According to his classmate (and later secretary) Louis Bourrienne, Napoleon read avidly from an early age...

>According to his classmate (and later secretary) Louis Bourrienne, Napoleon read avidly from an early age. Whenever they had free time at the military school at Brienne:

> [Napoleon] would run to the library, where he read with great eagerness books of history, particularly Polybius and Plutarch. He also especially liked Arrian, but had little taste for Quintus Curtius. (1)

>At the École Militaire in Paris and as a young artillery officer, Napoleon continued to read classical scholars, as well as more recent French and Italian authors. He also read a number of English works in translation. An idea of his favourites might be judged by what he chose to bring with him during a leave of absence in Corsica in 1786-87. His brother Joseph recounts,

> [Napoleon] was then a passionate admirer of Jean-Jacques [Rousseau]; … a fan of the masterpieces of Corneille, Racine and Voltaire. He brought the works of Plutarch, Plato, Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Livy and Tacitus, translated into French; and those of Montaigne, Montesquieu and Raynal. All of these works filled a trunk larger than the one that contained his toiletries. I don’t deny that he also had the poems of Ossian, but I do deny that he preferred them to Homer. (2)

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>Napoleon soon parted ways with Rousseau, but his admiration for Ossian continued throughout his life. He even reads Ossian in Napoleon in America. Ossian’s cycle of epic poems was published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson beginning in 1760. Though Macpherson claimed the material originated from ancient Gaelic sources, many – including Samuel Johnson – criticized the work as a forgery, written by Macpherson himself.

>When Napoleon learned, on St. Helena, that the wife of British Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm hailed from Scotland, he asked her if she knew Ossian’s poems.

> [Napoleon] said he admired them very much, particularly Darthula, and inquired if the controversy about their authenticity was decided; and whether Macpherson had really written them. He laughed on her replying with quickness, that Macpherson was not capable of writing them. She said the Highland Society had done everything possible to investigate and had proved their authenticity beyond a doubt…. She said [the poems] had been more admired on the Continent than in England. He exclaimed with energy: ‘It was I, – I made them the fashion. I have been even accused of having my head filled with Ossian’s clouds.’ (3)

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>Napoleon’s appetite for reading books continued as he rose in power. In 1798, about to depart on the Egyptian campaign, he gave Bourrienne a list of books he wanted in his camp library. These included works in Sciences and Arts (e.g., Treatise on Fortifications), Geography and Travels (e.g., Cook’s Voyages), History (e.g., Thucydides, Frederick II), Poetry (e.g., Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto), Novels (e.g., Voltaire, Héloïse, Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther and 40 volumes of “English novels”), and Politics and Morals (the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, etc.). (4)
>In 1800, Napoleon appointed Louis Ripault, an antiquarian who was a member of the Egyptian expedition, as his personal librarian. When Ripault proved to be too liberal, he was replaced in 1804 by an elderly Italian historian, Carlo Denina, author of The History of the Revolutions of Italy, which Napoleon had read as a student. In 1807, Denina was succeeded by the librarian Antoine-Alexandre Barbier.
>Napoleon expected his librarian to be on call at all hours to read to him, to report on new books, to find sources of information on particular subjects, and to summarize content. Dissatisfied with the camp libraries formed for his use, in July 1808 Napoleon dictated from Bayonne instructions for Barbier to create a purpose-built travelling library.

> " The Emperor wants a portative library of thousand volumes in 12mo., printed in good type, without margin, and composed as nearly as possible of 40 volumes on religion, 40 of epics, 40 of plays, 60 of poetry, 100 of novels, 60 of history, the remainder, to make up the 1,000, of historical memoirs. The religious works are to be the Old and New Testament, the Koran, a selection from the works of the Fathers of the Church, works respecting the Arians, Calvinists, a Mythology, &c. The epics are to be Homer, Lucan, Tasso, Telemachus, the Henriade, &c. (5)"

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Shots fired at Milton

>[While on the way to St Helena] On seeing an Englishman reading Milton’s Paradise Lost on board the Northumberland, the ship that conveyed him to exile, Napoleon reportedly said,

>"Your British Homer lacks taste, harmony, warmth, naturalness. Read again the poet of Achilles. Devour Ossian. Those are the poets who lift up the soul, and give to man a colossal greatness. (10)"

quite right

Milton BTFO

>‘It was I, – I made them the fashion. I have been even accused of having my head filled with Ossian’s clouds.’ (3)
Shut up Napoleon, it was Goethe not you

Damn what a patrician

Napoleon shits on his brothers work

>It was while he was on St. Helena that Napoleon read his brother Lucien’s Charlemagne:
>" What ability; what time and labour; thrown away! Twenty thousand verses – some few of them good verses – but the whole colourless, aimless, and resultless. (14)"

A steward to Napoleon on St Helena

>"The Emperor was infinitely fond of reading. The Greek and Roman historians were often in his hands, especially Plutarch. … He often read Rollin. The history of the middle ages, modern history, and particular histories occupied him only casually. The only religious book which he had was the Bible. He liked to read over in it the chapters which he had heard read in the ruins of the ancient cities of Syria. They painted for him the customs of those countries and the patriarchal life of the desert. It was, he said, a faithful picture of what he had seen with his own eyes. Every time that he read Homer it was with a new admiration. No one, in his view, had known what was truly beautiful and great better than this author; consequently he often took him up again and read him from the first page to the last. The drama had great charms for the Emperor. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, often had one or two acts of their pieces read aloud. He preferred Corneille to the others, in spite of his imperfections…. Sometimes he would ask for some comedy which he had seen played, and from time to time a piece of poetry, for instance, ‘Vert-Vert’ [by Gresset]. He also took pleasure in reading some parts of Voltaire’s Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations, as well as some articles from the Dictionnaire Philosophique of the same author. Novels helped him to relax and broke the seriousness of his habitual occupations. Gil Blas, Don Quixote and a small number of others would be read by him. Those of Mesdames de Staël, Genlis, Cottin, Souza, etc. he read over sometimes, but the novels which he could not bear were those of Pigault Lebrun…. He had nearly always under his eyes all the works relative to the military art and the campaigns of the great captains…. It was only by chance that he took up a scientific work; books of this sort were only occasional. (13)"

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