less
enough but worse than ill-judged, which had so fatal a result, has left
reminiscences of the later years of Louis XV., and a connected
narrative of the outbreak of the Revolution. The memoirs concerning the
_Philosophes_ form a library in themselves, even those which concern
Voltaire alone making a not inconsiderable collection. Those of Madame
d'Epinay (the friend of Grimm, of Galiani, and of Rousseau), of
Marmontel, of Morellet, are perhaps the principal of this group.
Marmontel's memoirs are among his best works, and Madame d'Epinay's are
among the most characteristic of the period. There is a certain number
of interesting memoirs of actors and actresses, which dates from this
time, including those of the great actress Mademoiselle Clairon, the
tragic actor Le Kain, and others.

[Sidenote: Minor Memoirs.]

Circumstances rather political than literary have given a place in
literary history to the memoirs of Linguet and Latude concerning the
Bastile. That celebrated building, however, figures largely in the
memoirs of the time, and the experiences of Voltaire, Marmontel,
Crebillon, and others show how greatly exaggerated is the popular notion
of its dungeons and torments. The so-called memoirs of the Duke de
Richelieu (the type, and a very debased type, of the French noblesse of
the eighteenth century, as La Rochefoucauld was of that of the
seventeenth) are the work of Soulavie, a literary man and unfrocked abbe
of very dubious character: but they at least rest upon authentic data,
and abound in the most curious information. The President Henault, a man
of probity and learning, has left memoirs of value.

[Sidenote: Memoirs of the Revolutionary Period.]

As might be expected, the collection of memoirs which have reference to
the Revolution and the Empire is very large. The fortunes of the
ill-fated royal family are dealt with in three sets of memoirs, on which
all historians have been obliged to draw, those of Madame Campan, of
Weber, and of Clery, all three of whom were attendants on Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette. The memoirs of the first-named are supposed to be the
least accurate in matters of fact. The ill-natured and factious Madame
de Genlis has left two different works of the memoir kind, the one
entitled _Souvenirs de Felicie_, which is somewhat fictitious in form
and arrangement, but is believed to be accurate enough in facts; the
other, definitely called _Memoirs_, which was written long after date