BAILLY'S LITERARY WORKS.—HIS BIOGRAPHIES OF CHARLES V.—OF LEIBNITZ—OF PETER CORNEILLE—OF MOLIÈRE.
When Bailly entered the Academy of Sciences, the perpetual secretary was Grandjean de Fouchy. The bad health of this estimable scholar occasioned an early vacancy to be foreseen. D'Alembert cast his views on Bailly, hinted to him the survivorship to Fouchy, and proposed to him, by way of preparing the way, to write some biographies. Bailly followed the advice of the illustrious geometer, and chose as the subject of his studies, the éloges proposed by several academies, though principally by the French Academy.
From the year 1671 to the year 1758, the prize subjects proposed by the French Academy related to questions of religion and morality. The eloquence of the candidates had therefore had to exercise itself successively on the knowledge of salvation; on the merit and dignity of martyrdom; on the purity of the soul and of the body; on the danger there is in certain paths that appear safe, &c. &c. It had even to paraphrase the Ave Maria. According to the literal intentions of the founder, (Balzac,) each discourse was ended by a short prayer. Duclos thought in 1758, that five or six volumes of similar sermons must have exhausted the matter, and on his proposal the Academy decided that, in future, it would give as the subject of the eloquence prize, the eulogiums of the great men of the nation. Marshal Saxe, Duguay Trouin, Sully, D'Aguesseau, Descartes, figured first on this list. Later, the Academy felt itself authorized to propose the éloge of kings themselves; it entered on this new branch at the beginning of 1767, by asking for the éloge of Charles V.
Bailly entered the lists, but his essay obtained only an honourable mention.
Nothing is more instructive than to search out at what epoch originated the principles and opinions of persons who have acted an important part on the political scene, and how those opinions developed themselves. By a fatality much to be regretted, the elements of these investigations are rarely numerous or faithful. We shall not have to express these regrets relative to Bailly. Each composition shows us the serene, candid, and virtuous mind of the illustrious writer, in a new and true point of view. The éloge of Charles V. was the starting point, followed by a long series of works, and it ought to arrest our attention for a while.
The writings, crowned with the approbation of the French Academy, did not reach the public eye till they had been submitted to the severe censure of four Doctors in Theology. A special and digested approbation by the high dignitaries of the Church, whom the illustrious assembly always possessed among her members, was not a sufficient substitute for the humbling formality. If we are sure that we possess the éloge of Charles V. such as it flowed from the author's pen; if we have not reason to fear that the thoughts have undergone some mutilation, we owe it to the little favour that the discourse of Bailly enjoyed in the sitting of the Academy in 1767. Those thoughts, however, would have defied the most squeamish mind, the most shadowy susceptibility. The panegyrist unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John. The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful passions of the King of Navarre; his treacheries; the barbarous avidity of the nobility; the seditious disposition of the people; the sanguinary depredations of the great companies; the ever recurring insolence of England; all this is expressed without disguise, yet with extreme moderation. No trait reveals, no fact even foreshadows in the author, the future President of a reforming National Assembly, still less the Mayor of Paris, during a revolutionary effervescence. The author may make Charles V. say that he will discard favour, and will call in renown to select his representatives; it will appear to him that taxes ought to be laid on riches and spared on poverty; he may even exclaim that oppression awakens ideas of equality. His temerity will not overleap this boundary. Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, made the Chair resound with bold words of another description.
I am far from blaming this scrupulous reserve; when moderation is united to firmness, it becomes power. In a word, however, Bailly's patriotism might, I was about to say ought to, have shown itself more susceptible, more ardent, prouder. When in the elegant prosopopœia which closes the éloge, the King of England has recalled with arrogance the fatal day of Poitiers, ought he not instantly to have restrained that pride within just limits? ought he not to have cast a hasty glance on the components of the Black Prince's army? to examine whether a body of troops, starting from Bordeaux, recruiting in Guienne, did not contain more Gascons than English? whether France, now bounded by its natural limits, in its magnificent unity, would not have a right, every thing being examined, to consider that battle almost as an event of civil war? ought he not, in short, to have pointed out, in order to corroborate his remarks, that the knight to whom King John surrendered himself, Denys de Morbecque, was a French officer banished from Artois?
Self-reliance on the field of battle is the first requisite for obtaining success; now, would not our self-reliance be shaken, if the men most likely to know the facts, and to appreciate them wisely, appeared to think that the Frank race were nationally inferior to other races who had peopled this or that region, either neighbouring or distant? This, let it be well remarked, is not a puerile susceptibility. Great events may, on a given day, depend on the opinion that the nation has formed of itself. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel, afford examples on this subject that it would be well to imitate.
In 1767, the Academy of Berlin proposed a prize for an éloge of Leibnitz. The public was somewhat surprised at it. It was generally supposed that Leibnitz had been admirably praised by Fontenelle, and that the subject was exhausted. But from the moment that Bailly's essay, crowned in Prussia, was published, former impressions were quite changed. Every one was anxiously asserting that Bailly's appreciation of his subject might be read with pleasure and benefit, even after Fontenelle's. The éloge composed by the historian of Astronomy will not, certainly, make us forget that written by the first Secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The style is, perhaps, too stiff; perhaps it is also rather declamatory; but the biography, and the analysis of his works, are more complete, especially if we consider the notes; the universal Leibnitz is exhibited under more varied points of view.
In 1768, Bailly obtained the award of the prize of eloquence proposed by the Academy of Rouen. The subject was the éloge of Peter Corneille. In reading this work of our fellow-academician, we may be somewhat surprised at the immense distance that the modest, the timid, the sensitive Bailly puts between the great Corneille, his special favourite, and Racine.