Jean Paul Marat (page [284]).
The following remarkable account of this scientific monster is given in an “Historical Account of the Warrington Academy, an institution in Lancashire,” published in the Monthly Repository, by the Rev. W. Turner, of Wakefield.
“After the departure of Dr. Reinhold Forster, various unsuccessful attempts were made to engage a foreigner in the capacity of teacher of the modern languages—a M. Fantin la Tour, a M. le Maitre, alias Mara, and a Mr. Lewis Guery; but none of them continued for any length of time.... There is great reason to believe that le Maitre, alias Mara, was the infamous Marat.... It is known that he was in England about this time [1774], and published in London “A Philosophical Essay on the connection between the Body and the Soul of Man,” and, somewhere in the country, had a principal hand in printing, in quarto, a work of considerable ability, but of a seditious tendency, entitled—‘The Chains of Slavery: a work wherein the clandestine and villainous Attempts of Princes to ruin Liberty are pointed out, and the dreadful Scenes of Despotism disclosed, etc.; London, sold by J. Almon.... T. Payne, and Richardson and Urquhart, 1774.’ Mara, as his name is spelt in the Minutes of the Academy, very soon left Warrington, whence he went to Oxford, robbed the Ashmolean Museum, escaped to Ireland, was apprehended in Dublin, tried and convicted in Oxford, under the name of le Maitre, and sentenced to the hulks at Woolwich. Here one of his old pupils at Warrington, a native of Bristol, saw him. He was afterwards a Bookseller in Bristol, and failed; was confined in the gaol of that city, but released by the Society there for the relief of prisoners confined for small sums. One of that society, who had previously relieved him in Bristol Gaol, afterwards saw him in the National Assembly in Paris in 1792.”
Grave doubts have, however, been thrown upon the accuracy of the above statement by Henry A. Bright, B.A., in a paper published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 8vo, vol. xi., session 1858–9. Yet it was an establishment that might have attracted such a mind as Marat’s. “At Warrington Academy (says Mr. Bright), were collected some of the noblest literati of their day. Here the free thought of the English Presbyterians first began to crystallize into the Unitarian theology which they have since maintained. Here, for a time, was the centre of the liberal politics and the literary taste of the entire county.... The Academy was founded in 1757, and was closed in 1786. It was visited by John Howard, W. Roscoe, T. Pennant, Currie, the biographer of Burns, &c. The first Tutors appointed were Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, Tutor in Divinity, Mr. Holt of Kirkdale, Tutor in Natural Philosophy, Mr. Dyer of London, Tutor in Languages and Polite Literature, whose duties, however, were taken by Mr. (afterwards the Rev. Dr.) Aikin, father of the celebrated Physician and Mrs. Barbauld. Dr. Priestley succeeded Dr. Aikin.”
Dr. Priestley, who is addressed by Coleridge as “Patriot, and Saint, and Sage,” was succeeded by John Reinhold Forster, a German Scholar and Naturalist, who accompanied Captain Cook in his second voyage, Dr. Enfield, author of The Speaker, and the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, were Tutors. Among the students were Mr. Serjeant Heywood; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, the Irish rebel; the Rev. H. Malthus; Lord Ennismore; Sir James Carnegie of Southesk; Mr. Henry Beaufoy, etc., all strong Whigs. The name of neither Mara nor Le Maitre appears on the Minutes of the Academy.
For the latest contribution to the history of Marat’s sojourn in England we are indebted to the researches of Mr. H. Morse Stephens, of Balliol College, Oxford, who, in his elaborate and painstaking History of the French Revolution (1886), which includes facts unknown to Carlyle and earlier historians, gives the following account of that “arch-destroyer”; but, as he calls him, “a much maligned individual”:—
“Jean Paul Marat,” says he, “was born at Boudry, near Neufchatel, in Switzerland, on April 13, 1742. His father, who spelt his name ‘Mara,’ was a physician of some ability, and on being exiled from his native island of Sardinia for abandoning the Roman Catholic religion, had taken up his residence in Switzerland; and married a Swiss Protestant. Jean Paul was the eldest of three sons; his next brother settled down as a watchmaker at Geneva, and his youngest brother entered the service of the Empress Catherine, and distinguished himself in the Russian army under the title of the Chevalier de Boudry. Jean Paul was from his childhood of an intensely sensitive and excitable disposition, and also so quick at his books that he became a good classical scholar, and acquainted with most modern languages. As his chief taste, however, seemed to be for natural science, he was intended to follow his father’s profession, and was, at the age of eighteen, sent to study medicine at the University of Bordeaux. He there obtained a thorough knowledge of his profession, but devoted himself particularly to the sciences of optics and electricity. From Bordeaux he went to Paris, where he effected a remarkable cure of a disease of the eyes, which had been abandoned as hopeless both by physicians and quacks, by means of electricity. From Paris he went to Amsterdam, and, finally, to London, where he set up in practice in Church Street, Soho, then one of the most fashionable districts in London. He must soon have formed a good practice, for he stopped in London, with occasional visits to Dublin and Edinburgh, for ten years, and only left it to take up an appointment at the French court. While in London he wrote his first book, and in 1772 and 1773, he published the first two volumes of a philosophical and physiological Essay on Man. The point he discussed was the old problem of the relation between body and mind, and he treated it in a very interesting manner from the physiological point of view. He held some extraordinary theory