The fortune of the family flourished but for a short time. In 1800 it received a severe blow by a measure which suppressed a great number of journals, and in 1810 it was totally ruined by a decree of Napoleon, which limited the number of printers in Paris to sixty, suppressing a great number of the smaller establishments, and, among others, that of the Michelets. It seems, however, that they found means to print (it was for behoof of their creditors) some trivial works of which they possessed the copyright. They worked themselves, unaided. "My mother, in bad health, cut, folded, and sewed the sheets; I, a mere child set the types; my grandfather, very old and feeble, undertook the severe labor of the presswork, and printed with his trembling hands."
Michelet was now twelve years old, and knew nothing but a word or two of Latin, which he had learned from an old bookseller who had been a schoolmaster, and was still an enthusiast in grammar. "He left me, when he died, all he had in the world—a manuscript; it was a very remarkable grammar, but incomplete, he not having been able to devote to it but thirty or forty years." Michelet, we may take this opportunity of remarking, has a perpetual under-current of humor. "Our place of work was in a cellar, where I had for companions my grandfather, when he came, and at all times a spider—an industrious spider, that worked beside me, and harder than I did—no doubt of it."
Michelet's religious education had been entirely neglected. However, among the few books he read, happened to be the "Imitation of Christ." "In these pages, I perceived all of a sudden, beyond this dreary world, another life and hope. The feeling of religion thus acquired was very strong in me; it nourished itself from every thing, fortifying itself in its progress by a multitude of holy and tender things in art and poetry which are erroneously believed alien to it." In the then existing museum of French monuments, he received "his first lively impressions of history." He peopled the tombs in his imagination, felt the presence of their occupants, and "never entered without a kind of terror those low vaults in which slumbered Dagobert, Chilpéric, and Frédégonde." As for any thing like a regular education, all he had of it at this time was a short daily lesson from his friend, the grammarian, to whom he went in the morning before his work began.
A friend of his father proposed to get the lad a situation in the Imperial Printing Office. It was a great temptation: things had become more and more gloomy with the family. "My mother grew worse, and France also (Moscow—1813!); we were in extreme penury." Yet his parents declined the offer; they had great faith in his future, and resolved to give him the education necessary to develop his talents. He was sent to the Collége de Charlemagne. Great indeed, must have been their faith, but it has not been unrewarded. If Michelet had entered the Imperial Printing Office, what would have become of him? He would soon have earned a livelihood, and would probably have now been a respectable master-printer, but nothing more. As many great men are spoiled for all great things, by tying them down to uncongenial professions, as there are little men spoiled for all useful things by hoisting them up to professions for which they are unqualified.
At college, the poor youth's difficulties were of course very great. He knew nothing of Greek, nor of classical versification, and he had no one to help him—"my father, however, set himself to making Latin verses—he who had never made any before." His professor, M. Andrieu d'Alba, "a man of heart, a man of God," was kind enough to him, but his comrades were very much the contrary; they ridiculed him and bemocked his dress and his poverty. "I was in the middle of them like an owl at mid-day, quite scared." He began to feel, indeed, that he was poor; he fell into a state of misanthropy rare at such an age; he thought, "that all the rich were bad—that all men were bad," for he saw few that were not richer than he was. "Nevertheless," he adds, and this is singular, if true, "in all my excessive antipathy to mankind, so much good remained in me, that I had no envy."
But one day—a Thursday morning—in the midst of all his troubles and privations (there was no fire, though the snow lay all round, and there were great doubts if there would be any bread that evening), "I struck my hand, burst open by the cold, on my oaken table (I have that table still), and felt a manly joy of vigor and a future for me." Doubtless, in the lives of many men, there have been such moments—moments when all is dark, when the necessaries of life are wanting, and there is no friend to cheer or pity—moments when the tides of life and hope are equally at their ebb, and when, if ever it were allowable, a man might be permitted to despair—when, nevertheless, a confidence, an inspiration suddenly buoys up the spirit in triumph and exultation, and a determination arises, and a freshness is infused which bears them on thenceforth, conquering and to conquer. Thirty years afterward, Michelet is seated at the same oaken table, and looks at his hand, still showing the scar of 1813. But all else is changed: he is in easy circumstances; he is the popular author, the popular professor; but he remembers, and his heart says to him, "Thou art warm, and others are cold; this is not just. Oh! who will bring me comfort for this hard inequality?" And he consoles himself characteristically with the thought of working for the people by giving to his country her history; for, to Michelet, history and the people are much the same thing as grammar was to his old friend, the schoolmaster with the unfinished manuscript.
