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Title: Lives of the most eminent literary and scientific men of France, Vol. 1
(of 2)

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Editor: Dionysius Lardner

Release date: May 11, 2021 [eBook #65317]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE
MOST EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN OF FRANCE,
VOL. 1 (OF 2) ***

THE

CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA.
CONDUCTED BY THE

REV. DIONYSIUS LARDNER, LL.D. F.R.S. L. & E.

M.R.I.A. F.R.A.S. F.L.S. F.Z.S. Hon. F.C.P.S. &c. &c.

ASSISTED BY

EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

Biography.

EMINENT
LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN
OF FRANCE.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER-ROW;
AND JOHN TAYLOR,
UPPER GOWER STREET.

1838.

CONTENTS

MONTAIGNE
RABELAIS
CORNEILLE
ROCHEFOUCAULD
MOLIÈRE
LA FONTAINE
PASCAL
SÉVIGNÉ (Madame de)
BOILEAU
RACINE
FÉNÉLON

LIVES

OF

EMINENT

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

MONTAIGNE

1533-1592

There is scarcely any man into whose character we have more insight than
that of Montaigne. He has written four volumes of "Essays," which are
principally taken up by narrations of what happened to himself, or

dissertations on his own nature, and this in an enlightened and
philosophical, though quaint and naïve style, which renders him one of the
most delightful authors in the world. It were easy to fabricate a long
biography, by drawing from this source, and placing in a consecutive view,
the various information he affords. We must abridge, however, into a few
pages several volumes; while, by seizing on the main topics, a faithful and
interesting picture will be presented.
Michel de Montaigne was born at his paternal castle of that name[1], in
Périgord, on the 8th of February, 1533. He was the son of Pierre Eyquem,
esquire—seigneur of Montaigne, and at one time elected mayor of
Bordeaux. This portion of France, Gascony and Guienne, gives birth to a
race peculiar to itself; vivacious, warm-hearted, and vain—they are
sometimes boastful, but never false; often rash, but never disloyal; and
Montaigne evidently inherited much of the disposition peculiar to his
province. He speaks of his family as honourable and virtuous:—"We are a
race noted as good parents, good brothers, good relations," he says,—and
his father himself seems eminently to deserve the gratitude and praise
which his son bestows. His description of him is an interesting specimen of
a French noble of those days:—"He spoke little and well, and mixed his
discourse with allusions to modern books, mostly Spanish; his demeanour
was grave, tempered by gentleness, modesty, and humility; he took peculiar
care of the neatness and cleanliness of his dress, whether on horseback or
on foot; singularly true in his conversation, and conscientious and pious,
almost even to superstition. For a short slight man he was very strong; his
figure was upright and well proportioned; he was dexterous and graceful in
all noble exercises; his agility was almost miraculous; and I have seen him,
at more than sixty years of age, throw himself on a horse, leap over the
table, with only his thumb on it, and never going to his room without
springing up three or four stairs at a time." Michel was the eldest of five
sons. His father was eager to give him a good education, and even before
his birth consulted learned and clever men on the subject. On these
consultations and on his own admirable judgment he formed a system, such
as may in some sort be considered the basis of Rousseau's; and which
shows that, however we may consider one age more enlightened than
another, the natural reason of men of talent leads them to the same
conclusions, whether living in an age when warfare, struggle, and the
concomitant ignorance were rife, or when philosophers set the fashion of

the day. "The good father whom God gave me," says Montaigne, "sent me,
while in my cradle, to one of his poor villages, and kept me there while I
was at nurse and longer, bringing me up to the hardest and commonest
habits of life. He had another notion, also, which was to ally me with the
people, and that class of men who need our assistance; desiring that I
should rather give my attention to those who should stretch out their arms to
me, than those who would turn their backs; and for this reason he selected
people of the lowest condition for my baptismal sponsors, that I might
attach myself to them." He was taught, also, in his infancy directness of
conduct, and never to mingle any artifice or trickery with his games. With
regard to learning, his good father meditated long on the received modes of
initiating his son in the rudiments of knowledge. He was struck by the time
given to, and the annoyance a child suffers in, the acquirement of the dead
languages; this was exaggerated to him as a pause why the moderns were so
inferior to the ancients in greatness of soul and wisdom. He hit, therefore,
on the expedient of causing Latin to be the first language that his son should
hear and speak. He engaged the services of a German, well versed in Latin,
and wholly ignorant of French. "This man," continues Montaigne, "whom
he sent for expressly, and who was liberally paid, had me perpetually in his
arms. Two others of less learning, accompanied to relieve him; they never
spoke to me except in Latin; and it was the invariable rule of the house, that
neither my father nor my mother, nor domestic, nor maid, should utter in
my presence any thing except the few Latin phrases they had learnt for the
purpose of talking with me. It is strange the progress that every one made.
My father and mother learnt enough Latin to understand it, and to speak it
on occasions, as did also the other servants attached to me;—in short, we
talked so much Latin, that it overflowed even into our neighbouring
villages, where there still remain, and have taken root, several Latin names
for workmen and their tools. As for me, at the age of six, I knew no more
French than Arabic; and, without study, book, grammar, or instruction,—
without rod and tears—I learnt as pure a Latin as my schoolmaster could
teach, for I could not mix it with any other language. If, after the manner of
colleges, I had a theme set me, it was given, not in French, but in bad Latin,
to be turned into good; and my early master, George Buchanan and others,
have often told me that I was so ready with my Latin in my infancy, that
they feared to address me. Buchanan, whom I afterwards saw in the suite of
the marshal de Brissac, told me that he was about to write on education, and

should give mine as an example. As to Greek, of which I scarcely know any
thing, my father intended that I should not learn it as a study, but as a game
—for he had been told to cause me to acquire knowledge of my own accord
and will, and not by force, and to nourish my soul in all gentleness and
liberty, without severity or restraint, and this to almost a superstitious
degree; for having heard that it hurts a child's brain to be awoke suddenly,
and torn from sleep with violence, he caused me to be roused in the
morning by the sound of music, and there was always a man in my service
for that purpose.
"The rest maybe judged of by this specimen, which proves the prudence
and affection of my excellent father, who must not be blamed if he gathered
no fruits worthy of such exquisite culture. This is to be attributed to two
causes: the first is the sterile and troublesome soil; for although my health
was good, and my disposition was docile and gentle, I was,
notwithstanding, so heavy, dull, and sleepy, that I could not be roused from
my indolence even to play. I saw well what I saw; and beneath this dull
outside I nourished a bold imagination, and opinions beyond my age. My
mind was slow, and it never moved unless it was led—my understanding
tardy—my invention idle—and, amidst all, an incredible want of memory.
With all this it is not strange that he succeeded so ill. Secondly, as all those
who are furiously eager for a cure are swayed by all manner of advice, so
the good man, fearing to fail in a thing he had so much at heart, allowed
himself at last to be carried away by the common opinion; and, not having
those around him who gave him the ideas of education which he brought
from Italy, sent me, at six years of age, to the public school of Guienne,
which was then very flourishing, and the best in France. It was impossible
to exceed the care he then took to choose accomplished private tutors; but
still it was a school: my Latin deteriorated, and I have since lost all habit of
speaking it; and my singular initiation only served to place me at once in
the first classes; for when I left college, at the age of thirteen, I had finished
my course, but, truly, without any fruit at present useful to me.
"The first love I had for books came to me through the pleasure afforded by
the fables in Ovid's Metamorphoses. For, at the age of seven or eight, I
quitted every other pleasure to read them; the more that its language was
my maternal one, and that it was the easiest book I knew, and, considering
the matter, the best adapted to my age. I was more careless of my other

