Barthélemy

Barthélemy, AUGUSTE-MARSEILLE, a French poet and politician, was born at Marseilles in 1796. Educated at the Jesuit College of Juilly, he came to Paris in 1822, and soon made himself famous by a series of vigorous and pointed political satires in verse, directed against the Bourbons, and full of suggestive regrets for the glories of the empire. In Napoleon en Egypte (1828), and still more in his elegy for Napoleon's son, Le Fils de l'Homme (1829), he spoke out his imperialism more boldly, and the latter occasioned his imprisonment on the eve of the revolution of July. His liberation of course was immediate; and along with his friend Méry, he celebrated the victory of the people in a poem dedicated to the Parisians, and entitled L'Insurrection. During all the changes which followed, Barthélemy was indefatigable as a brilliant versifier on the political events of the day; though, in his later years, his popularity somewhat declined. He was, from the first, a warm supporter of the second Napoleonic régime. Some of his sayings are memorable, as the oft-quoted, 'L'homme absurde est celui qui ne change jamais.' His death took place, 23d August 1867, at Marseilles, of which city he was librarian.