606 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 139- 



1. The Marquise de Fausse-Lendry, in her 

 •work, Quelques-uns des Fruits amers de la Revolu- 

 tioJi, does not make any allusion to the fact, 

 although she was in the same chamber with Mile, 

 de Sombreuil, and relates her heroic devotion to 

 her father. 



2. Peltier, who was in Paris at the time, and 

 published his Histoire de la Revolution du \0 Aoiii 

 early in 1793, does not say a word as to the occur- 

 rence. 



3. The report of Piette, which was drawn up in 

 Mile, de Sombreuil's favour, and from details 

 supplied by herself, is completely silent on the 

 matter. 



4. Being arrested with her father, and her 

 younger brother. Mile, de Sombreuil was taken 

 to the Prison de la Bourbe on the 31st of Decem- 

 ber, 1793. One of the prisoners thus notices the 

 event in his journal : 



" Du 11 Nivose, an II. 

 " L'on amena aussi la famille Sombreuil, le pere, le 

 ills, et la fille : tout le monde salt que cette coura- 

 geuse citoyenne se precipita, dans les journees du mois 

 de Septembre, entre son pere et le fer des assassins, et 

 parvint a, I'arracher de leurs mains. Depuis, sa ten- 

 dresse n'avait fait que s'accroitre, et il n'est sorte de 

 soins qu'elle ne prodiguat a son pere, malgre les hor- 

 ribles convulsions qui la tourmentaient tous les mois, 

 pendant trois jours, depuis cette lamentable epoque. 

 Quand elle parut au salon, tous les yeux se fixerent 

 sur elle et se remplirent de larmes." — Tableau des 

 JVtsoras de Paris sous Robespierre, p. 93. 



Here again, not a word about the glass of blood, 

 although the narrative was written at no very dis- 

 tant period from the occurrences of September. 



Maton de la Varennes, in his Hist, particuliere 

 des Evenemens, written subsequent to the events 

 of Fructidor, year V., is enthusiastic in his praise 

 of Mile, de S.'s devotion ; but says not a word 

 as to the horrible sacrifice by which she is repre- 

 sented to have purchased her father's life. 



The tradition is found for the first time in print 

 in a note to Legouve's Merite des Femmes, which 

 appeared in 1801 ; and the subject has been con- 

 secrated by the pen of the exiled poet Victor 

 Hugo, in an ode to Mile, de Sombreuil. Since 

 then M. Thiers, without further looking into the 

 matter, has given place to it in his Hist, de la 

 Jtevolut. Frangaise : 



Victor Hugo's lines are the following : — 



" S'elan5ant au travers des armes : 



— Mes amis, respectez ses jours ! 



■ — Crois-tu nous flechir par tes larmes ? 



— Oh ! je vous benirai toujours ! 

 C'est sa fille qui vous implore; 



! Rendez-le moi ; qu'il vive encore ! 



— Vois-tu le fer deja leve ; 

 Grains d'irriter notre colere ; 

 Et si tu veux sauver ton pere, 



Bols ce sang — Mon pere est sauve !" 



The subsequent history of this unfortunate 

 family was this. M. de Sombreuil and his young- 

 est son perished on the scaffold, the 10th June, 

 1794. The elder brother, Charles de Sombreuil, 

 was shot at Vannes in June, 1795, after the Qui- 

 beron expedition. Leaving prison and France,, 

 after the 9th Thermidor, Mile, de S. married an 

 emigrant, the Comte de Villelume, who, under 

 the Restoration, became governor of the Invalides^ 

 at Avignon, at which place she died in 1823. 



Philip S. King. 



MILTON INDEBTED TO TACITUS. 



There is perhaps nothing in "Lycidas" which 

 has so commended itself to the memory and lips of 

 men, as that exquisite strain of tender regret and 

 pathetic despondency in which occur the lines — • 

 " Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise 

 ( That last infirmity of noble mind ) 

 To scorn delights, and live laborious days." 



It is with no desire to impair our admiration o€ 

 these noble lines that I would ask, if that graceful 

 glorifying of Fame as " the last infirmity of noble 

 minds " was not suggested by the profound remark 

 of Tacitus, in his character of the stoical republi- 

 can, Helvidius Priscus {Hist., 1. iv. c. 6.) : 



" Erant, quibus appetentior famae videretur, quando 

 etiam saplentibus cupido glori» novissima exuitur." 



The great Englishman has condensed and in- 

 tensified the expression of the concise and earnest 

 Roman. This is one of those delightful obligations 

 which repay themselves : Milton has more than 

 returned the favour of the borrowed thought by 

 lending it a heightened expression. 



Thomas H. Gill. 



Minav 3attS' 



Note by Warton on Aristotle's ^^ Poetics." — Som& 

 of your correspondents having expressed a wish 

 that the MS. remarks of eminent scholars, when 

 met with by your readers, might be communicated 

 to the world through your pages, I beg to send 

 you the following observations, signed J. Warton, 

 which I have found on the blank leaf of a copy of 

 Aristotle's Poetics (edit, of Ruddimannos, Edinb. 

 1731): — 



" To attempt to understand poetry without having 

 diligently digested this treatise, would be as absurd 

 and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry 

 without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fif- 

 teenth, and sixteenth chapters, wherein he has pointed 

 out the properest methods of exciting terror and 

 pity, convince us that he was intimately acquainted 

 with those objects which most forcibly aflect the heart. 

 The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the 

 scholastic precision and philosophical clearness with 

 which the subject is handled, without any address to 



