MARMONTEL, Jean François, a celebrated French writer, was born in 1723, at the picturesque village of Bort, in the Limousin, in a family little removed above the rank of peasantry. Like many other distinguished literary men of France, he owed the early part of his education to private charity and gratuitous public institutions. His parents destined him for trade; but his love for study induced him to assume the clerical habit, and to obtain admittance into the academy or college of the Jesuits at Clermont. Whilst there, he procured a subsistence by acting, during his leisure hours, as a private tutor to some of the more opulent students. He then went to Toulouse, where he delivered lectures in philosophy with considerable reputation, and gained an academical prize. His disappointment as to another prize opened for him a correspondence with Voltaire, which finally led to his departure from Toulouse for Paris, where he obtained the personal acquaintance of his illustrious correspondent, who at that time extended the most friendly encouragement to all young men possessed of any talents for poetry.

At the time of Marmontel’s arrival in the capital, in 1745, the prizes proposed by the academy opened up the shortest roads to literary distinction, and one which was eagerly pursued by those who were ambitious of celebrity. Marmontel, like many others, commenced his career of letters by gaining a prize for a poem on a subject proposed by the French Academy—the Glory of Louis XIV. perpetuated in his Successor. But in that age the theatre afforded the most ample field for the acquisition of wealth and eminence. All talent was in a manner forced into that direction, and was often recompensed with extravagant liberality. In order to qualify himself for dramatic composition, he commenced an assiduous study of the best critical works on the subject, which he borrowed from Voltaire; he obtained free admission to the French theatre, which he regularly attended; and he frequented the Procope Coffee-House, which was then the tribunal of criticism, and the school for young poets to study the humour and taste of the public. His first tragedies, Dionysius and Aristο∙ mènes, obtained a reception sufficiently flattering for a youthful poet, but they did not keep their ground on the stage; and his succeeding ones, Cleopatra, the Heraclides, and Numitor, had no success whatever. Laharpe, who was a great dramatic critic, condemns them all as bad, except the Heraclides, which he calls a tolerable tragedy of the second rank. In fact, Marmontel does not appear to have been endowed with any talents for poetry, at least of the higher order, either in point of poetical conception or the mechanical construction of verse. It is also evident, from his Réflexions sur la Tragédie, published at the end of his Aristomenes, that he had formed, at least in the early period of his life, the most unfounded and paradoxical theories with regard to the rules of dramatic composition. Hence his plots have,for the most part, but little interest; his dialogue is full of puerile common-places, and his versification is cold and constrained. The plot of Dionysius hinges on the conspiracy of Dion against the Sicilian tyrant, and the love of the younger Dionysius (who, in defiance of all historical truth, is represented as a paragon of virtue) for the daughter of Dion, whose character is formed on the model of the heroines of Calprenede and Scuderi. The plots of Aristomenes and Numitor are, for the most part, of his own invention, and are both sufficiently extravagant. In the Heraclides he has followed the well-known tragedy of Euripides as his guide. At his first interview with Voltaire, Marmontel had been assured by him, that by the stage he might in one day obtain glory and fortune; and that one successful piece would render him at the same moment rich and celebrated. The prediction was verified; and from the instant at which his first tragedy appeared, he, who had not money to pay the person who brought water to his lodgings, and who lived on credit with his baker and green-grocer, was at once plunged into all the bustling intrigue of the first literary circles, and into all the glare and dissipation of fashionable society. His time was occupied with rehearsals and parties of pleasure; he was received as the favoured lover of the most celebrated actress of the age, Mademoiselle Clairon; and in another intrigue in which he engaged he became the rival of Marshal Saxe. In order to shun the resentment of so formidable a rival, he retired for some time to Passy, the country-seat of the rich and sumptuous financier, Poplinière, who had married his mistress, and kept open house for all the idle and dissipated litterateurs of the age. By flattering the king in some occasional verses, which he wrote whilst residing here, he obtained[7:14:253] the powerful patronage of Madame de Pompadour, who procured for him the situation of under secretary of the royal buildings. This employment fixed his residence at Versailles for five years, which were passed wholly free from disquietude, and are often alluded to by him as the happiest period of his life. The duties of his situation occupied him two days in the week, and the remainder of his time was employed in contributing articles to the Encyclopédie, of which his friends D’Alembert and Diderot were the editors. These articles, which contain many ingenious theories mixed up with strange paradoxes, were afterwards printed together, in alphabetical order, under the general title of Elements de Littératures. ^[1. ' Γ.W ha ! ex ţ rac , te ð fr θ π } the Eléments de Littérature everything that related to eloquence, and placed the remarks not in alphabetical order, but in that of the subject. This work, which was intended to form a manual of French rhetoric, is entitled Principes d Eloquence de Marmontel, extraits de ses Elćmens de Littérature et mis en ordre. Paris, 1809. ]