studies, and in this was lucky in having a clever man for my preceptor, who
connived at this and similar irregularities of mine; for I thus read through
the Æneid, and then Terence and Plautus, led on by delight in the subject. If
he had been so foolish as to prevent me, I believe I should have brought
from college a hatred of all books, as most of our young nobles do. He
managed cleverly, pretending not to see; and sharpened my appetite by only
allowing me to devour these volumes by stealth, and being easy with me
with regard to my other lessons; for the principal qualities which my father
sought in those who had charge of me were kindness and good humour;
consequently idleness and laziness were my only vices. There was no fear
that I should do harm, but that I should do nothing—no one expected that I
should become wicked, but only useless. It has continued the same: the
complaints I hear are of this sort: that I am indolent, slow to perform acts of
friendship, too scrupulous, and disdainful of public employments.
Meanwhile my soul had its private operations, and formed sure and
independent opinions concerning the subjects it understood, digesting them
alone, without communication; and among other things, I believe it had
been incapable of submitting to force or violence."
It would require a volume almost to examine the effect that this singular
education had on Montaigne's character. If absence of constraint
strengthened the defects of his character, at least it implanted no extraneous
ones. His defective memory was not cultivated, and therefore remained
defective to the end. His indolence continued through life: he became
somewhat of a humourist; but his faculties were not deadened, nor his heart
hardened, by opposition and severity.
Montaigne's heart was warm; his temper cheerful[2], though unequal; his
imagination lively[3]; his affections exalted to enthusiasm; and this ardour
of disposition, joined to the sort of personal indolence which he describes,
renders him a singular character. On leaving college he studied law, being
destined for that profession; but he disliked it; and, though he was made
counsellor to the parliament of Bordeaux, he, in the sequel, gave up the
employment as by no means suited to him. He lived in troubled times.
Religious parties ran high, and were so well balanced, the kingly power
being diminished through the minority of Charles IX., and that of the nobles
increasing in consequence, that the struggle between the two was violent
and deadly. Montaigne was a catholic and a lover of peace. He did not

mingle with the dissensions of the times, avoided all public employments,
and it is not in the history of his times that we must seek for the events of
his life.
The chief event, so to call it, that he himself records with fondness 1559
and care, is his friendship for Étienne de la Boëtie. To judge by the .Ætat
only writing we possess of this friend, composed when he was .
scarcely more than seventeen, his Essay on "Voluntary Servitude," he 26.
evidently deserved the high esteem in which Montaigne held him, though
apparently very dissimilar from him in character. Boldness and vigour mark
the thoughts and style; love of freedom, founded on a generous
independence of soul, breathes in every line; the bond between him and
Montaigne rested on the integrity and lofty nature of their dispositions—on
their talents—on the warmth of heart that distinguished both—and a fervid
imagination, without which the affections seldom rise into enthusiasm.
Montaigne often refers to this beloved friend in his essays. "The greatest
man I ever knew," he writes, "was Étienne de la Boëtie. His was indeed a
soul full of perfections, a soul of the old stamp, and which would have
produced great effects had fate permitted, having by learning and study
added greatly to his rich natural gifts."[4] In another essay, which is entitled
"Friendship," he recounts the history of their intimacy. "We sought each
other," he writes, "before we met, on account of what we heard of each
other, which influenced our inclinations more than there seems to have been
reason for, I think through a command of Heaven. We, as it were, embraced
each other's names; and at our first meeting, which was by chance, and at a
large assembly, we found ourselves so drawn together, so known to each
other, that nothing hereafter was nearer than we were one to the other. He
wrote a beautiful Latin poem to excuse the precipitation of our intimacy,
which so promptly arrived at its perfection. As it was destined to last so
short a time, and began so late, for we were both arrived at manhood, and
he was several years the elder, it had no time to lose; it could not regulate
itself by slow and regular friendships, which require the precaution of a
long preluding acquaintance. Ours had no idea foreign to itself, and could
refer to itself alone; it did not depend on one special cause, nor on two, nor
three, nor four, nor a thousand, but was the quintessence of all which seized
on my will, and forced it to merge and lose itself in his, and which, having
seized his will, led him to merge and lose his in mine, with equal desire and
eagerness. I use the word lose as the proper one, for we neither reserved any

thing that was not common to both. Our souls mingled so entirely, and
penetrated with such ardent affection into the very essence of each other,
that not only was I as well acquainted with his as with my own, but
certainly I should have more readily trusted him than myself. This
attachment must not be put in the same rank with common friendships. I
have known the most perfect of a slighter kind; and, if the rules are
confounded, people will deceive themselves. In other friendships you must
proceed bridle in hand; in the more exalted one, the offices and benefits
which support other intimacies do not deserve even to be named. The
perfect union of the friends causes them to hate and banish all those words
that imply division and difference, such as benefit, obligation, gratitude,
entreaty, thanks, and the like. All is in common with them; and, if in such a
friendship one could give to the other, it would be him who received that
would benefit his companion. Menander pronounced him happy who
should meet only with the shadow of such a friend: he was right; for if I
compare the rest of my life, though, with the blessing of God, I have passed
it agreeably and peacefully, and, save from the loss of such a friend, exempt
from any poignant affliction, with a tranquil mind, having taken the good
that came to me originally and naturally, without seeking others; yet, if I
compare the whole of it, I say, with the four years during which it was given
me to enjoy the dear society of this person, it is mere smoke,—it is a dark
and wearisome night. I have dragged it out painfully since I lost him; and
the very pleasures that have offered themselves to me, instead of consoling,
doubled the sense of my loss. We used to share every thing, and methinks I
rob him of his portion. I was so accustomed to be two in every thing that I
seem now but half of myself. There is no action nor idea that does not
present the thought of the good he would have done me, for as he surpassed
me infinitely in every talent and virtue, so did he in the duties of
friendship."
A severe illness of a few days carried off this admirable friend. 1553
Montaigne recounts, in a letter to his father, the progress of the .Ætat
malady, and his death bed; and nothing can be more affecting, nor .
better prove the noble and virtuous qualities of both, than these sad 30.
hours when the one prepared to die, and the other ministered to the dying.
This loss was never forgotten; and we find, in the journal of his travels in
Italy, written eighteen years after, an observation, that he fell one morning

into so painful a reverie concerning M. de la Boëtie that his health was
affected by it.
Montaigne married at the age of thirty-three: he married neither from wish
nor choice. "Of my own will," he says, "I would have shunned marrying
Wisdom herself, had she asked me. But we strive in vain; custom, and the
uses of common life, carry us away: example, not choice, leads me in
almost all my actions. In this, truly, I did not go of my own accord, but was
led, or carried, by extraneous circumstances; and certainly I was then less
prepared, and more averse than now that I have tried it. But I have
conducted myself better than I expected. One may keep one's liberty
prudently; but, when once one has entered on the obligation, one must
observe the laws of a common duty." Montaigne made, therefore, a good
husband, though not enthusiastically attached, and a good father—indeed,
in all the duties of life, he acted better than was expected of him. At his
death, his father[5] left him his estate, fancying that it would be wasted
through his indolence and carelessness; but Montaigne's faults were
negative; and he easily brought himself to regard his income as the limit of
his expenses, and even kept within it. His hatred of business and trouble,
joined to sound common sense, led him to understand that ease could be
best attained by limiting his desires to his means, and by the degree of order
necessary to know what these means were; and his practice accorded with
this conclusion.
Montaigne's father lived to old age. He married late in life, and we are
ignorant of the date of his death; from that period Montaigne himself seems
to have lived chiefly at his paternal castle. It would appear that he was at
that time under forty[6]; and henceforth his time was, to a great degree,
spent in domestic society, among the few books he loved, writing his
essays, and attending to the cares that wait upon property. It is not to be
supposed, however, that he lived a wholly sedentary and inactive life.
Though he adhered to no party, and showed no enthusiasm in the
maintenance of his opinions, his disposition was inquisitive to eagerness,
ardent and fiery. The troubles that desolated his country throughout his life
fostered the activity of mind of which his writings are so full. He often
travelled about France, and, above all, was well acquainted with Paris and
the court. He loved the capital, and calls himself a Frenchman only through
his love of Paris, which he names the glory of France, and one of the

