MEMOIR.
The following brief Memoir of the Author of "Priests, Women, and Families" was written for, and embodied in, the "Dictionary of Universal Biography," published by Mackenzie about 1862.
Another Memoir of this celebrated Historian of France was given in The Times, Feb. 12, 1874, two days after his decease. The Times states that he "died of heart disease":—
"Michelet, Jules, one of the greatest of contemporary French writers, was born at Paris on the 21st of August, 1798. In the introduction to his little book, 'Le Peuple,' Michelet has told the story of his early life. He was the son of a small master printer, of Paris, who was ruined by one of the Emperor Napoleon's arbitrary measures against the Press, by which the number of printers in Paris was suddenly reduced. For the benefit of his creditors, the elder Michelet, with no aid but that of his family, printed, folded, bound, and sold some trivial little works, of which he owned the copyright; and the Historian of France began his career by 'composing' in the typographical, not the literary, sense of the word. At twelve he had picked up a little Latin from a friendly old bookseller who had been a village schoolmaster; and his brave parents, in spite of their penury, decided that he should go to college. He entered the Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished himself, and his exercises attracted the notice of Villemain. He supported himself by private teaching until, in 1821, he obtained, by competition, a professorship in his college. His first publications were two chronological summaries of modern history, 1825-26. In 1827 he essayed a higher flight by the publication, not only of his 'Précis de l'Histoire Moderne,' but by that of his volume on the Scienza Nuova of Vico ('Principes de la Philosophie d'Histoire'), the then little-known father of the so-called philosophy of history, whose work was thus first introduced to the French public, and, indeed, to that of England. These two works procured him a professorship at the école normale. After the Revolution of the Three Days, the now distinguished professor was placed at the head of the historical section of the French archives, a welcome position, which gave him the command of new and unexplored material for the History of France. The first work in which he displayed his peculiar historical genius, was his 'Histoire Romaine,' 1831, embracing only the History of the Roman Republic. From 1833, dates the appearance of his great 'History of France,' of which still uncompleted work, twelve volumes had appeared in 1860. In 1834, Gruizot made the dawning Historian of France his suppléant, or substitute, in the Chair of History connected with the Faculty of Letters; and in 1838 he was appointed Professor of History in the College de France. Meanwhile, besides instalments of his 'History of France,' he had published several works, among them (1835) his excellent and interesting 'Memoires de Luther,' in which, by extracts from Luther's Table-talk and Letters, the great reformer was made to tell himself the history of his life; the 'OEuvres Choises de Vico;' and the philosophical and poetical 'Origines du Droit Francais.' In the education controversy of the later years of Louis Philippe's reign, Michelet and his friend Edgar Quinet vehemently opposed the pretensions of the clerical party, and carried the war into the enemies' camp by the publication of their joint work, 'Les Jesuites,' 1843, followed, in 1844, by Michelet's 'Du Pretre, de la Femme, et la Famille,' translated into English as 'Priests, Women, and Families.' Guizot bowed to the ecclesiastical storm which these works invoked, and suspended the lectures of the two anti-clerical professors. To 1846 belongs Michelet's eloquent and touching little book, 'Le Peuple.' The Revolution of February, 1848, restored Michelet to his functions. He waived, however, the political career which was now opened to him, and laboured at his grandiose 'History of the French Revolution,' of which the first volume had appeared in 1847. In 1851 he was again suspended—this time by the ministry of the Prince President—from his professional functions, and on account of his democratic teachings. After the coup d'etat he refused to take the oaths, and lost all his public employments. Since then he has been occupied with his 'History of France,' and of the French Revolution, and with the production of other and some minor works. It is not among the last that must be classed his two striking volumes, 'L'Oiseau,' 1856, and 'L'Insecte,' 1857, the result of a retreat from a pressure of a new political system into the realm of nature. In 'L'Amour,' 1858, and 'La Femme,' 1859, the intrusion of physiology into the domain of thought and feeling was too much for English tastes. In 'La Mer,' 1861, Michelet addresses himself to the natural history and the poetry of the sea."