly appreciated the merits of Fenelon, and has paid a deserved tribute to his character. The famous, or infamous, Dubois is thus delineated by him : This person has played such an important part in the State since the death of the King, that it is fit that he should be made known. The Abbe Dubois was a little, pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in a flaxen•wig, with a weazel's face, brightened by some intellect. In familiar terms, he was a regular scamp. All the vices unceasingly fought with him for supremacy, so that a continual uproar tilled his mind. Avarice, debauchery, ambition, were his gods ; perfidy, flattery, foot-licking, his means of action ; complete impiety was his repose; and he held the opinion as a great principle, that probity and honesty are chimeras, with which people deck themselves, but which have no existence. In consequence. all means were good to him. He excelled in low intrigues; he lived in them, and could not do without them ; but they always had an aim, and he followed thew with a patience terminated only by success, or by firm conviction that he could not reach what he aimed at, or unless, as he wandered thus in deep darkness, a glimmer of light came to him from some other cranny. He passed thus his (lays in sapping and counter-sapping. The most impudent deceit had become natural to him, and was concealed under an air that was simple, upright, sin cere, often bashful. He would have spoken with grace and forcibly, if, fearful of saying more than he wished, he had not accustomed himself to a fictitious hesitation, a stutter ring which disfigured his speech, and which, redoubled when important things were in question, became insupport able and sometimes unintelligible. He had wit, learning, knowledge of the world, much desire to please and in sinuate himself, butt all this was spoiled by an odour of falsehood which escaped in spite of him through every pore of his body—even in the midst of his gaiety, which made whoever beheld it sail. We have not space to extract the whole Of the character, and we cite the foregoing to show the exact fidelity with whieh St. Simon ad hered to the truth, undazzled by the station of high personages. We know of no writer of memoirs who has so often anticipated the im partial verdict of a remote posterity as St. Simon. In this respect he differs vastly from Horace Walpole, whose opinions on the Court and courtiers of the time can never be trusted, and always require corroborative testimony. Neither was Walpole, like St. Simon, close by the fountain head of knowledge. St. Simon was in the Court, and of the Court; whereas Walpole was indebted to second-hand infor mation. Walpole excelled as a writer of letters, but his memoirs of George lll.'s reign are deficient in weight, besides being disfigured by caprice ; whereas St. Simon ever maintains an equable air. Many parts of this third volume in spirit and tone almost come up to the moral level of what a French Tacitus might have written. These recollections are not so much memoirs pour tervir as history itself. The death-bed of Louis XIV. occupies several pages, and is described with affecting solemnity. It thus commences : Louis XIV. began, as I have before remarked, sensibly to decline, and his appetite, which had always been good and uniform, very considerably diminished. Even foreign countries became aware of this. Bets were laid in London that his life would not last beyond tLe first of September, that is to say about three months, and although the King wished toknow everything, it may be imagined that nobody was very eager to make him acquainted with the news. He used to have the Dutch papers read to hint in private by Torcy, often after the Council of State. One day as Torcy was reading, coming unexpectedly—for he had not ex amined the paper—upon the account of these bets, he stopped, stammered, and skipped it. The King, who easily perceived this, asked him the cause of his embarrass ment ; what he was passing over, and why? Torcy blushed to the very whites of his eyes, and said that it was a piece of impertinence unworthy of being read. The King insisted ; Torcy also : but at last thoroughly confused, he could not resist the reiterated command he received, and read the whole account of the beta. The King pretended not to be touched by it, but he was, and profoundly, so that sitting down to table immediately afterwards, he could not keep himself from speaking of it, though without mention ing the gazette. The disease continued to progress, and St. Simon details tho various changes. There is much told in the following sentences : He had not been able to quit his chamber for some days; he could scarcely eat anything solid; his physician slept in his chamber, and yet he reckoned upon being cured, upon dressing himself again, and wished to choose his dress 1 In like manner there was the same round of councils, of work, of amusements. So trite it is, that men do not wish to die, and dissimulate from themselves the approach of death as long as possible. Meanwhile, let me say, that the state of the King, which nobody was ignorant of, had already Lchanged M. d'Orleana' desert into a crowded city. The end of the drama is thus related : The night which followed was very agitated. The King was seen at all moments joining his hands, striking his breast, and was heard repeating the prayers be ordinarily employed. On Wednesday morning, the `.:Bth of August, he paid a compliment to Madame de Maintenon, which pleased her but little, and to which she replied not one word. Ile said, that what consoled him in quitting her was that, con sidering the age she had reached, they must soon meet again ! About seven o'clock in the morning, he eaw in the mirror two of his valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, " Why do you weep ? Is it because you thought me immortal? As for me, I have not thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have been prepared to lose me." A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to Versailles with a remedy which, he said, would cure the gangrene. The King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they consented to receive him. Fagon tried to say something, but this rustic, who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely, and Fagon accustomed to abuse others was confounded. Ten drops of Le Brun's mixture in Alicante wine were therefore given to the King about eleven o'clock in the morning. Sometime after he became stronger, but the pulse falling again and becoming bad, another dose was given to him about four o'clock, to recall him to life, they told him. He replied, taking the mixture, "To life or to death as it shall please God." We pass over the expiring hours of the Sove reign, and cite some anecdotes of the way in which ho acquired his immense power over his subjects : The most cruel means by which the King was informed of what was passing—for many years before anybody knew it—was that of opening letters. The promptitude and dexterity with which they were opened passes understand ing. He saw extracts from all the letters in which there were passages that the chiefs of the post-office, and then the minister who governed it, thought ought to go before him; entire letters, to:), were sent to him, when their con tents seemed to justify the sending. Thus the chiefs of the post, nay, the principal clerks, were in a position to suppose what they pleased and a4aitist whom they pleased. A word of contempt against the King or the Grown* went, a joke, a detached phrase, was enough. ■