noblest ornaments of the world. He attended the courts at the same time of
the famous duke de Guise and the king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. He
had predicted that the death of one or the other of these princes could alone
put an end to the civil war, and even foresaw the likelihood there was that
Henry of Navarre should change his religion. He was at Blois when the
duke de Guise was assassinated; but that event took place long subsequent
to the period of which we at present write.
During his whole life civil war raged between catholic and huguenot.
Montaigne, attached to the kingly and catholic party, abstained, however,
from mingling in the mortal struggles going on.[7] Yet sometimes they
intruded on his quiet, and he was made to feel the disturbances that
desolated his country. It is a strange thing to picture France divided into two
parties, belonging to which were men who risked all for the dearest
privilege of life, freedom of thought and faith; and were either forced, or
fancied that they were forced, to expose life and property to attain it; and to
compare these religionists in arms with the tranquil philosopher, who
dissected human nature in his study, and sounded the very depths of all our
knowledge in freedom and ease, because he abstained from certain
watchwords, and had no desire for proselytes or popular favour. "I regard
our king," he says, "with a mere legitimate and political affection, neither
attracted nor repelled by private interest; and in this I am satisfied with
myself. In the same way I am but moderately and tranquilly attached to the
general cause, and am not subject to entertain opinions in a deep-felt and
enthusiastic manner. Let Montaigne, if it must, be swallowed up in the
public ruin; but, if there is no necessity, I shall be thankful to fortune to save
it. I treat both parties equally, and say nothing to one that I could not say to
the other, with the accent only a little changed; and there is no motive of
utility that could induce me to lie." This moderation, on system, of course
led him, in his heart, to be inimical to the reformers. "They seek
reformation," he says, in the worst of destructions, "and aim at salvation by
the exact modes in which we are sure to reap damnation; and think to aid
divine justice and humanity by overturning law and the rulers, under whose
care God has placed them, tearing their mother (the church) to pieces, to
give portions to be gnawed by her ancient enemies, filling their country
with parricidal hatreds." This is no lofty view of the great and holy work of
reformation, the greatest and (however stained by crime, the effect of the
most cruel persecutions) the most beneficent change operated in modern

times in human institutions. Montaigne goes on:—"The people suffered
greatly then, both for the present and the future, from the devastation of the
country. I suffered worse, for I encountered all those injuries which
moderation brings during such troubles—I was pillaged by all parties. The
situation of my house, and my alliance with my neighbours, gave me one
appearance, my life and actions another; no formal accusations were made,
for they could get no hold against me; but mute suspicion was secretly
spread. A thousand injuries were done me one after another, which I could
have borne better had they come altogether."
His mode of preserving his castle from pillage was very characteristic.
"Defence," he says, "attracts enterprise, and fear instigates injury. I
weakened the ardour of the soldiery by taking from their exploit all risk or
matter for military glory, which usually served them as an excuse: what is
done with danger is always honourable at those periods when the course of
justice is suspended. I rendered the conquest of my house cowardly and
treacherous; it was shut against no one who knocked; a porter was its only
guard, an ancient usage and ceremony, and which did not serve so much to
defend my abode as to offer an easier and more gracious entrance. I had no
centinel but that which the stars kept for me. A gentleman does wrong to
appear in a state of defence who is not perfectly so. My house was well
fortified when built, but I have added nothing, fearing that such might be
turned against myself. So many garrisoned houses being taken made me
suspect that they were lost through that very reason. It gave cause and
desire for assault. Every guarded door looks like war. If God pleased I
might be attacked, but I would not call on the assailant. It is my retreat
wherein to repose myself from war. I endeavour to shelter this corner from
the public storm, as also another corner in my soul. Our contest vainly
changes its forms, and multiplies and diversifies itself in various parties—I
never stir. Among so many armed houses, I alone, in France, I believe,
confided mine to the protection of Heaven only, and have never removed
either money, or plate, or title-deed, or tapestry. I was resolved neither to
fear nor to save myself by halves. If an entire gratitude can acquire divine
favour, I shall enjoy it to the end; if not, I have gone on long enough to
render my escape remarkable; it has lasted now thirty years." And he
preserved his philosophy through all. "I write this," he says, in one of his
essays, "at a moment when the worst of our troubles are gathering about
me; the enemy is at my gates, and I endure all sorts of military outrage at

once." He gives an interesting account of how, on one occasion, by presence
of mind and self-possession, he saved his castle. A certain leader, bent on
taking it and him, resolved to surprise him. He came alone to the gate and
begged to be let in. Montaigne knew him, and thought he could rely on him
as his neighbour, though not as his friend: he caused his door to be opened
to him as to every one. The visitant came in a hurried manner, his horse
panting, and said that he had encountered the enemy, who pursued him, and
he being unarmed, and with fewer men about him, he had taken shelter at
Montaigne's, and was in great trouble about his people, whom he feared
were either taken or killed. Montaigne believed the tale and tried to reassure
and comfort him. Presently five or six of his followers, with the same
appearance of terror, presented themselves; and then more and more, to as
many as thirty, well equipped and armed, pretending that they were pursued
by the enemy. Montaigne's suspicions were at last awakened; but finding
that he must go on as he had begun, or break out altogether, he betook
himself to what seemed to him the easiest and most natural course, and
ordered all to be admitted; "being," he says, "a man who gladly commits
himself to fortune, and believing that we fail in not confiding sufficiently in
Heaven." The soldiers having entered remained in the court yard—their
chief, with his host, being in the hall, he not having permitted his horse to
be put up, saying he should go the moment his people arrived. He now saw
himself master of his enterprise,—the execution alone remained. He often
said afterwards—for he did not fear to tell the tale—that Montaigne's
frankness and composure had disarmed his treachery. He remounted his
horse and departed, while his people, who kept their eyes continually upon
him to see if he gave the signal, were astonished to behold him ride off and
abandon his advantage.
On another occasion, confiding in some truce, he undertook a journey, and
was seized by about thirty gentlemen, masked, as was the custom then,
followed by a little army of arquebusiers. Being taken, he was led into the
forest and despoiled of his effects, which were valuable, and high ransom
demanded. He refused any, contending for the maintenance of the truce; but
this plea was rejected, and they were ordered to be marched away. He did
not know his enemies, nor, apparently, did they know him; and he and his
people were being led off as prisoners, when suddenly a change took place:
the chief addressed him in mild terms, caused all his effects to be collected
and restored, and the whole party set at liberty. "The true cause of so sudden

a change," says Montaigne, "operated without any apparent cause, and of
repentance in a purpose then through use held just, I do not even now know.
The chief among them unmasked, and told his name, and several times
afterwards said that I owed my deliverance to my composure, to the
courage and firmness of my words, which made me seem worthy of better
treatment."
As Montaigne advanced in life he lost his health. The stone, which he
believed he inherited from his father, and painful nephritic colics that seized
him at intervals, put his philosophy to the test. He would not allow his
illnesses to disturb the usual tenor of his life, and, above all, refused
medical aid, having also inherited, he says, from his father a contempt for
physicians. There was a natural remedy, however, by which he laid store,
one much in favour at all times on the continent—mineral and thermal
springs. The desire to try these, as well as a wish to quit for a time his
troubled country, and the sight of all the misery multiplying around him,
caused him to make a journey to Italy. His love of novelty and of seeing
strange things sharpened his taste for travelling; and, as a slighter motive,
he was glad to throw household cares aside; for, though the pleasures of
command were something, he received perpetual annoyances from the
indigence and sufferings of his tenants, or the quarrels of his neighbours: to
travel was to get rid of all this at once.
Of course, his mode of proceeding was peculiar: he had a particular dislike
to coaches or litters,—even a boat was not quite to his mind; and he only
really liked travelling on horseback. Then he let every whim sway him as to
the route: it gave him no annoyance to go out of his way: if the road was
bad to the right, he took to the left: if he felt too unwell to mount his horse,
he remained where he was till he got better: if he found he had passed by
any thing that he wished to see, he turned back. On the present occasion his
mode of travelling was, as usual, regulated by convenience: hired vehicles
carried the luggage while he proceeded on horseback. He was accompanied
by several friends, and, among others, by his brother, M. de Mattecoulon.
Montaigne had the direction of the journey. We have a journal of it, partly
written in his own hand, partly dictated to his valet, who, though he speaks
of his roaster in the third person, evidently wrote only the words dictated.
This work, discovered many years after Montaigne's death, never copied
nor corrected, is singularly interesting. It seems to tell us more of

