To sum up, then, What was the character of M. de Talleyrand? Of his extraordinary abilities there is no question, since men of every variety of feeling and position have borne testimony to them; but, was he great, great as we esteem any of the models of our own, or other countries? We think not. Celebrated he might be, but great he was not. No intensely selfish man like Talleyrand can ever become so. Where there is so much individual concentration, there is no room left for that expansion of the faculties of the soul upon which true renown rests, and out of which it springs. The region in which the mind acts is, necessarily, circumscribed by the constant pressure of a never-absent egotism; and when this mental constitution happens to be united to timidity, distrust, and temperamental coldness, greatness ceases to be a possible achievement. Moreover, he wanted principle, which is the natural foundation of public virtue; and he had no higher an idea of morality than its conveniency. His sense of propriety, which, in some cases was high, was merely a conventional instinct but it was derived from no anterior obligation, and recognized no source more elevated than the canons of society. Of duty (that sacred word!) in its English sense, he had not the faintest conception; and provided that his person was protected, and his fortunes advanced, it was a matter of absolute indifference to him what master he served, or in what cause he enlisted. The first revolution, the empire, the restoration, and the throne of the barricades, all found in him a willing and an able instrument, and yet he proved faithless to all; for, though we have not circumstantial proof of this as to the last, his growing discontent with Louis Philippe shows clearly, that the political weathercock was again veering. Even when we make allowance for the very peculiar circumstances by which he was surrounded from his entry into life until his exit from it, it is impossible to doubt that this versatility was a consequence of a particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously analyzed, its causes would be found to resolve themselves into habits of reasoning upon men and things from which courage, generosity, and masculine disinterestedness, were carefully excluded. Patriotism may be pleaded in justification—it is a ready argument, and a common defense; but, ample as its proportions are, it will not cover every thing: besides that, in Talleyrand's case it was a non-existence, for of that holy love of country which the word is designed to convey, and which is the fruitful mother of moral heroism, he had not one particle. He might be, and no doubt was, the clever minister of a system, whatever that system chanced to be, and we know that he carried out the views of his immediate employers à toute outrance, and without the slightest regard to their future social or political consequences; but of any grand conceptions resting upon the rights, or contemplating the happiness of mankind, and discriminated from the claims of an existing dynasty, be it democratical or monarchical, he was utterly incapable. Carpe diem was his motto, and he was faithful to it; but however proper that Epicurean maxim might have been in the mouth of a Roman poet, or however truly it might depict the philosophy of a Roman courtesan, it is the deadly antagonist of greatness, which it blights in the bud. Out of such a nature as this—a nature unequal to the slightest sacrifice for the benefit of others, conservative of itself, and indifferent to all the world besides, it is impossible to make a great, though it may be easy enough to make a celebrated man—and such we take M. de Talleyrand, Prince de Benevento, to have been.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Revelations of the Life of Prince Talleyrand. Edited from the Papers of the late M. Colmache, Private Secretary to the Prince. Second Edition. One Volume. London, 1850. H. Colburn.
[18] Suetonius, in Vita, cap. 92.
[19] Οναρ εκ Διος εστιν.
[20] Voice from St. Helena.
[21] The reader will perceive that this was written before the death of Louis Philippe, which took place at Claremont on the 26th day of August last.
[22] The italics are not ours.
[23] See Caulincourt's Recollections, &c. vol. ii. Appendix.
[24] Caulincourt, vol. ii. p. 274, 5.