(749) After numerous interruptions, the King's aunts were permitted by the National Assembly to proceed to Italy.-E.
(750) "I have passed," says Gibbon, in a letter to Lord Sheffield, "four days at the castle of Copet with Necker; and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amusement of books, building, etc. he answered, with a deep tone Of despair, 'Dans l'`etat o`u je suis, je ne puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abbatu.' How different from the conscious cheerfulness with which our friend Lord North supported his fall! Madame Necker maintains more external composure, mais le diable n'y perd rien. It is true that Necker wished to be carried into the closet, like old Pitt, on the shoulders of the people, and that he has been ruined by the democracy which he had raised. I believe him to be an able financier and know him to be an honest man."-E.
(751) The following are Gibbon's expressions:—"Burke's book is a most admirable medicine against the French disease; which has made too much progress even in this happy country. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his Chivalry, and I can forgive even his superstition."-E.
(752) M. Bailly, the learned astronomer. He was president of the first National Assembly, and in July 1789, appointed mayor of Paris; in which situation he gave great offence to the people, in July 1791, by ordering martial law to be proclaimed against a mob which had assembled in the Champ de Mars to frame an address, recommending the deposition of Louis. For this step, which was approved of by the Assembly, he was arrested, tried, condemned, and put to death on the 11th of November 1793. The details of this event are horrible. "The weather," says M. Thiers, "was cold and rainy, Conducted on foot, he manifested the utmost composure amidst the insults of a barbarous populace, whom he had fed while he +was mayor. On reaching the foot of the scaffold, one of the wretches cried out, that the field of' the federation ought not to be polluted by his blood. The people instantly rushed upon the guillotine, bore it off, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the bank of the Seine, and opposite to the spot where Bailly had passed his life and composed his invaluable works. This operation lasted some hours: meanwhile, he was compelled to walk several times round the Champ de Mars, bareheaded, and with his hands pinioned behind him. Some pelted him with mud, others kicked and struck him with sticks. He fell exhausted. They lifted him up again. 'Thou tremblest!' said a soldier to him. 'My friend,' replied the old man, 'it is cold.' At length he was delivered over to the executioner; and another illustrious scholar, and one of the most virtuous of men, was then taken from it." Vol. iii. p. 207-E.
(753) See post, p. 484.-E.
(754) Mr. Gifford was of Walpole's opinion, and has, in consequence, accorded to " The Charming-man" a prominent situation in the Baviad:—
"See snivilling Jerningham at fifty weep
O'er love-lorn oxen and deserted sheep."
To the poem here alluded to, and which was entitled "Peace, Ignominy, and Destruction," the satirist thus alludes:-"I thought I understood something of faces; but I must read my Lavater over again I find. That a gentleman, with the physionomie \2d'un mouton qui r`eve,' should suddenly start up a new Tyrtaeus, and pour a dreadful note, through a cracked war-trump, amazes me: well, fronti nulla fides shall henceforth be my motto' In a note to the Pursuits of Literature, Mr. Mathias directs the attention of Jerningham to the following beautiful lines in Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Julien, Secretary of the Muses:—
"All his care
Is to be thought a Poet fine and fair;
Small beer and gruel are his meat and drink,
The diet he prescribes himself to think;
Rhyme next his heart he takes at morning peep,
Some love-epistles at the hour of sleep;
And when his passion has been bubbling long,
The scum at last boils Up into a song." —E.
Letter 372 To The Miss Berrys.
Berkeley Square, March 5, 1791. (page 483)