C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Benjamin Constant (1767–1830)
Constant de Rebecque, Henri Benjamin (kô
-sto‘ de re -bek’). A French publicist; born at Lausanne, Switzerland, Oct. 23, 1767; died at Paris, Dec. 8, 1830. Popularly remembered as the lover of Mme. de Staël. A member of the Revolutionary Tribunate, he was banished by Napoleon, and later by the Bourbons for accepting Napoleon. Besides many works on political questions and the history of political constitutions, and two on the history of religion,—viz., ‘Religion Considered in its Source, its Forms, and its Developments,’ and ‘Roman Polytheism,’—he wrote a romance, ‘Adolphe’ (1816), which profoundly influenced European literature.