11 DECEMBER 1886, Page 42

QITIIsTET'S " LETTRES D'EXIL."*

TIIE publication of Quinet's Lettres d'Exil is now complete, the fourth and last volume containing even nearly two hundred pages written after his return from exile; and the time has come when this correspondence may be appreciated as a whole. Nor can one regret the extended scale on which Quinet's letters have been published, in this and other works (Lettres d sa Mere; Le • Edgar Qainet: Lettres d'Ex4 d lltiche/et et d divers Arnie. 4 vols. Paris Calmann.Levy. 1885-86.

Livre de l'Exile), by the devoted partner of his later years. Nothing else could have given such irrefragable evidence of the purity of his aims and of his life, the depth of his affections,

and at the same time of the lofty plane, so to speak, on which he both felt and thought. And yet, many-sided as was Quinet's mind, and widely as his sympathies might range, it is certain

that a process of selection will now be required to give his corre- spondence its true place in the world's literature. None but

those interested beforehand in the man and in the par- ticular works spoken of will care to read letter after

letter on the subject of each such work, whether accom- panying presentation copies, or conveying thanks for literary notices. But a selection might be made, amounting in all to two or three volumes, which ere long would not

only be recognised as being of permanent value, but would be reckoned among the world's jewels. Already, it may be observed, the Lettres a sa Here—which would largely contribute towards such a selection—is becoming a class-book in this country. In its uncompressed state, however, the correspondence is invaluable from the historical point of view. For there is

scarcely a distinguished man on the Liberal side—using the word in its very widest sense—in the contemporary Latin world, who is not found among Quinet's correspondents. Besides Michele% his most intimate friend, we find letters addressed to

Victor Hugo, Lamartine, George Sand, Carnot, St. Rene Taillandier, Jules Simon, Jules Janin, Eugene Sae, Prevost Paradol, Duvergier de Hauxanne and his son Ernest, Charms, Barbes, Emile Souvestre, Emile Montegut, Rmile Burnout, Henri Martin, Jules Favre, Eugene Pelletan, D'Haussonville, Be

Pressense, Gabriel Monod, Ernest Picard, Emile 011ivier, Emile de Girardin, Pierre Leroux, Gambetta, Agenor de Gasparin, Charles de Remusat, Paul Bert, General Trochu, Clement Thomas, Lockroy, Louis Viardot, Brisson, De Laprade, Albert Reville, among his own countrymen ; to the Belgian Be Laveleye ; to Mazzini, Garibaldi, Ricasoli, De Gubernatis, Cernuschi, Alberto Mario, among Italians ; to Castelar and one or two other Spaniards ; to Alph. de Caudolle, Ad. Pictet, Ernest Naville, Marc Monnier, Gaussen, Merle d'Aubigne, among other Swiss. Outside the Latin world, indeed, though we may find several English correspondents (including Mrs. Josephine Butler), and several Germans and Greeks, the only two names of real mark are those of Mickiewicz, the Pole, and Hertzen, the Russian. The mere enumeration of such names is enough to indicate the five different aspects of Quinet's genius. Litera- ture, politics, philosophy, religion, and latterly physical science, all these claim their share—their full, large, liberal share—in him. Since Goethe, the Continent has seen no such many-sided man; and in Goethe we wholly miss that keen living interest in politics which made Quinet for many years a noble exile from his country. The one might be a demi-god, but failing on this point, he was also only a demi-man ; the other will probably be recognised by after-ages as the completest man of Continental Europe in the nineteenth century.

Beginning in December, 1851, these "letters of exile" (with the exception of those of a three months' trip to Germany and Switzerland from June to September, 1857), were for the first seven years written from Belgium; after May, 1858, until Quinet's return to Paris in September, 1870, generally from Switzer- land, and for the most part from Veytaux, in the Canton de Vaud. His twelve years' stay in Switzerland appears only to have been broken, and that in the early part of it, by two visits to Savoy (of course before its annexation to France). Through- out the whole time of his exile, his literary activity never ceased. To the Belgian period belong the third volume of his Egvolutions d'Italie, a drama in verse entitled Les Esclaves ou Spartacus, the Ponclation de la 116publique des Provinces Unies, with the reprint of the works of Marnix de Saint Aldegonde, the Histare de Afes Idges, and Souvenirs d'Enfance. But it was an immense relief to him to pass from Belgium into Switzerland.

Poor little Belgium was so cowed with fear of the French Empire, that the life there of the refugees was a most irksome one. The first letter from File (June 26th, 1857), written to Michelet's son-in-law, M. Dumesnil, is an outburst of relief :—

" Yes, my dear friend, here am I for some time out of my damp Brussels dungeon. I cannot tell you what I experienced, when I found myself in mid-Rhine, out of reach of the various kinds of police which for six years have followed me like a shadow. I could not believe my eyes. I seemed to begin again to live. I perceived that I needed to be put again in contact with Nature ; I breathed in life, amidst free air, by every pore."

