Ernest Belfort Bax
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 28
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... JEAN PAUL MARAT. CHAPTER I. Were we called upon to designate the best abused man in modern history, I think we should not be far wrong in assigning this place of honour, or dishonour, as the case may be, to the individual whose name heads this sketch. The following are only a few of the sobriquets which have been liberally showered upon him by almost every writer who has handled the subject of the French Revolution. M. Michelet styles him the "personification of murder;" Sir Walter Scott compares him to a "wolf;" most writers designate him as the "monster;" even Mr. Carlyle, who would treat the memory of the "Sea-green Incorruptible" himself with some degree of consideration, has no name for "this poor man Marat" but that of "dogleech," "obscene spectrum," &c. The Marat of tradition and of public opinion is, B in fact, a mask, whereon is depicted, in a rough and ready manner, all that is most hideous in human nature; it is made to carry in propria persona all the errors and shortcomings of the Revolution, magnified into crimes by reaction and prejudice, much as the masks of the Greek actors displayed the human emotions--the grave or gay character being laid on liberally and without much regard to detail. Now I purpose in the ensuing pages to divest the name Marat, if only for awhile, of this grotesque suit of malevolence with which it has been enshrouded by the prejudice of public opinion and tradition, and to lay bare to English readers, as briefly as possible, the real man who bore this name--the Marat of history. I am led to this, firstly, by the desire of helping to rescue the memory of a man whom I believe to. have been possessed of a moral earnestness and steadfastness of purpose rarely met with; secondly, to contribute, by this...