Courier, PAUL LOUIS, one of the most powerful and brilliant of French writers, was born in Paris on January 4, 1772. His boyhood was spent in Touraine, and he afterwards studied at the Collège de France and the School of Artillery at Chalons. He then served for some eighteen years in the army, but his interest lay wholly in study, and especially in the study of the Greek language. His military experiences ended in 1809 on the field of Wagram, from which he was carried insensible to Vienna. Thenceforth he devoted himself to letters. He lived for some time at Florence, where he became embroiled with the librarian of the Laurentian Library, in regard to a manuscript of Longus. The quarrel led to the publication of the Lettre à M. Renouard, in which Courier's incomparable ironic faculty was for the first time revealed. He removed to Paris in 1812, and in 1814 settled on his estate in Touraine. In 1816 he issued the first of his famous pamphlets, the Pétition aux Deux Chambres, a scathing exposure of the wrongs inflicted on the peasantry by the government of the Restoration. The Pétition was read by high and low, and its author was thenceforth recognised as a political power in France. Courier continued the attack in a series of admirably witty letters in the Censeur, and in 1821 there appeared the inimitable Simple Discours de Paul Louis, Vigneron de la Chavonnnière. In this pamphlet the scheme to purchase the estate of Chambord for the Duc de Bordeaux by a 'national offering,' wrung from the peasantry, was mercilessly derided and laid bare. The Simple Discours is Courier's masterpiece. It was made the subject of a government prosecution, and its author underwent two months' imprisonment in Sainte Pélagie, where he formed the acquaintance of Béranger. On his release he was again tried, but escaped with a reprimand, for his Pétition pour les Villageois qu'on empêche de danser. His subsequent writings were published anonymously at Brussels. They comprised Réponses aux Lettres Anonymes, the Gazette du Village, the Livret de Paul Louis, the Pièce Diplomatique—an imaginary letter from Louis XVIII. to the king of Spain—and the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, a vindication of pamphleteering, which appeared in 1824, and which Armand Carrel called 'the swan-song of Courier.' On Sunday, May 10, 1825, Courier was found shot dead a little before sunset in the grounds of his house at Varetz.
With the exception of Pascal, Courier is the greatest master of irony in the ranks of French authors. A deadly controversialist, he was at the same time an exquisite artist, whose style is characterised by austere simplicity of diction. See the notice of Courier in the edition of his works edited by Armand Carrel (4 vols. Paris, 1834), and an admirable essay by Mr H. Traill in the Fortnightly Review of February 1877.