Notwithstanding all his difficulties, Michelet finished his studies at college quickly and well. He then looked out for the means of living; would not live by his pen; began giving lessons in languages, philosophy, and history, and seems to have been fortunate enough to find sufficient employment. He would not live by his pen, for he thought, he says, with Rousseau, "that literature should be the reserved treasure, the fair luxury and inner flower of the spirit," as if, when it is all these fine things, it could not be a ministering angel too. In 1821, he was made professor in a college (a college in France, be it remarked, generally corresponds to our public school). In 1827, two of his works, which appeared at the same time, his "Choice Works of J.B. Vico," and his "Summary of Modern History," procured him a professorship in the Normal School. "This I quitted with regret in 1837, when the eclectic influence was dominant in it. In 1838, the Institute and the Collége de France having both named me as their candidate, I obtained the chair I now occupy," that of professor of history in the Collége de France—a position similar to that of professor in our universities. From his teaching, Michelet says he found the happiest results. "If, as an historian, I have a special merit which maintains me beside my illustrious predecessors, I owe it to teaching, which to me was friendship. These great historians have been brilliant, judicious, profound; but I, over and above, have loved." He should have added that, besides having loved much, he had also hated much; and that if as an historian he has "a special merit" in the eyes of those whose partisan he is, he owes it to the fierce animosity he shows to their opponents.
Michelet married young. He tells us no more of his mother. His father, however, it appears, survived till 1846, and so had the satisfaction of seeing his hopes of his son realized. The death of this parent is thus alluded to in the preface to the "History of the Revolution:" "And as every thing is of a mixed nature in this life, at the moment when I was so happy in renewing the tradition of France, my own was broken up forever. I have lost him who so often told me the story of the Revolution—him who was to me at once the image and the venerable witness of the great age: I mean the eighteenth century; I have lost my father, with whom I had lived all my life, eight-and-forty years." And then immediately follows a passage, part of which we quote, as well exemplifying Michelet's style and mode of thought: "When this happened, I was looking, I was elsewhere, I was realizing hastily this work so long dreamed of, I was at the foot of the Bastile, I was taking the fortress, I was planting on its towers the immortal flag. This blow came upon me, unexpected, like a bullet from the Bastile."
In his place of professor, Michelet, as we have said, still remains. In 1846, he formally renounced all intention of ever entering on public life, and so following the example of so many other distinguished men in France, who have considered and used the professorial chair only as a stepping-stone to the parliamentary tribune. "I have judged myself," he says in his "Peuple." "I have neither the health, nor the talent, nor the art of managing men necessary for such a thing." And in 1848, when tempted and urged to come prominently forward, he kept his resolution wisely. The particular reason he assigned for continuing in his retirement, was curious: "Now, more than ever, is the time," he said to his friends, "for me to teach the people of France their history, and to that, therefore, alone I devote myself."
From the foregoing sketch of his life, and from the extracts we have given from his writings, a good deal will have been gathered of the character of Michelet. To those who read his works at length, it will be exposed in full, for never did an author throw his individual personality more prominently forward. Whatever be his subject, he never for a moment allows you to forget that it is he who is treating of it. We do not say that this is offensive—we do not say he is egotistical from vanity or self-importance—we only note what must be evident to all his readers, that, from his passionate temperament, he puts self into the midst of every thing, and that his said self being of a very odd appearance and idiosyncrasy, Michelet, more than any thing else, is prominent in Michelet's pages.