FOOTNOTES:
[49] From "Shakespeare and His Times."
[50] Voltaire's references to Shakespeare were made in his "Letters on England." From them dates the beginning of French interest in the English poet.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Born in 1790, died in 1869; famous chiefly as a poet, being one of the greatest in modern France, but successful as an orator and prominent in political life during the troubled period of 1848, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs; author of several historical works, among them the "History of the Girondists."
OF MIRABEAU'S ORIGIN AND PLACE IN HISTORY[51]
He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugees established in Provence, but of Italian origin. The progenitors were Tuscan. The family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his country in such bitter strains for her exiles and prosecutions. The blood of Machiavelli and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices, passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar correspondence the color and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.