Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/201

Rh Q U I Q U I 183 duty of his countrymen to resist any encroachments upon their right to self-government. In 1770 he wrote A n Address of the Merchants, Traders, and freeholders of Boston in favour of a non-importation Act, asserting, about the same time, in a newspaper article that Americans would " know, resume, assert, and defend their rights " by the " arts of war " if " the arts of policy " should fail. In December 1773 he took an active and leading part in the town-meeting which virtually ordered the destruction of the cargoes of the tea-ships in Boston harbour. The appeal to the other towns for help to sustain Boston against the enforcement of the consequent Acts of Parliament was written by him ; and soon after there appeared under his own name Observations on the Boston Port Bill, with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies, his longest and most important political paper, which made him a marked man both in England and America. He sailed a few months afterwards for England with the approval of the leading revolutionists, to present, though unofficially, to the ministry and other public men the grievances and the determination of the colonists. After six months failing health he had long been threatened with consumption compelled him to return home, and he died on shipboard as the vessel was entering the harbour of Gloucester, Massachusetts, April 26, 1775. A memoir written by his only son, JOSIAH QUINCY (1772-1864), containing his life, correspondence, and the Observations on the Boston Port Bill, was published in 1825 (2<1 cd. 1874). This only son of Josiah Quincy, jun., born in Boston in February 1772, lived to be three times the age of his father, and filled public stations for more years than his father lived ; he was a member of Congress during the eventful period from 1805 to 1813 ; as the second mayor of Boston his sagacity and energy insured the future prosperity of that city ; in Congress he maintained at the head of the Federal party the struggle with the disastrous foreign policy of the adminis- trations of Jefferson and Madison, and the dangerous growth of the slave-power, which he never ceased to oppose ; as president of Har- vard College for sixteen years (1829-45) he increased the usefulness and added to the influence of that seat of learning. He wrote a history of the college for two hundred years, which was also largely a history of Massachusetts. He died in June 1864 in the ninety- third year of his age. A life of him, by his youngest sou Edmund Quincy, an accomplished scholar and well-known author, was pub- lished in 1867. QUINET, EDGAR (1803-1875), was born at Bourg-en- Bresse, in the department of the Ain, France, on February 17, 1803. His father, Jerome Quinet, had been a com- missary in the army, but being a strong republican and disgusted with Napoleon's usurpation, he gave up his post and resided either at Bourg or at a country house which he possessed in the neighbourhood, devoting himself to scien- tific and mathematical study. Edgar, who was an only child, was much alone, but his mother (whose name was Eugenie Rozat Lagis, and who was a person of education and strong though somewhat unorthodox religious views) exercised great influence over him. He was sent to school first at Bourg and then at Lyons, where he took no part in a celebrated barring out which led to the expulsion of his schoolfellow Jules Janin. On leaving school his father wished him to go into the army and then suggested busi- ness. But Quinet was determined upon literature, and after a time got his Avay. His first publication, the Tab- lettes du Juif Errant, appeared in 1823. Being struck with Herder's Philosophic der Geschichte, he undertook to translate it, learnt German for the purpose, published his work in 1827, and obtained by it considerable credit. At this time he was introduced to Cousin and made the acquaintance of Michelet. He had visited Germany and England before the appearance of his book. Cousin pro- cured him a post on a Government mission to the Morea in 1829, and on his return he published in 1830 a book on La Crece Moderne. Some hopes of employment which he had after the revolution of February were frustrated by the reputation of speculative republicanism which he had acquired. But he joined the staff of the Revue des Deux Mondes, and for some years contributed to it numer- ous essays, the most remarkable of which was that on "Les Epopees Fra^aises du Xllerae Sie"cle," an early though not by any means the earliest appreciation of the long-neglected chansons de geste. Ahasverus, his first ori- ginal work of consequence, appeared in 1833. This is a singular prose poem in language sometimes rather bom- bastic but often beautiful. Shortly afterwards he married Minna Mor6, a German girl with whom he had fallen in love some years before. Then he visited Italy, and, besides writing many essays, produced two poems, Napoleon and Promethee (1833), which being written in verse (of which he was not a master) are inferior to Ahasverus. In 1838 he published a vigorous reply to Strauss's Life of Jesus, and in that year he received the Legion of Honour, In 1839 he was appointed professor of foreign literature at Lyons, where he began the brilliant course of lectures afterwards embodied in the Genie des Religions. Two years later he was transferred to the College de France and the Genie des Religions itself appeared (1842). Quinet's Parisian professorship was more notorious than fortunate, owing, it must be said, to his own fault. His chair was one of Southern Literature, but, neglecting his proper subject, he chose, in conjunction with Michelet, to engage in a violent polemic with the Jesuits and with Ultramontanism. Two books bearing exactly these titles appeared in 1843 and 1844, and contained, as was usual with Quinet, the substance of his lectures. These excited so much disturbance and the author so obstinately refused to confine himself to literature proper that in 1846 the Government put an end to them a course which was not disapproved by the majority of his colleagues. By this time Quinet was a pronounced republican and something of a revolutionist. He appeared in arms during the dis- turbances which overthrew Louis Philippe, and was elected by the department of the Ain to the Constituent and then to the Legislative Assembly, where he figured among the extreme Radical party. He had published in 1848 Les Revolutions d' Italic, one of his principal though not one of his best works. He wrote numerous pamphlets dur- ing the short-lived second republic, attacked the Roman expedition with all his strength, and was from the first an uncompromising opponent of Prince Louis Napoleon. He was banished from France after the coup d'etat, and estab- lished himself at Brussels. His wife had died some time previously, and he now married Mademoiselle Assaki, the daughter of a Roumanian poet. At Brussels he lived for some seven years, during which he published Les Esclaves (1853), a dramatic poem, Marnix de Ste Aldegonde (1854), a study of that Reformer in which he very greatly exagger- ates Sainte Aldegonde's literary merit, and some other books. He then moved to Veytaux on the shore of the Lake of Geneva, where he continued to reside till the fall of the empire. Here his pen was busier than ever. In 1860 appeared a singular book somewhat after the fashion of Ahasverus entitled Merlin VEnchanteur, in 1862 a Histoire de la Campagne de 1815, in 1865 an elaborate book on the French Revolution, in which the author, republican as he was, blamed the acts of the revolutionists unsparingly, and by that means drew down on himself much wrath from more thoroughgoing partisans. Many pamphlets date from this period, as does La Creation (1870), a third book of the class of Ahasverus and Merlin, but even vaguer, dealing not with history, legend, or philosophy, but with physical science for the most part. Quinet had refused to return to France to join the Liberal opposition against Napoleon III., but immediately after Sedan he returned. He was then restored to his pro-