Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September
1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April 1788,
aged 81 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used himself to
say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His father was a councillor of
the parliament of Burgundy. His mother was celebrated for her wit, and
Buffon cherished her memory.
He studied at Dijon with much _eclat_, and shortly after leaving became
accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three travelled
together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
England.
Returning to France, he translated Hales's Vegetable Statics and Newton's
Treatise on Fluxions. He refers to several English writers on natural
history in the course of his work, but I see he repeated spells the
English name Willoughby, "Willulghby." He was appointed superintendent
of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth devoted himself to
science.
In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of
manner were extolled by all her contemporaries. One son was born to him,
who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
extinction of the Reign of Terror.
Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
father, little is recorded except the following story. Having fallen
into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
minute, a flush suffused his face and he added, "but I should petition
for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
was about to do."
On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomine Buffon," and laid his head upon the
block.
The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
most hateful birth frenzy of the new. So in those cataclysms and
revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men--so, doubtless,
many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
in the pain which an infant feels on teething. But to return. The man
who could be father of such a son, and who could retain that son's
affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained it, may not perhaps
always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well to pay attention to
whatever he may think fit to tell us. These are the only people whom it
is worth while to look to and study from.
"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can--_and she generally
can_." But in his case she could not well help herself. "He was
conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of character,
for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did. His great
wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the gifts
which Fortune has in it her power to bestow she had denied him nothing."
Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains." Another and
still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with its
original setting.
"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity. It is not
range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science,
nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that can
claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects
only, or written without taste, genius, and true nobility of mind; for
range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a
volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better
how to treat them. The matter is foreign to the man, and is not of him;
the manner is the man himself." {162}
"Le style, c'est l'homme memo." Elsewhere he tells us what true style
is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the passage. "Le
style," he says "est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de l'ame."