book IV

.--T.

[310] _Ad Familiares_, IV. 5: "In my return out of Asia, as I was sailing from Ægina towards Megara, I amused myself with contemplating the circumjacent countries. Behind me lay Ægina, before me Megara; on my right I saw Piræus, and on my left Corinth. These cities, once so flourishing and magnificent, now presented nothing to my view but a sad spectacle of desolation" (MELMOTH's translation).--T.

[311] Pierre Jean de Béranger (1780-1857), the national French song-writer. The extract quoted occurs in the notes to Béranger's song, _À M. de Chateaubriand_ (September 1831), which is quoted in a later volume.--T.

[312] Abel François Villemain (1790-1870), perpetual secretary of the French Academy from 1835, and author of the notice of Lord Byron in the _Biographie universelle_, from which the above sentences are quoted.--T.

[313] Byron spent his childhood at Aberdeen.--T.

[314] MACPHERSON's _Ossian_ was published in 1760.--T.

[315] GOETHE's _Sorrows of Werther_ appeared in 1774.--T.

[316] Rousseau's posthumous work, published in 1782.--T.

[317] By Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1784).--T.

[318] Chateaubriand cannot have read the _Age of Bronze_: it is true that this poem was written in 1823, at Genoa, a year later than the earlier portion of these remarks. In Stanza XVI. of the _Age of Bronze, or Carmen Seculare et Annus haud Mirabilis_, treating of the Congress of Verona (1822), occur the following lines:

There Metternich, power's foremost parasite, Cajoles; there Wellington forgets to fight; There Chateaubriand forms new books of martyrs; And subtle Greeks intrigue for stupid Tartars.

And Byron appends the following note:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand, who has not forgotten the author in the minister, receives a handsome compliment at Verona from a literary sovereign: 'Ah! Monsieur C., are you related to that Chateaubriand who-who-who has written _something?_' (_écrit quelque chose!_). It is said that the author of _Atala_ repented him for a moment of his legitimacy."--T.

[319] _De la Littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec l'état moral et politique des nations_, by Madame de Staël. As this book appeared in 1800, before _Atala_ and the _Génie du Christianisme_, Madame de Staël may well be excused for not mentioning Chateaubriand's name in it.--B.

[320] Teresa Contessa Guiccioli (1799-1873), _née_ Gamba, who became famous by her _liaison_ with Lord Byron. In 1831, widowed of both her husband and Lord Byron, she married the Marquis de Boissy, who had been an attache to Chateaubriand's embassy in Rome. The Countess Guiccioli published her Recollections of Lord Byron in 1863.--B.

[321] Anne Isabella Lady Byron (1792-1860), _née_ Milbanke, daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke-Noel, and heiress of her mother, Judith Noel, Viscountess Wentworth. She married Lord Byron on the 2nd of January 1815, and left him in January 1816, soon after the birth of their daughter Augusta Ada.--T.

[322] Alan IV. Duke of Brittany (_d._ 1112), known as Alan Rufus, son-in-law and nephew of William the Conqueror, was created Earl of Richmond and founded the borough of Richmond or Rich Mount.--T.

[323] See _Domesday Book.--Author's Note._

[324] Charles II. King of England (1630-1685) created the Duchy of Richmond in favour of...

[325] Charles Lennox, first Duke of Richmond (peerage of England) and Lennox (peerage of Scotland) in 1675. He was the illegitimate son of the King and of Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and Duchesse d'Aubigny. This last title of Aubigny was re-confirmed to the fifth duke by King Louis XVIII. in 1816.--T.

[326] Alice Perrers (d. 1400), married later to William de Windsor, became Edward III.'s mistress in 1366. She stole the rings from off his fingers when he was dying.--T.

[327] LA HARPE, _Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi martyr_:

"The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."--T.

[328] Queen Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), second wife of Henry VIII., executed on Tower Hill for adultery.--T.

[329] William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queensberry, K.T. (1724-1810), known as "Old Q.," the notorious veteran debauchee.--T.

[330] Peltier attacked Bonaparte in the _Ambigu_, which he published in London at the end of 1802. The First Consul, then at peace with England, asked for his expulsion, or at least his indictment before a British jury. Peltier was brought before the Court of King's Bench, was brilliantly defended by Sir James Mackintosh, and was sentenced to pay a trifling fine (21 February 1803).--B.

[331] Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) abandoned medicine for the law. He received an Indian judgeship in 1804, and in 1811 returned to England, entering Parliament in 1812. He was the author of some masterly writings, including the famous _Dissertation on Ethics in the Encyclopædia Britannica._--T.

