But owing partly to Lockhart's relations with Scott, and partly to the need of avoiding any literary comparisons, these small, fat duodecimos appeared anonymously.

That was, as it has been already mentioned, in 1829, two years after Scott's book.
To-day, it makes a capital starting-point for the long Napoleon adventure, whose end, so far as it is prolonged by fresh literary divigations, seems to be as remote as ever.
It is from the French side that one might chiefly draw those vivid and sometimes questionable glimpses at first-hand, that can best add to Lockhart's presentment.

One must compare his retreat from Russia with Rapp's and other remembrancers' accounts, and be reminded by Rapp to go on to Jomini's _Vie Militaire_, and even turn for a single personal reminiscence to a flagrant hero-worshipper like Dumas, in his rapid and military biography.
"Only twice in his life," said Dumas, "had he who writes these lines seen Napoleon.

The first time on the way to Ligny; the second, when he returned from Waterloo.

The first time in the light of a lamp; the first time amid the acclamations of the multitude; the second, amid the silence of a populace.