New-York tribune., 1906-07-07
NAPOLEON'iS BOOKS.
The Great Emperor as an OmniU-
OrOaS Reader.

James Westfall Thompson, in The Atlantic
The command in Italy seems to have been
NapoleOnS renaissance. AS It awoke his am
bition, so it stimulated his intellect. Hence
forward history, institutions, biOgra ply, travel,
polite literature poetry became a permanent in
terest of his mind whenever the eXigencies Of
war and state allowed him to read anything
save dispatches, reports and bulletins. He al
ways remained an OmniVOrous II not deep
reader. O..
If Napoleon's enemies could have looked into
his boxes Of books, especially after 1SO9 or seen
the instructions he sent to his librarian, they
might have anticipated the future more accu-
rately. He always read up" for coming cam
paigD the history, geography, institutions OF
the country and people with whom he was go
ing to come in contact. It is exceedingly inter-
esting to see this projection of his thought into
the future, as indicated by his reading. This is
particularly true Of the Russian campaign.
This historical material displaced most of the
novels and the poems in the campaign Of 1872.
But in the hot summer days of that year, while
the army waited long in Poland the Emperor
sometimes found that moments Of leisure went
by on leaden WINGS and prayed for more di-
Verting literature. The faithful Meneval hastily
dispatched an order for some good new novels,
or old ones that he is not familiar with, or some
memoirs that would make agreeable reading"
The fate Of this travelling library was the
fate Of the entire army of 1872; it was lost The
books Of the Emperor probably went to boil the
tea Of some Cossack soldier even Junots
veterans plundered Spanish libraries to find
material for their camp fires. One interesting
detail Of its fate has been preserved on the
road to Russia the Emperor borrowed certain
books from the Royal Library in Dresden. In
the retreat from Moscow these also We're lost.
The effort the Emperor made to repair this loss
entities him to place in the ancient and honor
able company of book lovers. The man who had
lost army Of 100000 men. who saw Europe
marching against him from the Ural TO the Bay
of Biscay, took time and thought enough, on
February Z, 1913, upon his return to Paris, to
give express orders to procure duplicates OF
these volumes at any price and see that they
were sent to Dresden.
In 1908 Napoleon formed the idea of having
a travelling library. in order to make his hours
Of intellectual recreation independent Of the
exigencies Of a campaign or the delays Of
courier. Obviously such a collection OF books
would have to be selected with great care, that
the library might be portable one and conse-
Quently the minute instructions as to Its care
are, as it were a picture OF his mind
The distribution of subjects was as follows:
Forty volumes on religion, forty of epic poetry,
forty Of the drama, sixty volumes OF other
poetry sixty volumes Of history and one hundred
novels. I'm order to complete the quota" ran
the instructions, 1.-The balance shall be made up
works were the Old and New Testaments and
the Koran, works church history, including
some upon the Lutheran and the CalVinist move
ments. The epicS included Homer, Lucan, Tasso,
the "FIenriade' and forth; the drama, Sc
lected tragedies of Corneille Racine and Vol
taire. Comedy Napoleon could not endure; mot
a word Of AoHere.' he says. The history in
cluded some good chronological works. standard
histories OF France, like that of Mably, Machia-
velli's "Discourses on Livy," some of Voltaire's
historical writing. Montesquieu's esprit deS
I.ois'' and a French translation OF Gibbon:
Among the novels were the "Nouvelle HeloIse,
T,e Sage's ''Contes" and French versions Of
Richardson's and FTelding's works. Indeed OF
English fiction Napoleon was very fond