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M. DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 



THE POLITICIAN AND LITTERATEUR. 



",11 tourne au moindre vent, il tombe au moindre choc 

 Aujourd'hui dans un casque, et demaindans un froc." BOILEAU. 



AMONG the distinguished characters who figured in the great po- 

 litical drama that has been acting in France during the last forty 

 years, none is so highly entitled to the notice of literary men as 

 M. de Chateaubriand, whether we regard him as a politician or as a 

 man of letters. In the following observations it w* .' be our endea- 

 vour to lay before our readers the chief events of his life, and to 

 make en p assent such strictures on his political and literary character 

 as appears to be justifiable when made by a person who has paid a 

 watchful attention to his conduct during at least twenty years: and 

 with whatever severity we may have commented on some of the vi- 

 cissitudes of this great man's life, we would in the outset wish our 

 readers to understand that he deservedly holds, and ever must hold, a 

 very high station as a literary man, inasmuch as he is regarded by 

 his countrymen as the true leader of the romantique school of French 

 literature. In taking up this subject we have been induced, in great 

 part, by the appearance of a work on English literature, which per- 

 haps, as respects his lasting reputation among really learned men, 

 would have been better suppressed. We proceed to give some ac- 

 count of his life and his earlier and better works, reserving his lately 

 published work for the close of the article. 



FRANCOIS AUGUSTE, VISCOUNT QF CHATEAUBRIAND, the issue of an 

 ancient and noble family of Bretagne, was born in 1769, at Com- 

 bourg, near St. Malo. At the early age of seventeen he was second 

 lieutenant in the army of Louis XVI. Shortly afterwards, at the be- 

 ginning of the revolution, he repaired to America, where he passed 

 two years, fully occupied in exploring all the poetic wildness which 

 gigantic nature holds out to view in this new hemisphere ; and his 

 vigour and enthusiastic imagination was deeply impressed by the 

 spectacles so sublimely grand and richly varied which this wonderful 

 country continually offered to his view. At this period the classic 

 literature of the seventeenth century was visibly perishing under the 

 redoubled blows of its indiscreet and indefatigable panegyrists. It 

 was admired from motives of respect, but little read or truly valued ; 

 for politics then afforded an all-absorbing theme for meditation. The 

 musked literature of the eighteenth century had fallen with the Sy- 

 baritic luxury and frivolous manners which had given it birth. The 

 philosophy of Diderot and Voltaire no longer excited interest when 

 the priests, who encouraged it by their intolerance and ill-judged fury 



