Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/421

* BOtJRGET. 871 BOURGOING. Hautecombe, and the ancient chateau of Bour- deaiLX are conspicuous features in the vicinity. BOTJRGET, Le, or Le Bourget-Dbanct. A Tillage in the French Department of Seine, about six miles northeast of Paris. In the Franco- Prussian War it was the scene of serious French repulses, especially the disasters of Oc- tober 30 and December 21, 1870. Population, 1S;"U, 2.550. BOURGET, Paul (1852—). A notable French analytic essayist and novelist. He was born at Amiens, September 2, 1852. His father was a Russian, his mother English, while he is himself a cosmopolitan by instinct, study, and travel, lacking provincial prejudices, but also national conviction — a typical scholarly dilet- tante. After a brilliant school career, finished at the famous College Je Sainte-Barbe in Paris, he began life as a journalist and, as seems the French custom, made his first bow to literature in a volume of daintily hedonistic and pessimistic verse that earned him from Augier the name of ■Melancholy Pig.' These sighs of Restless Life {La vie inquiete, 1874), breathed in Latin Quar- ter cafgs, were repeated in Edel (1878) and Les aveux (1882). With the Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883), followed by youveaux essais (1885), and two volumes of Etudes et portraits (1888-89), Bourget appears in his ovm words as "a moralist of the decadence," "a maniac of psycholog-," and "a passionate lover of analysis." He did here as critic what he was to do later as a novelist: he carried realistic ob- senation beyond the externals of Zola and Mau- passant to what he called 'states of soul.' Thus he unites the methods of Stendhal and of Balzac, and it is by no accident that one of the first of his essays is devoted to the former writer, whose reputation he did much to reestablish. Bourget called himself a moralist, but he was rather an analyst, offering a brilliant diagnosis, but no prescription. His criticism reflects the dilettante skepticism of Renan; and his early fiction bears strong marks of the same influence, which even the later novels do not wholly avoid. They have been happily described as a seductive if somewhat sickly product of the hothouse of an outworn civilization, uniting intellectual keenness with morbid .sensitiveness, dealing by preference with the cosmopolitan types of that low life which is usually called "high." In the early novels there is a good deal of snobbishness which he himself mocks in the later ones. Men- songes (1887) marks the cardinal point of his fiction. L'Irrcparable (1884); Cruclle enigme (1885) ; Crime d'amour (1886) ; Andr4 CorndUs (1887), place tlie interest in situation and en- vironment rather than in character. Analysis is attempted, but description predominates. In the later fiction, Le disciple (1889); Terre promise (1892) ; Cosmopolis (1892) ; Un scruple (1893); Hteeplechase and Vn saint (1894); Idylle tragique (189G); Les complications scntimentales (1898) ; La duchesse 6;eue(1898) ; Xoyageuses (translated as Antigone) ; Drame de famille (1900); Un homme d'affaires (1900); La fantome (1901); as well a.s in the cynical Psychologie de I'amour modcrnc (1890), and in the impressions of travel, Sensations d'ltalie (1891), ouveaux pastels (1891), Ou/re-.I/er (1895), the dominant interest is in a morbid psycho-pathology and significantly peculiar 'states of soul,' though the latest volumes of fiction show increasing subtlety, maturity, and moral strength. Before Cosmopolis (1892) the ethical triumph is with cynical selfishness, though common-sense moralists like the AbbC- in Mcnxongcs occasionally find a tongue to de- scribe their fellow-actors, justly enough, as "wretches who live at the mercy <jf their sensa- tions." From Cosmopolis onwartl. liiiurget swims with the wave of reaction toward religious senti- ment and curiosity that came from a union of the spiritual mysticism of the Russians with the sensuous mysticism of Baudelaire and has alfected the work of many others (e.g. Vogue, Bninetiere, Huysmans, Daudet). Bourget's style is very uneven, affected, incorrect at times, but capal)le of a terse simplicity that unites strength and beauty to a rare degree. In temper the im- pression that he leaves is of a passive disillusion. He is never bitter, and one wonders if he is often sincere in posing as a type of ""the atrocious modern uneasiness that comes from regret at unbelief and dread of the moral void." Nearly all of Bourget's work since 1892 is translated into English. Consult: Renard, Les princes de la jeune critique (Paris, 1890) ; Doumie, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1894) ; Pellissier. Essais de liltcrature contemporaine (Paris, 1893) ; and Lemaltre. Les contemporains. Vol. III. (Paris, 188G-89). BOURGOIN, boor'gvax'. The capital of a canton in the Department of Is&re. France, on the Bourbre, 9 miles northwest of La Tour du Pin. It is the seat of active linen, woolen, pa- per, and other industries. Situated on the an- cient marsh bed of the Rhone, it was known to the Romans as Bcrnusium. Population, in 1901, of town, 524(i; of commune, 7279. BOURGOIN, bDor'g^va^-', Edme Alfred (1836 — ). A French chemist. He was born in Saint- Cyr-les-Colons (Yonne) and was educated in Paris. He became chief pharmacist at the Chil- dren's Hospital, Paris, in 1867 ; a member of the Council of Public Hygiene in 1881 : and director of the central pharmacy of the Paris hospitals in 1885. Among his numerous important writ- ings are the following: Elect rochimie (1868); Chimie organique. Principes de la classification des substances (1876); Traite de pharmacie galcniquc (18S0). BOURGOING, boor'gvaN', Jeax Fbax^ois, Barun de (1748-1811). A French diplomat, born in Nevers. He so distinguished himself in the military school jn Paris that the Government sent him to the University of Strassburg to pre- pare himself for diplomatic service. After study- ing there he spent four years in Germany on different military and diplomatic missions. In 1777 he was sent to Madrid as first secretary of legation, and during his seven years' residence there he wrote his best-known l)Ook, Nouveau voyage en Espagne, ou Tableau de I'etat actuel de cetle monarchic (1789). In 1791 he was made Minister Plenipotentiary of Louis XVI. to Mad- rid, and subsequently took a conspicUis share in negotiating the peace preliminaries with Spain. In 1808 he became jlinistcr to Saxony and was present in his oflicial capacity at the Congress of Erfurt. In addition to the above mentioned appointments he held luunerous other diplomatic posts in (Jermany and Holland. His Memoires historiques ct philosophiqucs sur Pie