The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of Napoleon Buonaparte, by
John Gibson Lockhart

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Title: The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

Author: John Gibson Lockhart

Release Date: January 23, 2006 [EBook #17579]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE HISTORY
OF NAPOLEON
BUONAPARTE

BY

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

LONDON & TORONTO J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK E.P. DUTTON & CO

First issue of this edition: _February 1906_

Reprinted: _April 1906_; _May 1907_;
_July 1909_; _November 1910_;
_November 1912_; _March 1915_

INTRODUCTION

[LOCKHART, 1794-1854]

"Nations yet to come will look back upon his history as to some grand
and supernatural romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career, and
the magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, have invested his
character with the mysterious grandeur of some heavenly appearance; and
when all the lesser tumults and lesser men of our age shall have passed
away into the darkness of oblivion, history will still inscribe one
mighty era with the majestic name of Napoleon."

These enthusiastic words, too, are Lockhart's, though they are not from
this history, but from some "Remarks on the Periodical Criticism of
England," which he published in _Blackwood's Magazine_. They serve, if
they are taken in conjunction with his book, to mark his position in the
long list of the historians, biographers and critics who have written in
English, and from an English or a British point of view, upon "Napoleon
the Great." Lockhart, that is to say, was neither of the idolaters, like
Hazlitt, nor of the decriers and blasphemers.

One recalls at once what he said of "the lofty impartiality" with which
Sir Walter Scott had written of Napoleon before him, and with which