about the existence of some fluid in the veins which acted on the mind; which, however, does not impair the interest of his inquiries into the cause of dreams, or diminish the respect felt for his wide reading and extensive knowledge both of ancient and modern philosophical and medical authors. He shows a wide knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, and while writing in good English freely quotes French, German, Italian, and Spanish writers. In one part of his book he declared that it was ridiculous for any one to make psychical researches without having some knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and openly attacked Helvétius for despising scientific knowledge in his famous De l’Esprit. Voltaire naturally took the side of Helvétius, and did the young author the honour of noticing, and very severely criticising, his book. Marat himself translated it into French, and published it at Amsterdam in 1775. His next work was of a political character. He had got mixed up with some of the popular societies in England, which were striving to obtain a thorough reform of the representation of the people in the House of Commons, and, in 1774, published a work, which he entitled The Chains of Slavery. In this book, which is partly historical and partly political, he begs the electors to take more care in the choice of their representatives. It is written in a very declamatory style, and strikes the note of the responsibility of representatives to their constituents, which is the key-note of all his political ideas. The book is published in quarto, and is printed on fine paper, so that it can hardly have been meant to appeal to the populace, but it, nevertheless, procured him the honorary membership of the popular societies of Newcastle and other great northern cities. Subsequently he again returned to his profession, and after publishing a medical tract in 1775, of which no copy is known to exist, he published An Inquiry into the Nature, Cause, and Cure of a singular Disease of the Eyes, in 1776. [See Academy of September 23, 1882.] In this little pamphlet there is no violent language; it describes the disease and the cases he had cured in perfectly simple language, and shows, at least, that he was no mere quack, but a scientific physician. On June 30, 1775, he had, while on a visit to Scotland, received the honorary degree of M.D. from the University of St. Andrews for his eminence as a doctor, and had probably received similar compliments from other Universities, because, on June 24, 1777, Jean Paul Marat, ‘médecin de plusieurs facultés d’Angleterre,’ was appointed, for his good character and high reputation as a doctor, physician to the body-guard of the Comte d’Artois, with a salary of a thousand livres a year and allowances. To take up this court appointment he moved to Paris, and soon acquired a large practice there, and the name of ‘physician of the incurables,’ from the number of hopeless cases he was successful in treating. He also moved in the best society about the court, and won the affections of the Marquise de l’Aubespine for saving her life. For some reason or other, most probably because he had obtained a competent fortune, and desired to satisfy his ambition, he resigned his court appointment in 1783, and devoted himself to science. He had long observed the phenomena of Heat, Light, and Electricity, and in the course of the next five years published the result of his experiments, and presented them to the Academy of Sciences. His hard work won him the friendship of Benjamin Franklin, but the violence with which he attacked his adversaries, and his audacity in doubting the conclusions of Newton, prevented him from obtaining a seat in the Academy of Sciences. When he recognised that this hostility to himself prevented due recognition of his work, he determined to win the approbation of the Academy by concealing his name; and his translation of the Optics of Newton, which was covered by the name of M. de Beauzée, and published in 1788, was at once crowned by the very Academy which had rejected him.
“His political work during these years was confined to a treatise, in imitation of Beccaria, on the subject of Punishments. The approach of the States-General, however, revived his political enthusiasm, and in the March of 1789, when he believed himself to be dying, he published his Offrande à la Patrie, which was followed in quick succession by a supplement and other pamphlets. Of these, distinctly the most able is the Tableau des Vices de la Constitution Anglaise, which he presented to the Assembly in September, 1789. In it he points out what he had learnt in the popular societies of England, that the English people was by no means so well governed as it was supposed to be; that the influence of the king and the ministry was overwhelming through the extent of patronage, and that the rich there bought seats in the House of Commons as they bought estates.
“Marat then felt that he could not express himself frequently enough in pamphlets, and on September 12 appeared the first number of a journal written entirely by himself, called the Journal du Peuple, which title was changed to that of Ami du Peuple, or The People’s Friend, with the fourth number.
“To understand the man, it is necessary to get rid of preconceived ideas. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive to an extreme, he attacked everybody, and attacked them all with unaccustomed violence; but with all this, he was in private life a highly educated gentleman. The extent of his attainments appears from his numerous works, and it must be remembered that he could not for years have been a fashionable physician and held a court appointment without being perfectly polite and well-bred. His faults arose from his irritable and suspicious nature, and years of persecution made him half-insane towards the end of his life; but in September, 1789, he was in perfect possession of his senses, and the very popularity of his journal showed how congenial his gospel of suspicion was to the Parisians.”—[Ed.]