And he speaks to the same correspondent three months later

The great charm of Quinet's letters is their sincerity. He never writes for the sake of writing, like a Sevign6 or a Pope. Hence, notwithstanding his mastery of style, it is never the style that we think of first in reading them, but the man. At times we may be disposed to think him somewhat exuberantly appreciative of praise bestowed on his own works, or over- laudatory of those sent to him by others. But even these are kindly traits in a writer of such eminence. Sensitiveness to praise went, of course, hand-in-hand with sensitiveness to blame, and especially to misunderstanding. But his pain on such occasions was singularly free from bitterness. When Emile Montegut, reviewing his Merlin in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and over-refining, as he is apt to do, mistook the whole purpose of the book, and read into it the history of France, "Oh, the barbarians !" Quinet is found exclaiming ; "how they have dis-

figured my dear Merlin in the Revue des Dour 3fondes ! How could I recognise him !" Yet he seized the first opportunity, when Montegut had written an appreciative article on Michelet, to thank him warmly, "as if for himself," adding the following touching words :— "Forgive me for not having written to you about Merlin. Sooth to say, I was in a difficulty. I am in that matter too evidently judge and litigant at once to be able to judge well. Nor is it a question of what I might have wished, but of what you thought. You told it with sincerity, and could I ask aught else ? I delude myself with the belief that, could I have seen you and talked with you, some things might a little have changed their aspect to your eyes ; but this, too, is perhaps a delusion, and I am not fond of such. I did not choose to afflict you with my affliction, for this it really was. It is past, and is it not a great folly to ask that others should see with the same eyes as ourselves the creations of our imagination ? What can be less just, less reasonable ?"

It may be observed that although the correspondence is

entitled Lettres d'Exil a Michelet et a divers Amis, it is only in the early years that Michelet's name occurs with real frequency

in the headings. Thus, in the first volume, 57 letters out of 203 are addressed to him, or more than one-quarter of the whole ; in the second, 21 out of 266, or not one in ten ; in the third, 8 out of 320, or one in forty ; in the fourth, up to Michelet's death, 7 out of 384, or not one in fifty. A cloud, indeed, Madame Quinet observes, passed once over their (September 30th, 1857), of his return to Belgium as a return "into slavery." In Germany, too, he was "morally stifled."

Something of the same feeling is to be experienced even now by the traveller who looks beyond mere natural objects. Belgium is still weighed down by the sense of her own defencelessness; Germany is still "morally stifling ;" the air of Switzerland is still—except, perhaps, for Salvationists—the breath of freedom. But it is almost incredible to read that, while in Belgium, for seven years a man like Quinet had to present himself on fixed days before the police like a criminal, and that when for health's sake he and his wife went to the seaside, almost on their arrival they were publicly expelled by gendarmes !

The mere list of Quinet's Swiss correspondents shows how differently from Belgium Switzerland received him. And perhaps, on the whole, the tone of his letters from Switzerland is higher and, in spite of the sorrows of exile, serener than that of his correspondence at any other period. And though his pen was perhaps less prolific than in Belgium, yet there is perceptible in the works of the Swiss period a ripeness of thought, a solemn depth of feeling, which exceed anything shown by him till then. To the Swiss period belong the completion and pub- lication of Merlin l'Enchanteur, one of his masterpieces in imaginative literature, and of the Campagne de 1815 (a portion of which had previously appeared), the first work, with that of Colonel Charras, which showed the French that, even as a military genius, the First Napoleon was not infallible ; his work on the French Revolution, the greatest he ever wrote, with the Critique de la Revolution, at first published separately, afterwards prefixed to it ; the remarkable cosmogonic work, La Creation; various articles and pamphlets (including Le Ileveil d'un Grand Peuple), eventually collected to form Le Livre

de After his return to France, although his pen con- tinued incessantly active, he never quite reached the same height. His political manifestoes during the siege of Paris form the volume Le Siege de Paris et la Defense Nationale, followed by La Republique, Conditions de la Regeneration de la France, and by his last important philosophical work, L'Esprit Nouveau. Death finally overtook him in the midst of the composition of his Vie at Mort du Genie Grec. The mere choice of such a subject at seventy-two shows the undying freshness of Quinet's mind.

friendship. Michelet seems to have thought his own work on the French Revolution insufficiently noticed in that of Quinet on the same subject. A beautiful letter from the latter set things to rights between the two friends. It would well deserve to be quoted entire ; but part of the conclusion, at least, must be given :—

"It may be that there are people in this world who seek to separate us. Do not let us give them this pleasure. Do not let us

make a mountain of the smallest cloud Every day some one leaves us. Let us therefore keep to each other. Oar friendship is our honour. We owe it to this wretched age that we should give it the example of such a friendship, whole until the end At this moment there is a gleam of revival and awakening in France It

is, then, a moment for drawing together, not for holding afar. As for me, I am determined more than ever to be to you what I have always been. Nothing shall separate me from you, do you hear ? I should believe that I was separating from a good portion of myself. I am your oldest friend, and I am bold to say, your firmest. Do not leave me. But, indeed, whatever may happen, whatever you may do, you will always find me, the moment you choose to do so. Nothing shall discourage me ; I will never change for you, I promise this to myself."

In their lifetime, "Michelet and Quinet" were the terms in which the two friends were usually spoken of. Posterity will assuredly intervert the order of the names. With all his brilliant gifts, Michelet is little likely to remain among the immortals of literature. A thousand years hence, he will probably be best remembered as Edgar Quinet's friend.

One serious omission of a formal nature has to be pointed out,—the absence of an index, making reference to any particular letter out of the 469 which make up the four volumes, a matter of extreme difficulty and irksomeness.