Montaigne than the Essays themselves: or, rather, it confirms much said in
those, by relating many things omitted, and throws a new light on various
portions of his character. For instance, we find that the eager curiosity of his
mind led him to inquire into the tenets of the protestants; and that, at the
Swiss towns, he was accustomed, on arriving, to seek out with all speed
some theologian, whom he invited to dinner, and from whom he inquired
the peculiar tenets of the various sects. There creeps out, also, an almost
unphilosophical dislike of his own country, springing from the miserable
state into which civil war had brought it.[8]
1580 The party set off from the castle of Montaigne on the 22d of June,
.
Ætat
1580: they proceeded through the north-east of France to Plombieres,
. where Montaigne took the waters, and then went on by Basle, Baden,
47. in the canton of Zurich, to Constance, Augsburgh, Munich, and
Trent. It is not to be supposed that he went to these places in a right line: he
often changed his mind when half way to a town, and came back; so that at
last his zigzag mode of proceeding rendered several of his party restive.
They remonstrated; but he replied, that, for his own part, he was bound to
no place but that in which he was; and that he could not go out of his way,
since his only object was to wander in unknown places; and so that he never
followed the same road twice, nor visited the same place twice, his scheme
was accomplished. If, indeed, he had been alone, he had probably gone
towards Cracovia, or overland to Greece, instead of to Italy; but he could
not impart the pleasure he took in seeing strange places, which was such as
to cause him to forget ill health and suffering, to any other of his party: they
only sought to arrive where they could repose; he, when he rose after a
painful uneasy night, felt gay and eager when he remembered that he was in
a strange town and country; and was never so little weary, nor complained
so little of his sufferings, having his mind always on the stretch to find
novelties and to converse with strangers; for nothing, he says, hurt his
health so much as indolence and ennui.
With all his windings, after he had visited Venice, which "he had a hunger
to see," he found himself in Rome on the last day of November, having the
previous morning risen at three hours before daylight in his haste to behold
the eternal city. Here he had food in plenty for his inquiring mind; and,
getting tired of his guide, rambled about, finding out remarkable objects
alone; making his shrewd remarks, and trying to discover those ancient

spots with which his mind was familiar. For Latin being his mother-tongue,
and Latin books his primers, he was more familiar with Roman history than
with that of France, and the names of the Scipios and Metelli were less of
strangers to his ear than those of many Frenchmen of his own day. He was
well received by the pope, who was eager to be courteous to any man of
talent and rank who would still abide by the old religion. Montaigne, before
he set out, had printed two books of his "Essays:" these were taken at the
custom-house and underwent a censorship: several faults were found—that
he had used the word fortune improperly; that he cited heretical poets; that
he found excuses for the emperor Julian; that he had said that a man must of
necessity he exempt from vicious inclinations while in the act of prayer;
that he regarded all tortuous modes of capital punishment as cruel; that he
said that a child ought to be brought up to do every thing. Montaigne took
this fault-finding very quietly, saying that he had put these things down as
being his opinions, and without supposing that they were errors; and that
sometimes the censor had mistaken his meaning. Accordingly, these
censures were not insisted upon; and when he left Rome, and took leave of
the prelate, who had discoursed with him on the subject, he begged him not
to pay any regard to the censure, which was a mistaken one, since they
honoured his intentions, his affection for the church, and his talents; and so
esteemed his frankness and conscientiousness, that they left it to him to
make any needful alterations in another edition: and they ended by begging
him to assist the church with his eloquence, and to remain at Rome, away
from the troubles of his native country. Montaigne was much flattered by
this courtesy and much more so by a bull being issued which conferred on
him the citizenship of Rome, pompous in seals and golden letters, and
1581 gracious in its expressions. Nothing, he tells us, ever pleased him
.
Ætat
more than this honour, empty as it might seem, and had employed to
. obtain it, he says, all his five senses, for the sake of the ancient glory
48. and present holiness of the city.

The descriptions which he gives of Rome, of the pope, and all he saw, are
short, but drawn with a master's hand—graphic, original, and just; and such
is the unaltered appearance of the eternal city, that his pages describe it as it
now is, with as much fidelity as they did when he saw it in the sixteenth
century. Its gardens and pleasure-grounds delighted him; the air seemed to
him the most agreeable he had ever felt; and the perpetual excitement of
inquiry in which he lived, his visits to antiquities, and to various beautiful

and memorable spots, delighted him; and neither at home nor abroad was he
once visited by gloom or melancholy, which he calls his death.
On the 19th of April he left Rome, and passing by the eastern road, and the
shores of the Adriatic, he visited Loretto, where he displayed his piety by
presenting a silver tablet, on which were hung four silver figures,—that of
the virgin, with those of himself, his wife, and their only child, Eleanor, on
their knees before her; and performed various religious duties, which prove
the sincerity of his catholic faith. In the month of May he arrived at the
baths of Lucca, where he repaired for the sake of the waters. He took up his
abode at the Bagni di Villa, and with the exception of a short interval,
during which he visited Florence and Pisa, he remained till September,
when, on the 7th of that month, he received letters to inform him that he had
been elected mayor of Bordeaux,—a circumstance which forced him to
hasten his return; but he did not leave Italy without again visiting Rome.
His journey home during winter, although rendered painful by physical
suffering, was yet tortuous and wandering among the northern Italian
towns. He re-entered France by Mont Cenis, and, visiting Lyons, continued
his route through Auvergne and Périgord, till he arrived at the château de
Montaigne.
Montaigne, though flattered by the unsought for election of the citizens of
Bordeaux, the more so that his father had formerly been elected to that
office, yet, from ill health and natural dislike to public employments, would
have excused himself, had not the king interposed with his commands. He
represented himself to his electors such as he conceived himself to be,—
without party spirit, memory, diligence, or experience. Many, indeed, in the
sequel considered him too indolent in the execution of the duties of his
office, while he deemed his negative merits as deserving praise, at a period
when France was distracted by the dissensions of contending factions: the
citizens, probably, entertained the same opinion, since he was re-elected at
the end of the two years, when his office expired, to serve two years more.
Montaigne's was a long-lived family; but he attained no great age, and his
latter years were disturbed by great suffering. Living in frequent
expectation of death, he was always prepared for it,—his affairs being
arranged, and he ready to fulfil all the last pious catholic duties as soon as
he felt himself attacked by any of the frequent fevers to which he was
subject. One of the last events of his life was his friendship with

