MALTE-BRUN, or rather, as he was called in his native country, Malthe-Conrad Bruun, was born at Thister, in the province of Jutland, in Denmark, on the 12th of August 1775. His father, formerly a captain of dragoons, was counsellor of justice and commissioner of domains.

The latter watched over the education of his son with great care, and the excellent dispositions manifested by the young Conrad in his studies, determined his father to educate him for the church. At the university of Copenhagen, where he took his degrees, he followed his theological studies in submission to his father’s desire; but literature was his chief delight. Endowed with a great facility of learning languages, and apprehending the niceties of inflexion, and the shades of delicacy by which they are distinguished, he was soon enabled to write French with a facility, an elegance, and vigour, which no other foreigner ever acquired, and which placed him in the first rank of French authors.

Though timid and reserved in conversation, he was bold and passionate in his writings. He proved this in the first pamphlet which he published, under the title of Wakeren, or the Alarm Bell, the political sentiments of which drew down a legal condemnation upon the author.

The reputation which he had acquired determined him to abandon the ecclesiastical order for that of the bar. The study of the law developed his independence of opinion and his enthusiasm for liberty. In 1795 and 1796, he edited a periodical which he entitled The Aristocrat’s Catechism, in which the public authorities found ground for commencing a process against him, which obliged him to fly to the island of Hvn, belonging to Sweden. During his retirement, he composed several poetical pieces of great merit. After a short sojourn in the land of his exile, he obtained leave to return to Copenhagen. His first care was to publish his poetical essays. This collection had all the success which he could wish; but as he never ceased to assert his country’s right to that freedom which, under the administration of Bernstorff, she seemed on the point of obtaining, the party in power, interested in opposing reform, [7:14:67]characterised the young poet as a discontented and revolutionary spirit. The hostility of his enemies again menaced him in 1799, on the appearance of a bitter political satire entitled Tria juncta in uno. He therefore hastily sought an asylum in Sweden, where his reputation secured him protection, and his talents won him respect; and when the sentence of the Danish tribunals had condemned him to exile, he resolved to adopt France as his country.

He had been little more than three years in France when he commenced, along with Mentelle, a work entitled Géographie Mathématique, Physique., et Politique, in sixteen volumes. It was the first work of its class which combined force of expression and elegance of style with variety of description and minuteness of detail. Before its appearance, the geographical works of France were mere compilations, destitute alike of judgment and of taste, uninteresting in narrative, and repulsive in detail. The public understood, that although Malte-Brun contributed only a third part to the compilation of the,new geography, its success was mainly to be attributed to his talents; and the proprietors of the Journal des Debats, from the celebrity he had acquired by this publication, earnestly solicited him to become one of its editors. His contributions to the Journal des Debats, on voyages, geography, history, languages, antiquities, physical science, morals, and literature, compose a miscellany at once interesting and voluminous.

At the period when France was preparing to establish in Poland a barrier to secure Western Europe against the preponderating power of Russia, Malte-Brun conceived the design of bringing this country into notice; a country which had twice fallen a sacrifice to iniquitous power, and which, divided between two of its natural allies, no longer possessed a geographical existence. The interest which the Poles excited secured a favourable reception for the Tableau de la Pologne·, a work which, although it cost the learned geographer only six months’ labour, contains a rapid sketch of the geography, history, manners, and resources of the ancient territory of Poland.

It was in the course of the year 1808 that Malte-Brun executed the plan which he had conceived, for contributing to diffuse a taste for geography in France, by the publication of a periodical especially devoted to this important branch of human knowledge. He then published, in concert with Μ. Eyries, the Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, et de l’ Histoire; and the success of this attempt led to the publication of other periodical works on geographical science.

The publication of these annals, and his co-operation in the editorship of the Journal des Debats, did not prevent Malte-Brun from finding time to erect that monument to geography which he proposed to leave as his most durable title to scientific and literary reputation; we allude to the Precis de la Géographie Universelle. The first volume of this work appeared in 1810, and the sixth in 1825. He had only prepared the first five or six leaves of the seventh volume, when he ceased for ever from his labours, leaving the last two volumes, containing Western Europe, to be completed by others. An English translation of Malte-Brun’s Geography has been published at Edinburgh, in nine volumes 8vo.

Great, indeed, must have been the erudition which enabled him to compose the first six volumes of this work. The plan is no doubt too vast for one man to execute, without leaving some parts weak; still these are comparatively few in number, and no part of what he left unfinished has been better done to this day.

The constant and harassing fatigue attending his laborious employment at length exhausted his strength. For three days he had determined on confining himself to his room; but, absorbed by his passion for science, and the intensity of his desire to be useful, he sketched, two hours before his death, the analysis of a scientific work for the Journal des Debats ; and, on the 14 th of December 1826, an attack of apoplexy suddenly carried him off.