Brussels, April 27th, 1811.
Sir,
You will be unable to account for my silence, as I found it difficult to understand the tardy arrival of the prospectuses you had promised me in your letter of the fourth of this month. I must explain to you that the porter here had confounded that packet with the files of unimportant printed papers addressed to a Prefecture, and if the want of a book had not induced me to visit the private study of the Prefect, I should perhaps have not yet discovered the mistake. I thank you for the confidence with which you have treated me on this occasion. You are aware that no one renders you more than I do, the full justice to which you are entitled, and you also know that I accord it equally from inclination and conviction. My generation has passed away, yours is in full action, and a third is on the point of rising. I see you placed between two, to console the first, to do honour to the second, and to form the third. Endeavour to make the last like yourself; by which I do not mean that I wish all the little boys to know as much as you do, or all the little girls to resemble in everything, your more than amiable partner. We must not desire what we cannot obtain, and I should too much regret my own decline if such an attractive age were about to commence. But restrain my idea within its due limits, and dictate like Solon the best laws which the infancy of the nineteenth century can bear or receive; this will abundantly suffice. Today the mox progeniem daturos vitiosiorem would make one's hair stand on end.
Madame de la Tour du Pin, a Baroness of the Empire for two years, a Prefectess of the Dyle for three, and a religious mother for twenty, will recommend your journal with all the influence of her two first titles, and subscribes to it with all the interest that the last can inspire. I, who have no other pretension, and desire no other, than that of a father and a friend, request your permission to subscribe for my daughter, who, commencing the double education of a little Arnaud and a little Léontine, will be delighted to profit by your double instruction. I believe also that the grandfather himself will often obtain knowledge, and always pleasure, from the same source. It seems to me that no association could be more propitious to the union of the utile dulci. If I were to allow free scope to my pen, I feel assured that I should write thus like a madman to one of the two authors: "Not being able to make myself once more young, to adore your merits, I become an old infant, to receive your lessons. I kiss from a distance the hand of my youthful nurse, with the most profound respect, but not sufficiently abstracted from some of those emotions which have followed my first childhood, and which my second education ought to correct. Is it possible to submit to your rod with more ingenuousness? At least I confess my faults. As I am bound to speak the truth, I dare not yet add, this can never happen to me again. But the strong resolution will come with weak age; and the more I can transform myself, the nearer I shall approach perfection."
Will you be so kind as to present my respects to Madame and Mademoiselle de Meulan. Have you not a very excellent and amiable young man (another of the few who are consoled by elevation and purity of mind), the nephew of M. Hocher, residing under the same roof with yourself? If so, I beg you to recall me to his remembrance, and through him to that of his uncle, from whom I expect, with much anxiety, an answer upon a matter of the greatest interest to the uncle of my son-in-law, in the installation of the Imperial Courts. But nothing has arrived by the post.
I shall say nothing to you of our good and estimable friends of the Place Louis Quinze, for I am going to write to them directly.
But it has just occurred to me to entreat a favour of you before I close my letter. When, in your precepts to youth, you arrive at the chapter and age which treats of the choice of a profession, I implore you to insert something to this effect: "If your vocation leads you to be a publisher or editor of any work, moral, political, or historical, it matters not which, do not consider yourself at liberty to mutilate an author without his previous knowledge, and above all, one who is tenacious of the inviolability of his text more from conscience than self-love. If you mutilate him on your own responsibility, which is tolerably bold, do not believe that you are permitted to substitute a fictitious member of your own construction for the living one you have lopped off; and be cautious lest, without being aware of it, you replace an arm of flesh by a wooden leg. But break up all your presses rather than make him say, under the seal of his own signature, the contrary of what he has written, thought, or felt. To do this is an offence almost amounting to a moral crime." I write more at length on this topic to my friends of the Place Louis Quinze, and I beg you to speak to none but them of my enigma, which assuredly you have already solved; I hope that what has now offended and vexed me will not happen again. In saying what was necessary, I used very guarded expressions. I do not wish a rupture, the vengeance of which might fall on cherished memories or living friends. My letter has taken a very serious turn; I little thought, when I began, that it would lead me to this conclusion. I feel that I am in conversation with you, and carried away by full confidence. It is most gratifying to me to have added an involuntary proof of this sentiment to the spontaneous expression of all those with which you have so deeply inspired me, and the assurance of which I have the honour to repeat, accompanied by my sincere salutations.
Lally-Tolendal.
P.S. Allow me to enclose the addresses for the two subscriptions.