Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/167

 9* S. IX. FEB. 22, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of Llanarth, C B., C.M.G., D.S.O. Col. Herbert is alone entitled to bear the un- differenced arms of Herbert, to wit, Per pale azure and gules, three lioncels rampant argent. Like some other offshoots of this male stock, Morgan of Arkstone bore different arras, viz., Argent, a lion rampant sable, ducally crowned or.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Life of Napoleon I. By John Holland Rose,

M.A. 2 vols. (Bell & Sons.)

NUMEROUS and important as are the books con- cerning Napoleon, no historical collection can afford to dispense with this latest addition. Mr. Rose has scarcely had canvas enough for the picture he has sought to paint. Many details have had to be hurried over, and the design in places is blurred. The necessity for compression renders the language, and sometimes the idea, obscure, and the passages in which occur explanations of the impossibility of carrying further a portion of the argument are numerous. These things are inherent in the scheme, and we are compelled to accept the book as it is planned and executed by the author. The work might have been better had double the amount of time been spent on its composition and double the amount of space been awarded to the exposition. It is excel- lent, however, as it is, and we are only justified in going behind the author's purpose and aim so far as to say that there are times when we should be thankful for more. Mr. Rose's book is a specimen of the rewritten histories which must in time replace in almost all cases the half -informed and often prejudiced compilations of earlier days. The influence of the opening of the archives of Simancas to English research, and the careful investigation of those of Venice, have, for instance, rendered necessary a recasting of the history of Tudor times. In history, as in other things, there is no finality, and further research opportunities for which multiply as international jealousies, so far as access to literary documents is concerned, diminish leads to a constant reshaping of facts and recasting of judgments. It is curious that close investigation into those portions of our archives embracing the period covered by the Napoleonic wars should have been long deferred. This has, however, been the case, and Mr. Rose is practically the first to bring to bear upon the career of the great French emperor the information contained in our national archives. This constitutes the chief value of his important and profoundly interesting volumes. Not wholly consoling is it to read of the ineptitude of the British Government after the death of Pitt, of the disastrous consequences of aristocratic jobbery, of widespread corruption, and of disloyalty on the part of a political opposition which the author denounces as lack of patriotism. To the study of these things the merest tiro in history is accus- tomed, and he is a sanguine man who expects to find more gratifying reading in the records of present or future campaigns.

Little in the present work is more striking than the contempt Napoleon displayed for English diplo- macy a contempt so justified that the student accepts it as inevitable, and shrugs his shoulders over it as part of the appanage shall we say as the curse? of our race. It is natural that, though the work deals with the entire career of Napoleon, the most interesting portion should be to English readers the descriptions of the sustained struggle against England, the most resolute and, thanks to her insular position, the most triumphant of Napoleon's opponents. Of the men arrayed against Napoleon three only can come into any sort of comparison with him, and these were all Englishmen Pitt, Nelson, and Welling- ton. Anything approaching to an adequate review of Mr. Rose's work is not to be expected. Every episode in the career of Napoleon is of highest interest, and we turn as ^reluctantly from the man of Toulon and of Vendemiaire as from the con- queror of Marengo, of Austerlitz, and of Jena, the fugitive from Moscow, the defeated of Waterloo, and the prisoner of St. Helena. We can but take a few distinct and distinguishing assertions or opinions of the author. Of the French Revolution he says that discontent and faith were the ultimate motive power: "Faith prepared the Revolution, and discontent accomplished it." The three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be definite and practical were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. With purely speculative writers he concerns himself no more than with such half- unconscious agents as Beaumarchais. As his is a history of Napoleon, and not of the Revolution, such omissions are excusable. In his short and valuable preface Mr. Rose quotes the words em- ployed by Napoleon to Gallois: "Je n'aime pas beaucoup leu femmes, ni le jeu, enfin rien : je suis tout cl fait un etre politiqiie." This shows the point of view from which the book is written. Mr. Rose avowedly treats with special brevity the years 1809-11, which he considers to represent the con- stans cetas of the emperor's career, and has dedi- cated proportionately more space to showing how Napoleon's "continental system was setting at work mighty economic forces that made for his overthrow, so that after the debacle of 1812 it came to be a struggle of Napoleon and France contra mundum" It is pleasant to find from the same preface that British policy comes out the better the more fully it is known. Beginning in feeble- ness and ineptitude, it attained to firmness and dignity, and "Ministers closed the cycle of war with acts of magnanimity towards the French people which are studiously ignored by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of St. Helena."

Of Napoleon's passion for Josephine in the days of the Italian campaign an interesting account is

iven, Marlborough's letters to his peevish duchess uring the Blenheim campaign being " not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of the fierce scourge of Austria to his heartless fair." The "facile fondnesses" of Josephine welled forth far too widely "to carve out a single channel of love and mingle with the deep torrent of Bonaparte's early passion." With these passages will naturally be compared those when the position was changed, it may almost be said reversed. Nelson's career in Naples" the worst Court in Europe" is un- sy mpathetically treated, and that hero is said to have tarnished his fame on the Syren (sic) coast. Napo- leon's behaviour at Jaffa is held to compare favour-