mademoiselle Marie de Gournay le Jars, a young person of great merit, and
afterwards esteemed one of the most learned and excellent ladies of the day;
and honoured by the abuse of pedants, who attacked her personal
appearance and her age, in revenge for her transcending even their sex in
accomplishments and understanding: while, on the other hand, she was
1585 regarded with respect and friendship by the first men of her time.
.
Ætat
She was very young when Montaigne first saw her, which happened
. during a long visit he made to Paris, after his mayorship at Bordeaux
52. was ended. Having conceived an enthusiastic love and admiration of
him from reading his essays, she called on him, and requested his
acquaintance. He visited her and her mother at their château de Gournay,
and allied himself to her by adopting her as his daughter, and entertaining
for her a warm affection and esteem. His picture of her is not only
delightful, as a testimony of the merits of this young lady[9], but a proof of
the unfailing enthusiasm and warmth of his own heart, which, even in
suffering and decay, eagerly allied itself to kindred merit.
The illness of which he died was a quinsey, that brought on a paralysis of
the tongue. His presence of mind and philosophy did not desert him at the
end: he is said, as one of his last acts, to have risen from his bed, and,
opening his cabinet, to have paid his servants and other legatees the legacies
he had left them by will, foreseeing that his heirs might raise difficulties on
the subject. When getting worse, and unable to speak, he wrote to his wife
to beg her to send for some gentlemen, his neighbours, to be with him at his
last moments. When they arrived, he caused mass to be celebrated in his
chamber: at the moment of the elevation he tried to rise, when he fell back
fainting, and so died, on the 13th of September, 1592, in the sixtieth year of
his age. He was buried at Bordeaux, in a church of the commandery of St.
Anthony, and his widow raised a tomb to his memory.
Montaigne was rather short of stature, strong, and thick set: his countenance
was open and pleasing. He enjoyed good health till the age of forty-six,
when he became afflicted by the stone. Vivacious as a Gascon, his spirits
were unequal,—but he hated the melancholy that belonged to his
constitution, and his chief endeavour was to nourish pleasing sensations,
and to engage his mind, when his body was unemployed, in subjects of
speculation and inquiry.

Of three daughters who had been born to him, one, named Eleonora, alone
survived.[10] But his other daughter by adoption, mademoiselle de Gournay,
deserved also that name, by the honour and care she bestowed on his
memory. Immediately on his decease, the widow and her daughter invited
her to come and mourn their loss with them; and she crossed all France to
Bordeaux in compliance with their desire. She afterwards published several
editions of his "Essays," which she dedicated to the cardinal de Richelieu,
and accompanied by a preface, in which she ably defended the work from
the attacks made against it. This preface, though somewhat heavy, is full of
sound reasoning, and displays learning and acuteness, and completely
replies to all the blame ever thrown on his works.
Montaigne's "Essays" have also been attacked in modern times. It requires
that the reader should possess some similarity to the author's own mind to
enter fully into their merits, and relish their discursive style. The
profoundest and most original thinkers have ever turned to his pages with
delight. His skilful anatomy of his own mind and passions,—his
enthusiasm, clothed as it is in apparent indifference, which only renders it
the more striking,—his lively and happy descriptions of persons,—his
amusing narratives of events,—his happy citations of ancient authors,—and
the whole instinct with individuality;—perspicuity of style, and the stamp
of good faith and sincerity that reigns throughout;—these are the charms
and merits of his "Essays,"—a work that raises him to the rank of one of the
most original and admirable writers that France has produced.

[1]This château was situate in the parish of Saint Michael de Montaigne, not far from the town of
Saint Foi, in the diocese of Perigueux, at the distance of about ten leagues from the episcopal city. It
was solidly and well built, on high ground, and enjoyed a good air.
[2]"Je suis des plus exempt de la passion de tristesse, et ne l'aime ni l'estime; quoique le monde a
entreprins, comme à prix faist de l'honnorer de faveur particulière: ils en habillent la sagesse, la vertu,
la conscience; sot et monstreux ornement!"
[3]"Je suis de ceulx qui sentent tres grand effort de l'imagination; chascun en est heurte mais aulcuns
en sont renversez. Son impression me perce; et mon art est de lui eschapper par faulte de force à luy
resister. Je vivroys de la seule assistance de personnes saines et gayes; la veue des angoisses d'autruy
m'angoisses materiellement, et a mon sentiment souvent usurpé le sentiment d'un tiers. Je visite plus
mal voluntiers les malades auxquels, le devoir m'interesse que ceux auxquels je m'attends moins et
que je considere moins, je saisis le mal que j'estudie et le couche en moi."
[4]Tom III. liv. II. chap. 17.

[5]He displayed his affectionate gratitude towards his excellent father by a tender veneration for his
memory. He preserved with care the furniture of which he made personal use; and wore, when on
horseback, the cloak his father wore,—"Not for comfort," he says, "but pleasure—methinks I wrap
myself in him."
[6]In one of his early essays, he says, "Exactly fifteen days ago I completed my thirty-ninth year"
(liv. I. chap. 19.); and in a former one he says, "Having lately retired to my own residence, resolved,
as well as I can, to trouble myself with nothing but how to pass in repose what of life is left to me, it
appeared to me that I could not do better than to allow my mind, in full idleness, to discourse with
itself, and repose in itself, which I hoped it would easily do, having become slower and riper with
time; but I find, on the contrary, that, like a runaway horse, it takes a far swifter course for itself than
it would for another, and brings forth so many fantastic and chimerical ideas, one after the other,
without order or end, that, for the sake of contemplating their folly and strangeness at my ease, I have
resolved to put them down, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself."
[7]One of his reasons for abstaining from attacking the huguenots, may be found in the circumstance
that one of his brothers, M. de Beauregard, had been converted to the reformed religion.
[8]"M. de Montaigne trouvoit à dire trois choses en son voyage: l'un qu'il n'eut mené un cuisinier
pour l'instruire de leurs façons, et en pouvoir un jour faire a preuve chez lui; l'autre qu'il n'avait mené
un valet Allemand, on n'avait cherché la compagnie de quelque gentilhomme du pais, car de vivre à
la merci d'un belitre de guide il y sentoit une grande incommodité; la tierce qu'avant faire le voyage il
n'avait veu les livres qui le pouvoint avertir, des choses rares et remarquables de chaque lieu. Il
meloli à la vérité à son jugement un peu de passion de mepris de son pais, qu'il avait à haine et à
contre-cœur pour autres considerations."
[9]"J'ai pris plaisir de publier en plusieurs lieux l'espérance que j'ai de Marie de Gournay le Jars, ma
fille d'alliance, et certes aimée de moi beaucoup plus que paternellement, et envellopée en ma retraite
et solitude comme l'une des meilleures parties de mon propre estre: je ne regarde plus qu'elle au
monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner présage, cette alme sera quelque jour capable des plus belles
choses, et entre autre de la perfection de cette très sainte amitié, ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe
ayt peu monter encores: la sincérité et la solidité de ses mœurs y sont déjà bastantes; son affection
vers moi, plus que surrabondante, et telle, en somme, qu'il n'y a rien a souhaiter, sinon que
l'appréhension qu'elle a de ma fin par les cinquante et cinq ans auxquels elle ma rencontré, la
travaillant moins cruellement. Le jugement qu'elle fait de mes premiers Essais, et femme, et si jeune,
et seule en son quartier, et la véhémence fameuse dont elle m'aima et me désira longtemps, sur la
seule estime qu'elle eu prins de moi, longtemps avant m'avoir vue, sont des accidents de très digne
considération."
[10]Eleonore de Montaigne married twice. She had no children by her first marriage. Her second
husband was the viscount de Gamache. From this marriage the counts of Segur are descended in the
female line.

