[Footnote 119: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) fulfilled a number of political missions before 1300,çoisRené when he was made a Florentine magistrate.--T.]
[Footnote 120: Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) spent his life between poetry and public affairs. In 1512, he was sent on a mission from the Duke of Ferrara to Pope Julius II.; in 1521, he was sent to suppress the bands of brigands infesting one of the provinces, and so on.--T.]
[Footnote 121: John Milton (1608-1674) was secretary-interpreter for the Latin tongue to the Privy Council under the Commonwealth and, subsequently, private secretary to the Protector Cromwell.--T.]
[Footnote 122: Charles de Lameth had made himself ridiculous in 1790, in his capacity as a member of the Committee of Inspection of the Constituent Assembly, by leading a nocturnal expedition against the convent of the Nuns of the Annunciation at Pontoise, in order to look for M. de Barentin, brother of the Abbess. The Marquis de Bonnay, Chateaubriand's predecessor in Berlin, wrote on this occasion an heroi-comical poem of the wittiest description, entitled the _Prise des Annonciades._--B.]
[Footnote 123: Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau (1638-1720), a great favourite with Louis XIV., thanks originally to his skill at cards. He accompanied the king as aide-de-camp in all his campaigns. Dangeau had a great reputation for wit and learning, and, although he had published nothing, was admitted a member of the French Academy in 1668. He left manuscript Memoirs from which extracts were published by Voltaire (1770), Madame de Genlis (1817) and Lemontey (1818); but the whole, entitled _Journal de la cour de Louis XIV._, first appeared in 1858.--T.]
[Footnote 124: Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux (_circa_ 1619--_circa_ 1700) left Memoirs which were first published by M. Monmerqué in 1834, under the title of _Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux_, forming a crowd of curious and cynical anecdotes.--T.]
[Footnote 125: Karl August Prince von Hardenberg (1750-1822), born in Hanover, entered the Prussian service in 1790, and became Foreign Minister in 1806, and State Chancellor in 1810. He signed the Treaty of Paris in 1814, in which year the King of Prussia made him a prince, and took part as plenipotentiary in all the important congresses of the time.]