Having been engaged about the same time in writing on the subject of comedy, and searching into nature for the rules and means of the art, this study led him to examine if it were true, as was then often said, that all the great strokes of ridicule had been seized by Molière and the dramatic poets who followed him. In running over the canvass of society, he perceived that, in the inexhaustible combinations of follies and extravagancies of all conditions of life, a man of genius might still find sufficient employment. He had even collected some observations to propose to young poets, when his friend Μ. de Boissy, who at the time conducted the Mercure de France, requested him to supply some pieces in prose, to insert in that literary journal, from which Marmontel derived a considerable pension. It occurred to him to employ, in a tale, one of the touches of ridicule in his collection; and he chose, by way of essay, the absurd pretension of being loved merely for one’s self. This was exhibited in the first of his Moral Tales, entitled Alcibiade, ou Le Moi. The story was much admired, and was by some attributed to Montesquieu, and by others to Voltaire. Its success induced him towrite other tales of a similar description; and thus commenced the Contes Moraux, which were subsequently collected and printed by themselves. Many of these tales, on which the fame of Marmontel principally if not solely rests, bear reference to the original idea with which they commenced, being for the most part intended to expose some absurdity or extravagance of character. Thus the second displays the folly of those who exert authority in order to bring a woman to reason; and he chose, for an example of this, a sultan and his slave, as being placed in the two extremes of power and dependence. In most of them he has reached a very happy imitation of nature, in the manners and language; and it is only to be regretted that he has occasionally thrown a too glittering varnish over conceptions of the most beautiful simplicity. As lively pictures of French manners, both simple and fashionable, they are admitted to be unrivalled. The early part of the life of Marmontel was passed amidst scenes of rural innocence, with a family which lodged in a cottage, and subsisted by the labour of their hands; the remainder of his days was spent in the most brilliant and refined society which Paris or the world afforded, exhibiting the most splendid union of literary talents with all the polish of exalted rank and the graces of female elegance. This enabled him to succeed in scenes and characters which were extremely remote, and indeed contrasted to each other, in the delineation of the innocent pleasures of the country, as well as of the rivalships, whims, and levities of gay or splendid life. The Shepherdess of the Alps, which has been the most popular of them all, and Les deux Infortunées, are as distinguished for simple and touching pathos as the great proportion are for liveliness. The style is remarkable for facility, and the ease with which it inclines, in pursuing the course of events, to the ludicrous or pathetic.

After the death of Μ. de Boissy, Marmontel obtained the patent and sole management of the Mercure, of which he had long been the chief support. Upon receiving this appointment, he resigned that which he held at Versailles, and fixed his residence at Paris, in apartments assigned to him in the house of Madame Geoffrin. He appears to have conducted the journal of which he had charge, with great ability and judgment. Few periodical works have appeared more diversified, more attractive, or more abundant in resources; and many who afterwards came to hold the highest rank in French literature were first introduced through it to the favour of the public. After he had conducted it, however, for two years, he became suspected of writing a satire against some powerful nobleman. He was, in consequence, shut up for a few days in the Bastille, and on his release was deprived of his agreeable and lucrative situation. But this misfortune did not discourage his literary exertions. Soon after he had recovered his freedom, he translated into prose the Pharsalia of Lucan, of which he was a great admirer. He also added to it a supplement, in which he details the events of Caesar’s war in Africa, and concludes with his last campaign in Spain. The French have at all times been great dealers in prose translations of the classics. But though the shape in which Marmontel exhibited the Pharsalia can never convey an adequate idea of the original, his work is more agreeable to read than the turgid poetical version of Brebenf, by which it was preceded.

