It has interested me much, and I
have derived from it additional information. In the course of
reading it, I have often felt called upon to approve the ability and
tact of the writer, to admire the skill with which he conducts the
narrative, enchains the reader's attention, and keeps it fixed upon
his hero; but I have also been moved frequently to disapprobation.
It is not the political principles of the writer with which I find
fault, nor is it his talents I feel inclined to disparage; to speak
truth, it is his manner of treating Mirabeau's errors that
offends--then, I think, he is neither wise nor right--there, I think,
he betrays a little of crudeness, a little of presumption, not a
little of indiscretion.
'Could you with confidence put this work into the hands of your son,
secure that its perusal would not harm him, that it would not leave
on his mind some vague impression that there is a grandeur in vice
committed on a colossal scale? Whereas, the fact is, that in vice
there is no grandeur, that it is, on whichever side you view it, and
in whatever accumulation, only a foul, sordid, and degrading thing.
The fact is, that this great Mirabeau was a mixture of divinity and
dirt; that there was no divinity whatever in his errors, they were
all sullying dirt; that they ruined him, brought down his genius to
the kennel, deadened his fine nature and generous sentiments, made
all his greatness as nothing; that they cut him off in his prime,
obviated all his aims, and struck him dead in the hour when France
most needed him.
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