Explore "Bourrienne" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Bourienne is admirable. He is the French Pepys, -- a man with right feelings, / but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may. / He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the / substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend"[1] but which / Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel, / or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte / was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more / than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was, -- always / contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his own.
[Footnote 1: Vol. i. Essay 12. p. 133.]