RABELAIS

1483-1553

Francis Rabelais,—"the great jester of France," as he is designated by Lord
Bacon; a learned scholar, physician, and philosopher, as he appears from
other and eminent testimonies,—was one of the most remarkable persons
who figured in the revival of letters. It is his fortune, like the ancient
Hercules, to be noted with posterity for many feats to which he was a
stranger,—but which are always to his disadvantage. The gross buffooneries
amassed by him in his nondescript romance have made his name a common
mark for any extravagance or impertinence of unknown or doubtful
parentage. The purveyors of anecdotes have even fixed upon him some of
the lazzi, as they are called, which may be found in the stage directions of
old Italian farce. Those events and circumstances of his life which are really
known, or deserving of belief, may be given within a narrow compass. We,
of course, reject, in this notice, all that would offend the decencies of
modern and better taste.
Rabelais was born at Chinon, a small town of Touraine. The date of his
birth is not ascertained; but the generally received opinion of his death, at
the age of 70, in 1553, would place his birth in 1483. There is the same
uncertainty respecting the condition of his father; whether that of an
innkeeper or apothecary. His predilection for the study of medicine favours
the latter supposition, whilst the imputed habits of his life countenance the
former. If, however, he was really abandoned to intemperance, as he is
represented by his adversaries, who were many and unscrupulous, it may,
with equal propriety, be charged to his monastic education, at a time when
cloisters were the chosen seats of debauchery and ignorance.
He received his first rudiments at the convent of Seville, near his native
town, where his progress was so slow that he was removed to another in
Angiers. Here also his career seemed unpromising; and the only advantage
he derived was that of becoming known to the brothers Du Bellay, one of
whom, afterwards bishop of Paris and cardinal, was his patron and friend
through life.
From Angiers he passed to a convent of cordeliers at Fontenaye-le-Compte,
in Poitou. He now applied himself, for the first time, to the cultivation of his
talents, but under circumstances the most unfavourable. The cordeliers of
Fontenaye-le-Compte had no library, or notion of its use. Rabelais assumed
the habit of St. Francis, distinguished himself by his preaching, and
employed what he received for his sermons and masses in providing

himself with books. The animosity of his brother monks was excited against
him: they envied and hated him, for his success as a preacher, and for his
superior attainments;—but his great and crying sin in their eyes was his
knowledge of Greek, the study of which they denounced as an unholy and
forbidden art. This was perfectly consistent: they were content with Latin
enough to give them an imposing air with the multitude; some did not know
even so much, and, instead of a breviary, carried a wine flask exactly
resembling it in exterior form.
His brother monks annoyed and harassed Rabelais by all the modes which
malice, ignorance, and numbers can employ against an individual, and in a
convent. The learned Budeus[11], alluding to the persecutions which he was
suffering, says, in one of his letters, "I understand that Rabelais is
grievously annoyed and persecuted, by those enemies of all that is elegant
and graceful, for his ardour in the study of Greek literature. Oh! evil
infatuation of men whose minds are so dull and stupid!" They at last
condemned him to live in pace; that is to linger out the remainder of his
life, on bread and water, in the prison cell of the convent.
The cause, or the pretence, of Rabelais's being thus buried alive, is
described as "a scandalous adventure:" but differently related. According to
some the scandal consisted in his disfiguring, by way of frolic, in concert
with another young cordelier, the image of their patron saint. Others state,
that on the festival of St. Francis he removed the image of the saint, and
took its place. Having taken precautions to hear out the imposture, he
escaped detection, until the grotesque devotions of the multitude, and the
rogueries of the monks, overcame his gravity, and he laughed. The simple
people, seeing the image of the saint, as they supposed it, move, exclaimed,
"A miracle!" but the monks, who knew better, dismissed the laity, made
their false brother descend from his niche, and gave him the discipline, with
their hempen cords, until his blood appeared. We will not decide which, or
whether either, of these versions be true; but it is certain that he was
condemned, as we have said, to solitary confinement for life in the prison
cell.
Fortunately for him, his wit, gaiety, and acquirements had made him friends
who were powerful enough to obtain his release. These were the Du Bellays
already mentioned, and Andre Tiraqueau, chief judge of the province, to
whom one of Rabelais's Latin letters is addressed;—a man of learning, it

would appear, and an upright judge. The letter is addressed, "Andreo
Tiraquello, equissimo judici, apud Pictones," and commences "Tiraquello
doctissime." Their influence obtained not only his liberty, but the pope's
(Clement VII.) licence to pass from the cordeliers of Fontenaye-le-Compte,
to a convent of Benedictines at Maillezieux in the same province. This latter
order has been distinguished for learning, and deserves respectful and
grateful mention for its share in the preservation of the classic remains of
antiquity. It was, no doubt, more agreeable, or less disagreeable, to Rabelais
than that which he had left; but wholly disgusted with the monastic life, he
soon threw off the frock and cowl, left the convent of his own will and
pleasure, without licence or dispensation from his superiors, and for some
time led a wandering life as a secular priest.
We next find him divested wholly of the sacerdotal character; and studying
medicine at Montpelier. The date of this transition, as too frequently
happens in the life of Rabelais, cannot be determined. He, however, pursued
his studies, took his successive degrees of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor,
and was, after some time, appointed a professor. He lectured, it appears
from his letters of a subsequent date, chiefly on the works of Hippocrates
and Galen. His superior knowledge of the Greek language enabled him to
correct the faults of omission, falsification, and interpolation, committed by
former translators of Hippocrates; and he executed this task, he says, by the
most careful and minute collation of the text with the best copies of the
original. "If this be a fault," says he, speaking of preceding mistranslations,
"in other books, it is a crime in books of medicine; for in these the addition
or omission of the least word, the misplacing even of a point, compromises
the lives of thousands." Accordingly, his edition of Hippocrates,
subsequently published by him at Lyons, has been highly prized by
physicians and scholars.
Rabelais had less difficulty in restoring and elucidating the text, than in
bringing into practice the better medical system of the father of the art. He
complains, in his Latin epistle to Tiraqueau, at some length, but in
substance, that though the age boasted many learned and enlightened men,
yet the multitude was in worse than Cimmerian darkness—the many so
besotted by the errors, however gross, which they had first imbibed, and by
the books, however absurd, which they had first read, as to seem
irremediably blind to reason and truth—clinging to ignorance and absurdity,

like those shipwrecked persons who trust to a beam or a rag of the vessel
which had split, instead of making aneffort themselves to swim, and finding
out their mistake only when they are hopelessly sinking.—Mountebanks
and astrologers (he adds) were preferred to learned physicians, even by the
great.
But his capacity and zeal were held in just estimation by the medical faculty
of Montpelier.—The chancellor Duprat having, for some reason now
unknown, deprived that body of its privileges, or, according to Nicéron, one
college only having suffered deprivation, Rabelais was deputed to solicit
their restoration. There is a current anecdote of the strange mode which he
took to introduce himself to the chancellor.—Arrived at the chancellor's
door, he spoke Latin to the porter, who, it may be supposed, did not
understand him; a person who understood Latin presenting himself,
Rabelais spoke to him in Greek; to a person who understood Greek, he
spoke Hebrew; and so on, through several other languages and interpreters,
until the singularity of the circumstance reached the great man, and
Rabelais was invited to his presence. This is in the last degree improbable.
Cardinal du Bellay, his patron, was then bishop of Paris, in high favour at
the court of Francis I., and, doubtless, ready to present him in a manner
much more conducive to the success of his mission. The ridiculous
invention was suggested by a passage of Rabelais, in which Panurge
addresses Pantagruel, on their first meeting, in thirteen different languages,
dead and living, not including French. Rabelais, however, pleaded the cause
of the faculty of Montpelier so well, that its privileges were restored, and he
was received by his colleagues on his return with unprecedented honours.
So great was the estimation in which he was held henceforth, and the
reverence for him after his departure, that every student put on Rabelais's
scarlet gown when taking his degree of doctor. This curious usage
continued from the time of Rabelais down to the Revolution. The gown
latterly used was not the identical one of Rabelais. The young doctors, in
their enthusiasm for its first wearer, carried off each a piece, by way of
relic, until, in process of time, it reached only to the hips, and a new
garment was substituted.
Rabelais, having left Montpelier, appears next at Lyons, where he practised
as a physician, and published his editions of Hippocrates and Galen, with
some minor pieces, including almanacks, which prove him conversant with

