HKB
be hopelessly impracticable. He was, however, infinitely more competent than the effeminate Joseph and the melancholy Louis, and seems to have had more command of parliamentary oratory than Napoleon himself.
Napoleon's influence on literary men may be gauged by what Wieland[9] and Müller[10] reported of their interview with him at Erfurt. That with Wieland took place at the ball which followed the entertainment on the field of Jena. "I was presented," he says, "by the Duchess of Weimar, with the usual ceremonies; he then paid me some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at me. Few men have appeared to me to possess, in the same degree, the art of reading at the first glance the thoughts of other men. He saw, in an instant, that notwithstanding my celebrity I was simple in my manners and void of pretension; and, as he seemed desirous of making a favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain his end. I have never beheld any one more calm, more simple, more mild, or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the feeling of power in a great monarch; he spoke to me as an old acquaintance would speak to an equal; and what was more extraordinary on his part, he conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half, to the great surprise of the whole assembly." Wieland has related part of their conversation, which is, as it could not fail to be, highly interesting. They touched on a variety of subjects; among others, the ancients. Napoleon declared his preference of the Romans to the Greeks. "The eternal squabbles of their petty republics," he said, "were not calculated to give birth to anything grand; whereas the Romans were always occupied with great things, and it was owing to this they raised up the Colossus which bestrode the world." This preference was characteristic; the following is anomalous: "He preferred Ossian to Homer." "He was fond only of serious poetry," continues Wieland; "the pathetic and vigorous writers; and, above all, the tragic poets. He appeared to have no relish for anything gay; and in spite of the prepossessing amenity of his manners, an observation struck me often, he seemed to be of bronze. Nevertheless, he had put me so much at my ease that I ventured to ask how it was that the public worship he had restored in France was not more philosophical and in harmony with the spirit of the times? 'My dear Wieland,' he replied, 'religion is not meant for philosophers; they have no faith either in me or my priests. As to those who do believe, it would be difficult to give them or to leave them too much of the marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for philosophers, it would be just the reverse of that of the credulous part of mankind.'"[11]