It was not Bonaparte's fault if poets failed him, although he had proscribed three of the greatest of his time: Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël and Lemercier. Bonaparte demanded poets from the Chancellor of the University, just as he demanded soldiers from his Minister for War. Unhappily, it was easier for M. le Duc de Feltre to find 300,000 conscripts than for M. de Fontanes to find a dozen poets. So Napoleon was obliged to hang on to all he could find, to Lebrun, to Luce de Lancival, to Baour-Lormian: they all had posts and incomes as though they were true poets—in addition to compliments.
"You have written a fine tragedy," Napoleon once said to Luce de Lancival, about his Hector: "I will have it played in one of my camps." And on the night of the representation he authorised a pension of six thousand francs to be granted Luce de Lancival, with the message, "seeing that poets are always in need of money," he should be paid a year in advance. Read Hector and you will see that it was not worth the first payment of six thousand francs. Napoleon also placed Luce de Lancival's nephew, Harel, under Cambacérès, and made him a sub-prefect in 1815.
Baour-Lormian also received a pension of six thousand livres; but according to the witty complaint he laid before the Bourbons concerning the persecutions of the usurper, despotism had been pushed "to the extreme of punishing him with a pension of two thousand crowns," which, he adds, admitting his weakness, he had not dared to decline.
One day—during the rumours of war that were spread abroad in the year 1809—an ode fell into Napoleon's hands which began with this strophe:—
"Suspends ici ton vol.... D'où viens-tu, Renommée?
Qu'annoncent tes cent voix à l'Europe alarmée?...
—Guerre!—Et quels, ennemis veulent être vaincus?
—Russe, Allemand, Suédois déjà lèvent la lance;
Ils menacent la France!
—Reprends ton vol, déesse, et dis qu'ils ne sont plus!"
This beginning struck him, and he asked—
"Whose verses are these?"
"M. Lebrun's, sire."
"Has he a pension already?"