Maligna, six years before, to be
actually made the subject of a funeral panegyric by the poet. In fact,
the sufferings of the latter have been argued to be pure legend. But
this of course affects _literature_ hardly at all; and Vigny had a
perfect right to use the accepted version.

[255] Why should a "basket" be specially silly? The answer is that the
original comparison was to a "panier _perce_," a basket which won't hold
anything. But the phrase got shortened.

[256] He not only, in the face of generally known and public history,
makes the man who was positively insolent to George III. a flunky of
royalty, but assigns, as the immediate cause of the poet's suicide, the
offer to him of a lucrative but menial office in the Mansion House! Now,
if not history, biography tells us that Beckford's own death, and the
consequent loss of hope from him, were at least among the causes, if not
the sole cause, of the _subsequent_ catastrophe.

[257] He has contrived, with the help of the gaoler's daughter Rose, to
suppress an earlier inclusion of Chenier's name in the tumbril-list; and
thus might have saved him altogether, but for the father's insane
reminder to Robespierre.

[258] But she had to go backwards through the circles between Thermidor
and Brumaire, and can hardly be said to have "seen the stars" even then.
Vigny has, as we shall see, touched on the less enormous and
flagrant--but as individual things scarcely less atrocious--crimes of
the Directory in the first story of his next book.

[259] There might of course have been spy-subordinates (cf. the case of
D'Artagnan and Belleisle), with secret commissions to meet and render
futile his disobedience; but nothing of the sort is even hinted.

[260] Vigny, with perfect probability, but whether with complete
historical accuracy or not I do not know, represents this useless
exposure as wanton bravado on Napoleon's part.

[261] There may perhaps have been some private reasons for his
enthusiasm. At any rate it is pleasant to compare it with the offensive
manner in which this "heroic sailor-soul" and admirably good man has
sometimes been treated by the more pedantic kind of naval historian.

CHAPTER VII

THE MINORS OF 1830

There is always a risk (as any one who remembers a somewhat ludicrous
outburst of indignation, twenty or thirty years ago, among certain
English versemen will acknowledge) in using the term "minor." But it is
too useful to be given up; an