He
Suffered Severely, And Did His Final Work Under The Difficulty Of
Breaking Health.
He died in 1810, before his second volume was ready for
publication.
Freycinet wrote a series of notes by way of preface to volumes 2 and 3,
in attempted justification of the Terre Napoleon maps.* (* The second
volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes was published - out of its due
order - in 1816, the third in 1815.) He was put on the defensive because
"the audacious attempt which was made in the first volume of this work,
to rob Captain Flinders of the well-earned merit of his nautical labours
and discoveries, while he was basely and barbarously kept in prison in a
French colony, was regarded with becoming indignation throughout Europe,
and with shame by the better part of the French nation."* (* Quarterly
Review volume 17 (1817) page 229.) That that is a fair description of the
state of feeling among people concerned with the advancement of
knowledge, is beyond question; and the French above all, with their love
of enterprise, their sentiment of honour, their eager applause of high
achievement, their chivalrous sense of justice, and their quick sympathy
with suffering wrongly inflicted and bravely borne, would have no taste
for laurels plucked in their name from the brow of him who was entitled
to wear them. Thoroughly repugnant to French intellect and feeling was
conduct of this description. National animosities were more bitter at
this period than they have ever been at any other time, but science knows
no nationality.
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