About the same time at which he completed the translation of the Pharsalia, he published his Poétique Françoise, containing observations extracted from the various articles which he had furnished for the Encyclopedic. It is divided into two parts; the first expounding the elementary principles of poetry, and the second applying them to its different sorts.

Being about this period seized with a disorder in the chest, which had proved fatal to both his parents, he resolved to devote his remaining days to the composition of a romance or fiction of the higher order. The subject he chose was Belisarius, suggested to him by a print he possessed from the celebrated picture of Vandyck. The fact on which his tale is founded was rather a popular tradition and opinion than an historical truth. But the belief had so universally prevailed, and the idea of a blind old man reduced to beggary had been so closely associated with the name of Belisarius, that it possessed all the advantages essential for the purposes of historical romance. In other particulars the author relied on the faith of history, and Procopius chiefly served as his guide. On its first appearance in 1768, Bélisaire attracted universal attention. The first seven chapters, describing the journey of the old blind hero to the village where his family resided, his arrival there, and the visit paid to him by Justinian in his humble habitation, are possessed of an interest almost dramatic, and are composed in a higher tone of eloquence than any thing else which he has written. But those which follow are almost entirely destitute of incident, and are just so many separate lectures on different branches of government and politics delivered by Belisarius to Justinian. In the course of these dissertations, there are evidently many references to political incidents, and the system of French politics pursued in the middle of the seventeenth century. The last chapter, on religious toleration, involved the author in a dispute with the Sorbonne, who published a censure of it, which was opposed by the arguments of Turgot, and by the epigrams and squibs of Voltaire.

1 hough Belisarius cost its author many sleenless nichts, [7:14:254]he recovered during its composition from the disorder which had excited him to the undertaking, and he some time afterwards produced his Incas of Peru, dedicated to Gustavus king of Sweden. Irritated as he was by the recent anathemas of the Sorbonne, his great object in this new romance was to show, that all the evils inflicted by the Spaniards on the Indians had their origin in that fanaticism which he was desirous to bring into still deeper detestation. In Fernando de Loquez and Vincentio Re-quelme, he has given a sort of personification of fanaticism in its most hideous form; and has contrasted their characters with that of Las Casas, which is intended as a model of the exalted piety and tempered zeal most becoming a Christian. In the history on which this romance is founded, Las Casas had given a tremendous picture of the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in Peru, and of the sufferings of its inoffensive inhabitants. The pencil of Marmontel had scarcely sufficient strength to paint the determined courage, rapacity, debauchery, and remorseless cruelty of the soldiery let loose upon the Indians, nor the desperate characters of the adventurers at their head, who knew no law but the sword, and whose sole object and aim was plunder. In painting Indian scenes of innocence, tranquillity, and peace, he has been more fortunate. But he has unluckily abandoned the simplicity which charmed so much in his Moral Tales, for a tone too highly rhetorical; and there is a want of unity of interest, from the multiplicity of episodes. The longest is that of the conquest of Mexico related to the Inca by some refugees from that country, and who had come all the way to Quito, apparently for no other purpose than to tell their long story.

In 1763 Marmontel had been admitted, though after considerable opposition, to the much-envied place of a member of the French Academy, and, in 1783, he succeeded D’Alembert as its perpetual secretary. The situation of historiographer of France, and the chair of history in the Lyceum, which he successively obtained, fully indemnified him for the loss of the Mercure. He was in the full enjoyment of affluent circumstances, domestic felicity, and literary reputation, when the French Revolution suddenly changed the scene. During its alarming progress he led a retired life, and, though reduced to indigent circumstances, remained secure amidst all the violent events of the period. In 1797 he was chosen a deputy to the National Assembly by the department of Eure, but he died soon afterwards, of an apoplectic attack, at his cottage near Abbeville.