the science of astronomy. One almanack bearing his name is pronounced
spurious, on the ground of his being made to describe himself as "physician
and astrologer." He treated the pretended science of astrology with derision.
This would add nothing to his reputation in a later age; but, considering the
number of his contemporaries, otherwise enlightened, who were not proof
against this weakness, it proves him to have been one of those superior
spirits whose views are in advance of their generation.
Cardinal du Bellay was sent ambassador by Francis I. to the court of Rome
in 1534, and attached Rabelais as physician to his suite. He appears to have
made two visits to Italy with the cardinal at this period, but there are no
traces by which they can be distinguished, nor is it very material. It is made
a question in one of the most recent sketches of the life of Rabelais, whether
he attended the ambassador as physician or buffoon. His letters, addressed
from Rome, to his friend the bishop of Maillezieux, furnish decisive
evidence of his being a a person treated with respect and confidence,
independently of the known friendship of the cardinal. They are the letters
of a man of business, well informed of all that was passing, and trusted with
state secrets. He alludes, in one letter, to the quarrels of Paul III. (now pope)
and Henry VIII. It appears that the cardinal du Bellay and the bishop of
Mâcon opposed and retarded, in the consistory, the bull of
excommunication against Henry, as an invasion of the rights and interests
of Francis I. Writing of the pope, and to a bishop, he treats him as a
temporal prince, with the freedom of one man of sense and frankness
writing to another, but without the least approach to levity.
We pass over the gross and idle buffooneries which Rabelais is said to have
permitted himself at his first audience of the pope, and towards his person.
They are too coarse to be mentioned, and too inconsistent with the
probabilities of place and person to be believed. One anecdote only may be
excepted, as not altogether incredible. The pope, it is said, expressed his
willingness to grant Rabelais a favour, and he, in reply, begged his holiness
to excommunicate him. Being asked why he preferred so strange a request,
he accounted for it by saying, that some very honest gentlemen of his
acquaintance in Touraine had been burned, and finding it a common saying
in Italy, when a faggot would not take fire, that it was excommunicated by
the pope's own mouth, he wished to be rendered incombustible by the same
process. Rabelais appears to have indulged and recommended himself by

his writ and gaiety at Rome; and it is not absolutely incredible that he may
have gone this length with Paul III., who was a bad politician rather than a
persecutor. But it is still unlikely, that whilst he was soliciting absolution
from one excommunication, which he had already incurred by his apostacy
from his monastic vows, he should request the favour of another, even in
jest. It appears untrue that he gave offence by his buffooneries, and was
punished or disgraced. This assertion is negatived by his letters, and, more
conclusively, by the pope's granting him the bull of absolution, which he
had been soliciting for some time.
Rabelais returned to Lyons after his first visit to Rome. After the second, he
appears to have gone to Paris. No credit is due to the ridiculous artifice by
which, it has been stated so often in print, he got over the payment of his
hotel bill at Lyons, and travelled on to Paris at the public charge. He made
up, it is pretended, several small packets, and employed a boy, the son of
his hostess, to write on them "poison for the king," "poison for the queen,"
&c. through the whole royal family. His injunctions of secrecy of course
ensured the disclosure of the secret by the young amanuensis to his mother,
and Rabelais was conveyed a state prisoner to the capital. Arrived at Paris,
and at court too, he proved the innocuous quality of his packets, and
amused Francis I. by swallowing the contents. It has been justly remarked
by Voltaire, that at a moment when the recent death of the dauphin had
taken place under the suspicion of poison, this freak would have subjected
Rabelais to be questioned upon the rack. Other ridiculous expedients, said
to have been used by him, to extricate himself from his tavern bills, when
he was without money to pay them, are undeserving of notice. There is no
good evidence of his having been at any time under the necessity of
resorting to them. His letters from Rome to the bishop of Maillezieux, of
whom he was the pensioner, make it appear that his mode of life there was
frugal and regular. But the common source of all these impertinent fictions
is the mistake, as we have already said, of confounding an author with his
book. Rabelais, the eulogist of debts and drunkenness, the high priest of
"the oracle of the holy bottle," must of course have been reduced to such
expedients! There cannot be a greater error. Doctor Arbuthnot, who
approached the broad humour of Rabelais, even nearer than Swift, was
remarkable for the gravity of his character and deportment.

Cardinal du Bellay, on his return from Rome to Paris, took Rabelais into his
family, as his physician, his librarian, his reader, and his friend. It is stated,
that he confided to him even the government of his household; which is
itself a proof that Rabelais was not the reckless, dissolute buffoon he is
represented. The cardinal's regard for him did not rest here. He obtained
from the pope a bull, which secularized the abbey of St. Maur-des-Fosses,
in his diocese of Paris, and conferred it on Rabelais. The next favour
bestowed upon Rabelais by his patron was the cure or rectory of Meudon,
which he held to his death, and from which he is familiarly styled "Le curé
de Meudon."
It is not known at what periods or places Rabelais wrote his "Lives of the
great Giant Garagantua and his Son Pantagruel;" to which he owes, if not
all his reputation, certainly all his popularity; but he appears to have
completed and republished it after his return from Italy. The date of the
earliest existing edition of the first and second books is 1535; but there were
previous editions, which have disappeared. The "Champ Fleury," of
Geoffroy Tory, quoted by Lacroix du Maine, refers to them as existing
before 1529. The royal privilege, dated 1545, granted by Francis I. to "our
well-beloved Master Francis Rabelais," for reprinting a correct and
complete edition of his work, sets forth that many spurious publications of
it had been made; that the book was useful and delectable and that its
continuance and completion had been solicited of the author "by the learned
and studious of the kingdom."
The book and the author were attacked on all sides, and from opposite
quarters. The champions for and against Aristotle, who disputed with a
sectarian animosity, equalling in fury the theological controversies of the
time, suspended their warfare to turn their arms against Rabelais; he was
assailed, as a common enemy, by the champions of the Romish and
reformed doctrines; by the anti-stagyrite Peter Ramus, and his antagonist
Peter Gallandus; by the monk of Fontevrault, Puits d'Herbault, and by
Calvin. But the most formidable quarter of attack was the Sorbonne, and its
accusations against him the most perilous to which he could be exposed—
heresy and atheism. The book was condemned by the Sorbonne, and by the
criminal section of the court of parliament.
When it is considered that Rabelais, in the sixteenth century, and in France,
chose for the subjects of his ridicule and buffoonery the wickedness and

vices of popes, the lazy luxurious lives and griping avarice of the prelates,
the debauchery, libertinism, knavery, and ignorance of the monastic orders,
the barbarous and absurd theology of the Sorbonne, and the no less
barbarous and absurd jurisprudence of the high tribunals of the kingdom,
the wonder is not that he was persecuted, but that he escaped the stake. His
usual good fortune and high protection, however, once more saved him.
Francis I. called for the obnoxious and condemned book, had it read to him
from the beginning to the end, pronounced it innocent and "delectable," and
protected the author. The sentence of condemnation became a dead letter,
the book was read with avidity, and Rabelais admired and sought as the first
wit and scholar of his age.
Some expositors of Rabelais will have it, that his romance is the history of
his own time burlesqued. The fictitious personages and events have even
been resolved into the real. Nothing can be more uncertain, or indeed more
improbable. The simple fact, that of two the most copious and diligent
commentators of Rabelais,—Motteux and Duchat,—one has identified
Rabelais's personages with the D'Albrets of Navarre, Montluc bishop of
Valence, &c., whilst the other has discovered in Grandgousier, Garagantua,
Pantagruel, Panurge, friar John, the characters of Louis XII., Francis I.,
Henry II., cardinal Lorraine, cardinal du Bellay. This fact alone proves the
hopeless uncertainty of the question. Passing over the glaring want of
congruity, which any reader of history and of Rabelais must observe
between the personages here identified, how improbable the supposition
that Rabelais should have held up to public ridicule the sovereign who
protected him, and the friend upon whom he was mainly dependant! How
absurd the supposition that neither of them should have discovered it, or
been made sensible of it by others! We more particularly notice this
baseless hypothesis,—for such it really is,—because it is the most
confidently and frequently reproduced.
But, independently of what we have said, there is an outrageous disregard
of all design and probability in the work, which defies any such
verification. The most reasonable opinion, we think, is, that Rabelais
attached himself to no series of events, and to no particular persons, but
burlesqued classes and conditions of society, and even arts and sciences, as
they presented themselves to his wayward humour and ungoverned or
ungovernable imagination. This view is borne out by what we read in the

