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Page 9
Although the literature of France could boast of many men of great
talent, such as La Harpe, who died during the Consulate, Ducis, Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre, Chenier, and Lemercier, yet they could not be compared
with Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Fourcroy, Berthollet, and Cuvier, whose
labours have so prodigiously extended the limits of human knowledge. No
one, therefore, could murmur at seeing the class of sciences in the
Institute take precedence of its elder sister. Besides, the First Consul
was not sorry to show, by this arrangement, the slight estimation in
which he held literary men. When he spoke to me respecting them he
called them mere manufacturers of phrases. He could not pardon them for
excelling him in a pursuit in which he had no claim to distinction.
I never knew a man more insensible than Bonaparte to the beauties of
poetry or prose. A certain degree of vagueness, which was combined with
his energy of mind, led him to admire the dreams of Ossian, and his
decided character found itself, as it were, represented in the elevated
thoughts of Corneille. Hence his almost exclusive predilection for these
two authors With this exception, the finest works in our literature were
in his opinion merely arrangements of sonorous words, void of sense, and
calculated only for the ear.
Bonaparte's contempt, or, more properly speaking, his dislike of
literature, displayed itself particularly in the feeling he cherished
towards some men of distinguished literary talent. He hated Chenier, and
Ducis still more. He could not forgive Chenier for the Republican
principles which pervaded his tragedies; and Ducis excited in him; as if
instinctively, an involuntary hatred. Ducis, on his part, was not
backward in returning the Consul's animosity, and I remember his writing
some verses which were inexcusably violent, and overstepped all the
bounds of truth. Bonaparte was so singular a composition of good and bad
that to describe him as he was under one or other of these aspects would
serve for panegyric or satire without any departure from truth.
Bonaparte was very fond of Bernardin Saint-Pierre's romance of 'Paul and
Virginia', which he had read in his boyhood. I remember that he one day
tried to read 'Les etudes de la Nature', but at the expiration of a
quarter of an hour he threw down the book, exclaiming, "How can any one
read such silly stuffy. It is insipid and vapid; there is nothing in it.
These are the dreams of a visionary! What is nature? The thing is vague
and unmeaning. Men and passions are the subjects to write about--there
is something there for study. These fellows are good for nothing under
any government. I will, however, give them pensions, because I ought to
do so, as Head of the State. They occupy and amuse the idle. I will
make Lagrange a Senator--he has a head."
Although Bonaparte spoke so disdainfully of literary men it must not be
taken for granted that he treated them ill. On the contrary, all those
who visited at Malmaison were the objects of his attention, and even
flattery. M. Lemercier was one of those who came most frequently, and
whom Bonaparte received with the greatest pleasure. Bonaparte treated
M. Lemercier with great kindness; but he did not like him. His character
as a literary man and poet, joined to a polished frankness, and a mild
but inflexible spirit of republicanism, amply sufficed to explain
Bonaparte's dislike. He feared M. Lemercier and his pen; and, as
happened more than once, he played the part of a parasite by flattering
the writer. M. Lemercier was the only man I knew who refused the cross
of the Legion of Honour.
Bonaparte's general dislike of literary men was less the result of
prejudice than circumstances. In order to appreciate or even to read
literary works time is requsite, and time was so precious to him that he
would have wished, as one may say, to shorten a straight line. He liked
only those writers who directed their attention to positive and precise
things, which excluded all thoughts of government and censures on
administration. He looked with a jealous eye on political economists and
lawyers; in short, as all persons who in any way whatever meddled with
legislation and moral improvements. His hatred of discussions on those
subjects was strongly displayed on the occasion of the classification of
the Institute. Whilst he permitted the reassembling of a literary class,
to the number of forty, as formerly, he suppressed the class of moral and
political science. Such was his predilection for things of immediate and
certain utility that even in the sciences he favoured only such as
applied to terrestrial objects. He never treated Lalande with so much
distinction as Monge and Lagrange. Astronomical discoveries could not
add directly to his own greatness; and, besides, he could never forgive
Lalande for having wished to include him in a dictionary of atheists
precisely at the moment when he was opening negotiations with the court
of Rome.
Bonaparte wished to be the sole centre of a world which he believed he
was called to govern. With this view he never relaxed in his constant
endeavour to concentrate the whole powers of the State in the hands of
its Chief. His conduct upon the subject of the revival of public
instruction affords evidence of this fact. He wished to establish 6000
bursaries, to be paid by Government, and to be exclusively at his
disposal, so that thus possessing the monopoly of education, he could
have parcelled it out only to the children of those who were blindly
devoted to him. This was what the First Consul called the revival of
public instruction. During the period of my closest intimacy with him
he often spoke to me on this subject, and listened patiently to my
observations. I remember that one of his chief arguments was this:
"What is it that distinguishes men? Education--is it not? Well, if the
children of nobles be admitted into the academies, they will be as well
educated as the children of the revolution, who compose the strength of
my government. Ultimately they will enter into my regiments as officers,
and will naturally come in competition with those whom they regard as the
plunderers of their families. I do not wish that!"
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