AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

THE general impression, that an impartial and accurate biography of the Emperor Napoleon does not exist, and that Sir Walter Scott, in his "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," did injustice to his subject, authorises an endeavour to supply that defect and repair that injustice. In the body and appendix of the work, the first volume of which is now submitted to the public, this double object is attempted.

The fame and amiableness of the author of Waverley, since they give importance to his errors and effect to his detraction, are far from alleviating his faults as an historian. His name is less glorious than that of Napoleon; his memory less sacred than truth.

It may be that the causes of his failure in one walk of literature, were the sources of his success in another. But a bigoted and fantastic zeal for the hereditary privileges of rank and royalty, when displayed ostentatiously in the light of reason, and mischievously obtruded on the business of nations, is not the less absurd and offensive, that, transmitted through the twilight of romance, it has conduced to the creation or embellishment of unreal characters and fictitious scenes. Their music and innocence, although they qualify the choristers of Rome to fill with harmony the domes of temples, and to touch with ecstacy the forms of devotion, would not exempt them from pity and aversion, should they go forth into the world and meddle with the affairs of bearded men.

The propriety of annexing to a life of the Emperor Napoleon, an examination of the work of Sir Walter Scott, is enforced by several considerations. In the first place, that work controverts the assertions of Napoleon respecting matters of his personal experience, in the sketches which he dictated of his own life; and so far raises a question, the decision of which is essential to a just estimation of his moral character. In the next place, for an unknown writer to demand of the public the acceptance of his own narrative and the rejection of that of the most eloquent and popular author of his age without demonstrating the fallacy of one and the faithfulness of the other, would be a proceeding as presumptuous as the example of Norvins has proved it to be vain. (1)

An engineer, rather than see his fortress overcrowed and commanded, will not hesitate to demolish a neighbouring edifice, however costly its materials or curious its workmanship; however pompously its foundations may be laid in the earth, or gracefully its spires may spring into the air.

Again; if it shall be found that the scheme of the great novelist embraced such misrepresentations as he could decently repeat, or plausibly imagine, their correction will counteract, in its most imposing form, and by a single operation, a diversified mass of historical falsehood, and establish in the reader's mind, various and important truths. It is observed by Lord Bacon, that "the enquiry of truth, which is the wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human

nature."

Within the compass of the design here indicated, the task of

(1) Norvins announced (see his preface) his work as expressly designed to refute and discredit that of Sir Walter Scott-an effect which, notwithstanding his zeal and opportunities, he does not appear to have had the slightest agency in producing.

noticing kindred and conflicting errors of lesser writers naturally falls. The author, removed from the influence of national or personal feeling, in relation to his subject, is sensible of as little disposition to respect the follies of French, as the unfairness of British, historians, while he records the actions of a man, whose character, in rising to a level with the noblest examples of any former age, provoked and encountered the vilest prejudices and passions of his own.

TO THE READER.

The lamented death of the author, on the 30th of January 1837, unhappily arrested the execution of his original design to publish a work comprehending the entire life of the Emperor Napoleon. At the time of Major Lee's death the manuscript of the present volume only was prepared; but as the work, as far as it goes, is complete in itself, this volume, with a slight alteration in its title, is offered to the public in the conviction that the reader will regret only the untimely decease of its gifted author and the mature close of his labours.

pre

It may be proper to add that a previous volume, printed in a character which, it was found, would render the work unnecessarily voluminous, has, with its appendix abridged and corrected by the author, been embodied, under a more convenient form, in the present publication.

Consulate of the United States,

PARIS, 1837.