[332] Blenheim was founded in 1704 and bestowed by Parliament on John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, in recognition of his military and diplomatic services. It was named after the signal victory at Blenheim over the French and Bavarian troops (2 August 1704).--T.

[333] Admiral Horatio Viscount Nelson (1758-1805) destroyed the French fleet in the battle known indifferently as the Battle of Aboukir or the Nile (1 August 1798). For this he was created Baron Nelson by the King of England and Duke of Bronte by the King of Naples.--T.

[334] Emma Lady Hamilton (1763-1815), _née_ Lyon or Hart, the beautiful mistress of Charles Greville and of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, foster-brother to George IV., and Minister at Naples from 1764 to 1800. Sir William Hamilton married Emma Hart in 1791. Her intimacy with Nelson began in 1793, and their daughter Horatia was born in 1801.--T.

[335] 21 October 1805.--T.

[336] At that time the residence of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.--T.

[337] The Farnesina Palace, in Rome, where Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) died.--T.

[338] Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), the famous astronomer, had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.--T.

[339] Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), Sir William's sister, assisted him in recording his observations.--T.

[340] King Alfred (849-901), known as the Great, is said to have founded the University of Oxford in 872.--T.

[341] Thomas Gray (1716-1771).--T.

[342] _Elegy_, I.--T.

[343] _Purgatorio_, VIII. 5.--B.

[344] _Ode_, 11-15, 18-21, 28-30, 51-55.--T.

[345] _Cymbeline_, III. 4.--T.

[346] Queen Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1768-1821) married the Prince of Wales, afterwards King George IV., in 1795. The Prince and Princess of Wales separated by mutual consent in 1796, after the birth of Princess Charlotte.--T.

[347] Charles James Fox (1749-1806) entered Parliament for Midhurst in 1768; held office under North, but left him and joined Burke in his opposition to the American War; was Foreign Secretary in the Rockingham Ministry; joined North's short-lived Coalition Ministry of 1783; and during the next fourteen years distinguished himself as the great and eloquent opponent of Pitt's Government. On Pitt's death, in 1806, he again came into office as Foreign Secretary, but himself died shortly after.--T.

[348] Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751-1816) had produced all his plays and was owner of Drury Lane Theatre when he entered Parliament in 1780 under Fox's patronage. In 1782 he became Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Rockingham's Ministry. His two most famous speeches were those impeaching Warren Hastings in 1787 and supporting the French Revolution in 1794.--T.

[349] William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the antagonist of the slave-trade, entered Parliament as Member for Hull in 1780. He first introduced his Abolition Bill in 1789; it was passed by the House of Commons in 1801 and by the House of Lords in 1807.--T.

[350] William Wyndham, first Lord Grenville (1759-1834), entered Parliament in 1782. In 1789 he was Speaker of the House of Commons. In 1790 Pitt made him Home Secretary and a peer; in 1791 he was Foreign Secretary, and Premier from 1806 to 1807.--T.

[351] Samuel Whitbread (1758-1815) entered Parliament in 1790 as Member for Bedford, and attached himself to Fox, to the maintenance of peace, and to the cause of the Princess of Wales. He cut his throat on the 6th of July 1815.--T.

[352] James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale, K.T. (1759-1839), entered the House of Commons in 1780 for Newport, and supported Fox. In 1789 he succeeded to the Scottish peerage and was elected a representative peer in 1790, and in 1806 created a peer of Great Britain and Ireland. He veered from Whig to Tory over the Queen Caroline question, and received the Thistle in reward.--T.

[353] Thomas first Lord Erskine (1750-1823) was Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales (1783), Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall (1802), and in 1806 became Lord Chancellor and a peer.--T.

[354] This should be 1791. _Vide note infra._--T.

[355] 21 April 1791, in the course of an excursion on the French Revolution during the debate on the Quebec Government Bill.--T.

[356] George III., King of England (1738-1820). His frequent fits of insanity began in 1810.--T.

[357] Pitt died at his house at Putney on the 23rd of January 1806.--T.

[358] George Frederick Handel (1684-1759), a German musician who attained and still maintains great vogue in England.--T.

[359] Marie Catherine Marouise d'Aguesseau (1759-1849), _née_ de Lamoignon, married to the Marquis d'Aguesseau, who became a senator of the Empire (1805) and a peer of the Restoration (1814).--B.

[360] 8 May 1800.--B.

PART THE SECOND

1800-1814

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