Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/643

 S U D S U E 619 SUDRAS. SeeBRAHMANiSM,vol. iv. p. 203sq., and CASTE. SUE, JOSEPH MARIE (1804-1859), generally known as EUGENE SUE, French novelist, ranked by some as the chief practitioner of the melodramatic style in fiction, -was born at Paris on 10th December 1804. Unlike most volumin- ous writers of light literature, Sue was a man of fortune. He was the son of a surgeon in Napoleon's army, and is said to have had the empress Josephine for godmother. But in later life he became something very different from a Bonapartist, and his residence in Savoy for the last years of his life was due to his having been banished from France after the coup d'etat. Until his father's death in 1828 Sue pursued the same profession and was present as a surgeon both in the campaign undertaken by France in 1823 for the re-establishment of royal power in Spain and at the battle of Navarino (1828). His naval experiences supplied much of the materials of his first novels, Kernoclc le Pirate, Attar-Gull, La Salamandre, La Cmicarateha, and others, which were composed at the height of the romantic movement of 1 830, and displayed its Byronic enthusiasm, its fancy for outlandish subjects and names, and (in a very full measure) its extravagance. Then he took to more serious work, writing a naval history of France of no merit. His next venture was the historical or quasi- historical novel, in which style he composed Jean Cacali<r (1840), besides other stories of adventure. About this time he was strongly affected by the socialist ideas of the day, and his attempt to display these in fiction produced (with others) his most famous and perhaps best works, Les Mysteres de Paris (1842) and Le Juif Errant ( 1 844-45). These were among the most popular specimens of the roman-feuilleton, then at the height of its popularity. The political and philosophical or pseudo-philosophical " purpose " continuing to gain more and more ground on the novelist's art, he followed these up with clivers singular and not very edifying books, such as Les Sept Peches Capitaux, Les Mysteres du Peuple, and several others, all on a very large scale, though the number of volumes ten, twelve, and sometimes even sixteen gives rather an exaggerated idea of their length. Some of his books, especially the Wandering Jew and the Mysteries of Paris, were dramatized by himself, usually in collaboration with others. His popularity was immense, and, despite gross faults both of art and of morality (the latter somewhat exaggerated in general estimation, at least when the work of his successors is compared), he deserved that popularity in part. By an accident, which is noteworthy in the case of other pairs of novelists (notably in those of Thackeray and Dickens, and earlier of Fielding and Richardson), his period of greatest success and popularity coincided with that of another writer, and he has been even recently, and by not despicable authorities, compared with and exalted above Alexandre Dumas. This is entirely unjust, for Sue has neither Dumas's wide range of subject, nor his genial humanity of tone, nor his interest of character, nor, above all, his faculty of conducting the story by means of lively dialogue ; he has, however, a command of terror which Dumas seldom or never attained, and which, melodramatic as he is, sometimes comes within measurable distance of the sublime, while his " purpose " gives him a certain energy not easily to be found elsewhere in novel-writing. From the purely literary point of view his style is undistinguished, not to say bad, and his construction loose and prolix. After the revolution of 1848 he sat for Paris (the Seine) in the assembly from April 1850 until his exile as above- mentioned. This exile rather stimulated than checked his literary production. The works of his last days, however (the chief of which is perhaps Le Dialle Medeciii), are on the whole much inferior to those of his middle period. Sue died at Annecy (Savoy) on 3d August 1859. SUETONIUS. Caius Suetonius Tranquillus was one of the many second-rate authors and men of letters who- lived in the early period of the Roman empire. He was- the contemporary of Tacitus and the younger Pliny, and his literary work seems to have been chiefly done in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. His father was an officer in the army and military tribune in the XIHth legion, and he himself began life as an advocate. To us he is known as the biographer of the twelve Ccesars, from Caius Julius down to Domitian. These lives are valu- able as covering a good deal of ground where we are without the guidance of Tacitus. As Suetonius was the emperor Hadrian's private secretary, he must have had access to many important documents. It would seem from occasional references which he makes to himself in the course of the work that he was a youngish man in the reign of Domitian, and so would have had opportuni- ties of conversing with men who had lived in the days of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and had been present at the scenes of civil war and anarchy which followed the reign of the last-named. The most interesting fact about Suetonius is that he was a friend and correspondent of the younger Pliny, and the fact certainly tells in his favour. Several of Pliny's letters are addressed to him, and they all imply esteem and intimate friendship. Sometimes we find Pliny putting in a good word for him, as, for instance, on one occasion doing his best to help him in buying a .small property at a fair price, not very far from Rome, with a house of moderate size and land enough to amuse but not to engross a man of scholarly tastes (i. 24). In another letter (v. 10) he playfully rallies him on his dilatoriness in publishing his works. Pliny does not men- tion the subject of these works. Again he recommends him to the favourable notice of the emperor Trajan, " as a most upright, honourable, and learned man, whom persons often remember in their wills because of his merits," and he begs that he may be made legally capable of inheriting these bequests, for which under a special enactment Suetonius was, as a childless married man, disqualified. Trajan granted Pliny's request (x. 94, 95). Hadrian's bio- grapher, Spartianus, tells us that Suetonius had his private secretaryship taken from him because he and some others, of the imperial officials were not sufficiently observant of court etiquette towards the emperor's wife during his absence in Britain. The Lives of the Cazsars has always "been a popular work, at least with scholars, and has been frequently edited, as well as translated into most modern languages, the latest English translation being; that of Thomson in 1796. The lives of the first six Caesars are much fuller than those of the last six ; this shows that he was an industrious compiler rather than an original historian. He gives, us no picture of the society of the time, no hints as to the general character and tendencies of the period. It is the emperor, the emperor only, who is always before us, and yet after all the por- trait is but a sorry performance, drawn without any real historical judgment or insight. It is the personal anecdotes he tells us, several of which are very amusing, that give his lives their chief interest; but he panders rather too much to a taste for scandal and gossip. A good many of his scandalous stories about the emperors may be and probably are fictions, but at any rate they reflect the gossip of the time. Still we owe him thanks for having thrown some light on an important period, parts of which are very obscure. Suetonius is said to have been a voluminous writer, and among- his works Suidas mentions treatises on the Roman Year, Cicero's Republic, The Kings, The Pedigree of Illustrious Romans, and Rome, its Institutions aiid Customs, with several others, works, it would seem, of learned research. Under his name have come down to u* Lives of Terence, Juvenal, Horace, Persius, Lucan, and his friend the younger Pliny ; but the genuineness of these is highly ques- tionable, and that of the last is hardly worth considering. There is also a work entitled De illustrious grammaficis,a. "grammaticus being what we should call "a professor of language and literature. " SUEUR, ETJSTACHE LE (1617-1655), one of the founders of the French academy of painting, was born 19th Novem-