Returning To An Earlier Tune

Guizot
1787-1874

There ain't half been some clever bastards. On which topic I've come across the doings of Francois Guizot. He was a leading historian with more than a passing interest in English history, a prolific and influential translator of Shakespeare into his native French and, in-between times, he found he had the energy to serve France as Prime Minister. He was a constitutional monarchist and I've happened upon his doings in the context of my research into our own favourite constitutional monarchist, Walter Bagehot. Because, dear reader, it was as a nominal response to Guizot's 1852 republication of his Shakespeare et Son Temps that Bagehot wrote his less voluminous (but nevertheless the jumping-off point for OG's postgraduate thesis) Shakespeare - the Individual. Walter, as he could, rather damned M. Guizot with faint praise, comparing him to Pitt as someone incapable of learning by experience. Walter's point was that Shakespeare had an 'experiencing nature'. I'm afraid that by extension Walter rather immodestly saw himself in this way.

Guizot was briefly exiled in London but it was in Bagehot's formative journalistic years so it is unlikely they met, which is a pity - I can imagine Guizot insisting on speaking flawless English and Bagehot equally adamantly sticking to French. I reiterate - there ain't half been some clever bastards.