THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON: A STUDY IN CRITICISM; BEING THE STANHOPE ESSAY: OXFORD, 1893 BY ARTHUR OGLE EXHIBITIONER OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE London T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCXCIII...

There are occasions when the craft of the critic becomes especially delightful, and at the same time especially dangerous. Delightful, when the material in which he works is new and unessayed; dangerous, from the besetting temptation to be content with accredited methods, and to neglect that watchful regard to the texture of the clay, which alone can suggest the conditions of successful treatment. Of such delicate fabric is a man made, here and there. It is as if for a moment the common matter h

"I returned after supper at one o'clock. The man told me that his honour, the Chief of Police, desired to see me. It was to copy out fifteen circular letters to as many Intendants, and not to retire till it was done; my brother had already finished his task—an equal number—and my father had told him to go to bed. I took some coffee, and retired at four o'clock." [48] He is a young man, very dark, with clear-cut features, his eye glancing with a rough vivacity as he plies his pen with nervous han

Among the influences which connected d'Argenson with the tradition of the late reign were his relations with that curious and not very admirable person, [144] the Abbé de Choisy. It would appear that during the closing years of his life the harlequin abbé was on terms of some intimacy with his young relative; [145] and shortly before his death in 1724, he placed in d'Argenson's hands a collection of manuscripts, [146] from which the published remains of de Choisy are principally derived. [147] A

At the end of 1740, d'Argenson had succeeded his brother as chancellor of the Orleans household; [257] in November 1744, he was invited to accept a place in the Government as Minister of Foreign Affairs. [258] His brother, Count d'Argenson, was already Minister of War, and since the dismissal of Amelot in April, had been signing the despatches of the Foreign Office. The appointment of a man without any diplomatic experience or high official knowledge to what was, in the circumstances of the mome

It was on the 10th of January, 1747, that d'Argenson's ministry came to an end. For a year or so he found it a little hard to support his banishment from power; but it is plain that after that time his personal ambitions were gradually forgotten amid the press and play of wider interests. It is true that he never quite dismisses his hopes of office, and that he even fondles the pretty, courtier-like phrase with which he will accept an invitation to return; but there is none of the ardent, even f

" Il faut être autant en garde contre la réforme que contre les abus. "—"Considérations" (1784). It was not to be imagined that the man who watched so anxiously the progress of the malady, and marked with such sensitive precision the quickening of the pulse, could do so from a mere cold interest in social pathology. D'Argenson felt the distemper as if it had been his own. He was devotedly, even extravagantly patriotic; and his political criticism might have been less pungent had the subjects of

This Memoir (see pp. 116-18 and note 312) is noticed by M. de Broglie, who rejects it as— (i.) Probably unauthentic; as it has not been discovered by him or by M. Zevort among the ordinary sources; and (ii.) Certainly unimportant; since it is nowhere referred to, as it assuredly would have been, in d'Argenson's Memoirs. Now (i.) unless there existed, not merely this Memoir, but the whole policy of which it may have been a part, a considerable portion of the "Mémoires du Ministère" becomes uninte

Since this essay was written, the two editions of 1764 and 1784 have been carefully collated, with the object of clearing up the obscurity which surrounds them. The conclusions are as follows:— A. The text of 1764 was completed some years before d'Argenson's accession to the ministry, and is based upon a genuine manuscript, probably as early as those of 1737. B. The text of 1784, the whole of which is subsequent to his retirement from the ministry, divides into two parts. ( a ) Chapters I.—VI.,

See for— A. The action of France with regard to the commercial rivalry between Spain and England. —I. 325, 328; II. 303, 330, 382, 390; III. 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50-1, 55, 59, 83, 145, 164, 170, 217, 245, 312, 318, 319, 419, 435-38; IV. 14, 19, 36. B. The question of the Imperial Succession. —I. 304-5, 323, 330; III. 208 (death of Emperor), 208-11, 215, 216, 218, 221, 229, 230, 238, 239, 240, 245, 246, 249, 253, 260, 266, 268, 274, 276, 278, 279, 285, 290-91, 295, 296, 299, 300, 303-5, 309, 310,