Several of his pieces were published after his death. The Nouveaux Contes Moraux, which were inserted in the Mercure, had been extracted from that journal, and translated into English soon after their first appearance; but they were not printed apart in their original language till after the demise of the author. This second series is inferior in delicacy, grace, and beauty of style, to the former, but the scope and tendency of the stories is more strictly moral. On account of his situation as historiographer of France, Marmontel had thought it a duty incumbent on him to write some historical work. The period he chose was the regency of the Duke of Orleans, which he commenced in 1784; but though he completed it four years afterwards, it was not given to the public during his life. This work is not such, either in point of accuracy of facts or enlightened general views, as might have been expected from the time occupied in its composition, the materials which his situation opened up to him, and the pompous account which he himself gives of his access to information. “All the eminent men of the age,” says he, “opened to me the repositories which contained documents on my subject. The Count de Broglio initiated me into the mysteries of his most secret negociations; and Contades traced to me, with his own hand, the plan of his campaigns, and particularly of the battle of Minden.” The most interesting part is the last chapter, containing the relation of some particular incidents which occurred during the regency, as the plague at Marseilles, and the visit of the Czar Peter to France.

The Posthumous Memoirs of Marmontel, drawn up in his declining years for the instruction of his children, and edited in 1804 from a manuscript in his own handwriting, are amongst the most amusing volumes of the description ever presented to the public. They commence with the author’s earliest youth. The portion which comprehends this period of his life is written in the happiest style of his Moral Tales, and contains many interesting anecdotes of humble innocence, many animated sketches of domestic happiness, and many agreeable traits of village society. In the succeeding part, the portraits of the most distinguished characters in the most brilliant age of France are delineated with so much life, discrimination, and delicacy, and every thing is sketched with a colouring so light and aerial, that the whole representation is exquisite. There is scarcely a single person of note in France whose likeness is not exhibited in this vast gallery: the pictures of Voltaire, D’Alembert, Marivaux, Thomas, St Lambert, and Helvetius, are all excellent. The society which Marmontel frequented was probably the most refined and brilliant that had ever assembled together; but there was evidently a restraint, a desire of exhibition, and want of ease in its intercourse. “Every guest,” says Marmontel, “arrived ready to play his part; in Marivaux, impatience to give proof of acuteness and sagacity was visibly betrayed; Montesquieu, with more calm, waited till the ball came to him, but he expected it; Helvetius, attentive and discreet, sat collecting for a future day.” Literary fame was enjoyed in France in its greatest extent, but also in its greatest anxiety. Of all the others, Voltaire had gained the most brilliant literary success; yet of him Marmontel remarks, that his glory was too dearly paid by the tribulations to which it had exposed him. It had been said by Madame Genlis, that Marmontel, in his Moral Tales, showed gross ignorance of the French manners and character, in representing the higher classes, particularly of females, as so voluptuous, and in many cases abandoned; but the Memoirs, if they record the truth, unhappily confirm his representations. When so much amusement is derived from his minute descriptions, it is perhaps hypercritical to remark, that some petty circumstances, of no general interest, and which might have been better thrown into the background, are brought too muchouton the canvass, and are drawn in disproportioned magnitude. But for these details, he states as his apology that it is for his children he writes the history of his life, and that those things which may appear too minute to strangers, will prove interesting and useful to them. The concluding volume, containing a sketch of the first events of the Revolution, is confused and imperfect. Its incidents were too gigantic for the grasp of his mind, and he appears to have been dizzied and stupified by the rapid whirl and total subversion which he witnessed.

An author by profession, the literary character of Marmontel may be fully appreciated from his various and numerous productions. Though he admits that, whilst he has given the portrait of others at full length in his Memoirs, he has only painted himself in profile, yet from them his private character may be correctly enough estimated. Upon a review of these, it has been remarked, “that, without great passions or great talents, he seems to have had a lively imagination, a pliant and cheerful disposition, and a delicacy of taste and discrimination, of still greater value in the society which fixed his reputation. Although good tempered and social, he seems to [7:14:255] have been, in a great measure, without heart or affection; or rather the dissipated and sensual life to which he devoted himself after his removal to Paris, appears to have obstructed in him the growth of all generous and exalted feeling. In society he was joyous and easy, gay without affecting to dazzle, and ingenious without intolerance or fastidiousness.” (e.)