[ 500 ] [Nov. 



LETTER FROM PARIS, UPON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL. 



Paris, Oct. \5th. 



There are certainly very few of your erratic countrymen who have travelled in 

 Swisserlancl, and frequented society there, without knowing something of the vene- 

 rable Meister. This amiable old man, who had lived for upwards of eighty 

 years at Zurich, and died there last year, retained, to an advanced age, that vigour 

 of mind, and elegance of conversation, which had, in early youth, rendered him 

 the delight of men of letters, and the haut-ton of both sexes, more especially 

 those of the latter, who exercised such an influence on the ideas and habits of the 

 last half of the eighteenth century. Meister seemed only to have lived by his re- 

 collection since that period. A stranger to the great social movement which had 

 been effected in literature, arts, political institutions, and even the intercourse of 

 society, one might have said that, like a modern Epirnenides, he had fallen asleep 

 from epicureanism, when he beheld those tranquil habits of society, inter- 

 rupted by the gravity of political affairs, and did not awake till roused by the re- 

 opening of the gilded doors of our saloons. His philosophy, blended with a 

 refined incredulity, called to mind the school of Voltaire, Frederic of Prussia, 

 Diderot, and Catherine II., amidst which he had passed his early years. All the 

 memoirs of that day, the correspondence, secret and literary, have successively 

 disclosed certain facts relative to each of these distinguished personages, which it 

 would have been more decorous to have left in oblivion. But in the midst of all 

 this gossip of the makers of memoirs, correspondences, and biographies, a highly 

 important l.terary fact has been overlooked : and this will explain to you, why I 

 commence the correspondence you have proposed, by a few remarks on Meister. 



Your readers are, doubtless, acquainted with the celebrated correspondence of 

 Baron de Grimm, so famous for his quarrels with Rousseau, and his conquest of 

 Madame d'Epinay. A hundred articles have been written on this subject, in 

 France, and on your side the channel. Each writer certainly appreciated the 

 author's merit with judgment, and gave his opinion of Grimm according to his 

 feelings. Well, then, this famous correspondence was almost unknown to Grimm ! 

 Out of the eighteen volumes, he only wrote the last half of the first, and the first 

 half of the second. D'Alernbert wrote half of the first, Diderot the end of the 

 second, and the whole of the third. The nine following are by Meister, and the 

 remainder by Madame Guizot,then Mademoiselle Maillant, whom we lost a few 

 months ago. Meister, himself, shewed me the originals at Zurich, and when 

 M. Suard printed the correspondence here, Meister sent them to him, to insure 

 the correctness of the edition. Like a true epicurean, he would not afterwards 

 take the trouble of claiming his share of the reputation, and the book continues 

 to circulate under the name of Grirnm. You have also seen an ingenious cor- 

 respondent of one of your periodicals, adopt the signature of Grimm's grandson, 

 as a sufficient recommendation. Thus it is, with most literary correspondences, in 

 which all is fiction, even to the name of the author, if he thinks proper to assume 

 one. I begin with you, by escaping this first temptation, of leading your readers 

 into error, and I propose, in my future communications, to depart as little as pos- 

 sible from the strictest veracity. lam placed in a better situation than those 

 authors printed under the name of Grimm. They addressed a prince who was 

 glad to hear certain truths, but who did not like to see them carried too far. I 

 speak to a British pubLc, that rejects nothing which is rational for whom the 

 word extraordinary is not synonimous with ridicule and that knows how to 

 accord that freedom to others which it claims for itself. 



October is the worst month in the year to begin a correspondence of this sort. 

 Those whom the charms of the season could not hitherto attract to the country, 

 are now called there by the powerful interest attached to the vintage, and the 

 necessity of superintending the first operations of this important object. It is to 

 this solicitude that your tables are supplied with the sparkling champaign, the 

 perfumed clos-vaugeot, aud the chateau-margot, so delectable to the palates of 

 your nabobs. But this rural activity becomes detrimental to the city, which is, 

 as it were, abandoned to foreign travellers in September and October. It is not 



