Le Génie Satirique de Louis Veuillot by Emmanuel GauthierReview by: H. Carrington LancasterModern Language Notes, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Apr., 1954), p. 279Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3040205 .

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REVIEWS 279

Le genie satirique de Louis Veuillot. Par EMMANUEL GAUTHIER. Lyon et Paris: Emmanuel Vitte, s. d. [1953?] Pp. 478.

This book is primarily a panegyric of Veuillot as a satirist, a defender of the Catholic church, an ultramontane who contrasted the Odeurs de Paris with the Parfum de Rome and would have preserved, if he had been able to do so, the temporal power of the pope. Yeuillot seems to have been perfectly sincere in his diatribes, but M. Gauthier, though usually in sympathy with him, has occasionally reproved him so frankly and quoted him so honestly that one may ask why so large a book should be devoted to the 'satirical genius ' of so ignorant and prejudiced a person.

Veuillot writes, p. 117, "le Mariage [a] dix-neuf cents ans, la Paternite six mille ans "; p. 169, " la tres sainte Eglise catholique, apostolique, romaine, hors de laquelle il n'y a point de salut ni pour l'homme ni pour la societe"; p. 191, savants have given us " ces trois grands maux: l'artillerie, l'imprimerie et le protes- tantisme"; p. 122, the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's was an occasion when " quelques s6elerats firent mourir quelques scelerats." Veuillot wished to put the comte de Chambord on the throne. He opposed universal suffrage, state and lay charity, state medical instruction, divorce,' women, except Mme de Sevigne, as authors. He condemned many of the glories of French literature: Rabelais, Montaigne, Moliere, Voltaire, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Lamartine, Hugo, Balzac. He saw no beauty in the Place de la Concorde (p. 268). He could not appreciate Thiers and Cavour. In 1852 he welcomed " le joug qui pese sur cette industrie redout- able (le journalisme)" (p. 419), but he failed to approve of it when his own journal, l'Univers, was suppressed for seven years. Even M. Gauthier cannot defend his criticisms of Planche shortly after the latter's death and of Buloz, whose loss of an eye he called to public attention (p. 461). He attacked liberal Catholics so violently that Pope Pius IX felt obliged in 1872 to reprove him for lacking Christian charity (p. 78).

At the service of his medieval ideas he placed his vitriolic pen, one that is, it seems to me, at best that of a celever journalist, at worst that of a mud-slinger. If, as M. Gauthier thinks, Veuillot is now attracting an increasing number of readers, the fact, if fact it is, constitutes a melancholy commentary upon our times.2

H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER

1 And I may add birth control, if I may judge by this naYve and ghastly passage, p. 180: "I1 aima profondement sa femme, 'la douce Mathilde,' qui mourut en couches de sa sixi6me fille apres sept annees seulement de mariage."

2 On p. 270 M. Gauthier states that Augier amplified in le Mariage

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