Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Antoine de Rivarol

RIVAROL, Antoine de (1753–1801), was born at Bagnols in Languedoc on the 26th June 1753, and died at Berlin on the 13th April 1801. It seems to be undisputed that his father was an innkeeper, but no researches have thrown any certain light on the question of his origin; later he assumed the title of Comte de Rivarol, and attributed himself to a noble family of Italian origin. His enemies declared that the family name was really Riverot, and that, whether Italian or not, it had nothing whatever to do with countship. It is certain that he bore several names, and that when he was among the foremost defenders of aristocracy his claim to share in it was by no means allowed by his associates. He was well educated, and is said to have been admitted by the bishop of Uzès to a theological seminary, then to have held a tutorship at Lyons under the name of Longchamps, then to have appeared in Paris under the further travesty of Chevalier de Parcieux with no better reason than that his mother was related to a man of science of that name. All this, however, is of very little consequence; it is sufficient that he appeared in Paris in 1780 (just when the operation of liberal ideas was throwing society most freely open to men of letters), with youth, good address, fair knowledge, and a very unusual stock of wit and literary ability. After competing for and sometimes winning several of the academic prizes then in greatest vogue, Rivarol distinguished himself in the year 1784 by a treatise Sur l’universalité de la langue Française (which shows, if not much learning, the utmost critical acumen and a very happy faculty of expression), and by a translation of the Inferno, very free but of no small merit. The year before the Revolution broke out he, with some assistance from a man of similar but lesser talent, Champeenetz, compiled a lampoon entitled Petit Almanach de nos grands Hommes pour 1788, in which some writers of actual or future talent and a great many nobodies were ridiculed in the most pitiless manner. It made him many enemies, but scarcely more than his speeches in society had made. When the Revolution developed the importance of the press, Rivarol at once took up arms on the royalist side. The Journal Politique of Sabatier de Castres and the Actes des Apôtres of Peltier were the chief papers in which he wrote. But he emigrated early in June 1792, and established himself at Brussels, whence he removed successively to London, Hamburg, and Berlin. For ten years he occupied himself not too strenuously with political pamphlets and literary projects, receiving pensions for his services to the royalist cause. He had married an Englishwoman, but had quarrelled with her, and during his later years had for his companion a pretty but totally uneducated girl named Manette, to whom he addressed certain often-quoted verses which are nearly poetry. Rivarol’s genius, however, was essentially a genius of prose, though not a prosaic genius. No single work of his of any length has very great merit, and he is accordingly only known to posterity by volumes of “beauties” and selections, composed of epigrammatic remarks, short passages of criticism, and the like. Rivarol could not tell an anecdote with quite the point of his contemporary and rival Chamfort; but he has had no rival in France except Piron, and none in England except Sydney Smith, in sharp isolated conversational sayings. These were mostly ill-natured, and in some cases the full appreciation of them demands a more considerable acquaintance with the facts and men of the time than most readers possess. The brilliancy of Rivarol’s phrase, however, can escape no one. Burke was hyperbolical, and not altogether happily hyperbolical, in calling him the Tacitus of the Revolution, because the description suggests a power of historical portrait painting which Rivarol did not possess. But the expression no doubt really referred to the detached phrases which are so striking in Tacitus, and which Rivarol did in truth sometimes equal.

The works of Rivarol were published in five volumes by his friend Chênedollé (who has reported much remarkable conversation of his in his last days) and Fayolle (Paris, 1805); but their perusal as a whole can only be recommended to the student of literature. Selections are frequent: that published by De la Hays (Paris, 1858), with introductory matter by Sainte-Beuve and others, and that edited in 1862 by M. de Lescure, may be specified. The last-named editor published, in 1883, a study on Rivarol et la Société Française, which is the fullest treatment of the subject.