[Year 2
nity.[1] Let foreign Despots think of that. There is an Unconquerable in man, when he stands on his Rights of Man: let Despots and Slaves and all people know this, and only them that stand on the Wrongs of Man tremble to know it.—So has History written, nothing doubting, of the sunk Vengeur.
Reader! Mendez Pinto, Münchausen, Cagliostro, Psalmanazar have been great; but they are not the greatest. O Barrère, Barrère, Anacreon of the Guillotine! must inquisitive pictorial History, in a new edition, ask again, 'How is it with the Vengeur,' in this its glorious suicidal sinking; and, with resentful brush, dash a bend-sinister of contumelious lamp-black through thee and it? Alas, alas! The Vengeur, after fighting bravely, did sink altogether as other ships do, her captain and above two-hundred of her crew escaping gladly in British boats; and this same enormous inspiring Feat, and rumour 'of sound most piercing,' turns out to be an enormous inspiring Non-entity, extant nowhere save, as falsehood, in the brain of Barrère! Actually so.[2] Founded, like the World itself, on Nothing; proved by Convention Report, by solemn Convention Decree and Decrees, and wooden 'Model of the Vengeur'; believed, bewept, besung by the whole French People to this hour, it may be regarded as Barrère's masterpiece; the largest, most inspiring piece of blague manufactured, for some centuries, by any man or nation. As such, and not otherwise, be it henceforth memorable.
- ↑ Compare Barrère (Choix des Rapports, xvi. 416–21); Lord Howe (Annual Register of 1794, p. 86), etc.
- ↑ Carlyle's Miscellanies, § Sinking of the Vengeur.