memoirs of the president De Thou, who describes the author and the book
as follows:—"Rabelais had a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin
literature, and of medicine, which he professed. Discarding, latterly, all
serious thoughts, he abandoned himself to a life of gaiety and sensuality,
and, to use his expression, embracing as his own the art of ridiculing
mankind, produced a book full of the mirth of Democritus, sometimes
grossly scurrilous, yet most ingeniously written, in which he exhibited,
under feigned denominations, as on a public stage, all orders of the
community and of the state, to be laughed at by the public."
Perhaps the real secret of his enigmatical book may be found on the surface,
in his own declaration,—that he wrote for the amusement of his patients,
and of the sick and sad of mankind, "those jovial follies (cez folastreries
joyeuses), whilst taking his bodily refreshment, that is, eating and drinking,
the proper time for treating matters of such high import and profound
science."
The charge of heresy, as understood by the church of Rome, could be easily
proved against him; but there appears no good ground for that of atheism,
or of infidelity. He applies texts of Scripture improperly and indecently, but
rather from wanton levity of humour than deliberate profaneness; and he
may have retained this part of his early habits as a cordelier,—for the
monks were notorious for the licence with which they applied, in their
orgies, the texts of Scripture in their breviaries,—probably the only portions
of Scripture which they knew: allowance is also to be made for the tone of
manners and language in an age when the most zealous preachers and
theologians, Romish and reformed, indulged in profane applications and
parodies of Scripture without reproach. Rabelais was in principle a
reformer, but of a humour too light and careless to embark seriously in the
great cause.
No writer has had more contemptuous depreciators and enthusiastic
admirers: his book has been called a farrago of impurity, blasphemy, and
trash; a masterpiece of wit, pleasantry, erudition, and philosophy, composed
in a charming style. An unqualified judgment for or against him would
mislead. The most valuable opinions of him are those of his own
countrymen, since the French language and literature have attained their
highest cultivation. Labruyere, after discarding the idea of any historic key
to Rabelais, says of him, that "where he is bad, nothing can be worse, he

can please only the rabble; where good, he is exquisite and excellent, and
food for the most delicate." Lafontaine, who in his letters calls him "gentil
Maitre Français," has versified several of his tales, and even imitated his
diction. Boileau called him "reason in masquerade" (la raison en masque).
Bayle, however, made so light of him, that he has not deigned him an article
in his dictionary, and only names him once or twice in passing. This was
surely injustice from one who gives a separate and copious notice to the
buffoon and bigot. Father Garasse. Voltaire has treated Rabelais
contemptuously; called him "a physician playing the part of Punch," "a
philosopher writing in his cups," "a mere buffoon." But these opinions,
expressed in his philosophical letters, were recanted by him, after some
years, in a private letter to Madame du Deffand; and he avows in it that he
knew "Maitre Français" by heart. Voltaire appropriated both the matter and
manner of Rabelais in some of his tales and "facéties," and he has been
accused of this petty motive for decrying him. It was discovered, at the
French revolution, that Rabelais was another Brutus, counterfeiting folly to
escape the despotism of which he meditated the overthrow; and the late M.
Ginguené proved, in a pamphlet of two hundred pages, that Rabelais
anticipated all the reforms of that period in the church and state.
The detractors of Rabelais's book may be more easily justified than his
admirers. The favour which it obtained in his lifetime, and the popularity
which it has maintained through three centuries, may be ascribed to other
causes besides its merits. It had the attraction of satire, malice, and mystery,
which all were at liberty to expound at their pleasure; and many, doubtless,
read it for its ribald buffooneries. There is in it, at the same time, a fund of
wit, humour, and invention—a rampant, resistless gaiety, which gives an
amusing and humorous turn to the most outrageous nonsense. There are
touches of keen and witty satire, which bear out the most favourable part of
the judgment of Labruyere. The condemnation of Panurge, who is left to
guess his crime, is most happily humorous and satirical, whether applied to
the Inquisition or to the barbarous jurisprudence of the age. Panurge
protests his innocence of all crime: "Ha! there!" exclaims Grippe-Menaud;
"I'll now show you that you had better have fallen into the claws of the
devil than into ours. You are innocent, are you? Ha! there! as if that was a
reason why we should not put you through our tortures. Ha! there! our laws
are spiders' webs; the simple little flies are caught, but the large and
mischievous break through them." There is in Rabelais a variety of

erudition, less curious than Butler's, but more elegant. His stock of learning,
it has been said, would be indigence in later times: but it should be
remembered at how little cost a great parade of erudition may now be made
out of indexes and encyclopedias, whilst Rabelais, Erasmus, and the other
scholars of their time, had to purvey for themselves.
Rabelais most frequently quotes; but he also appropriates sometimes,
without acknowledgment, what he had read. Some of his tales are to be
found in the "Facetiæ" of Poggius;—that, for instance, which has been
versified by Lafontaine and Dryden: and he applied to himself, after Lucian
(in his treatise of the manner of writing history), the story of Diogenes
rolling his tub during the siege of Corinth. Lucian has been called his
prototype. Their essentially distinctive traits may be seen at a glance in their
respective uses of this anecdote of the cynic philosopher: in the redundant
picturesque buffoonery of dialogue and description of the one; the felicity,
humour, severer judgment, and chaster style of the other.
It is impossible to characterise the fantastic cloud of words, so far beyond
any thing understood by copiousness or diffuseness, conjured up sometimes
by Rabelais; his vagrant digressions, astounding improbabilities, and
monstrous exaggerations: but he has that rare endowment which all but
redeems these faults, and charms the reader,—the talent of narrating. His
great and fatal blemish is his grossness, his disregard of all decency, his
sympathy with nastiness, his invasion of all that is weak and vile in the
recesses of nature and the imagination. But it should be said for him, at the
same time, that his is the coarseness which revolts, rather than the depravity
which contaminates; and not only his affectation of a diction more antique
than even his own age, but his use of the vulgar provincialisms called in
France Patois, limit his popularity in the original to readers of his own
country, and the better informed of other countries.
Rabelais had a host of imitators in his own age, and that which immediately
succeeded: they have all sunk into utter and just oblivion, with the
exception, perhaps, of Beroalde de Verville, author of the "Moyen de
Parvenir." Scarron more recently made Rabelais his model, with a congenial
taste for buffoonery and burlesque. Molière has not disdained to borrow
from him in his comedies. Lafontaine has versified several of the tales
introduced in his romance, and has even inclined to his diction. Swift has
condescended to be indebted to him. "Gulliver's Travels" and the "Tale of a

Tub" both bear decisive evidence, not only in particular passages, but in
their respective designs, of the author's being well acquainted with the
romance of "Garagantua and Pantagruel." But the imitations only prove
Swift's incomparable superiority of judgment and genius. No two things can
be more different, than the grave and governed humour of Swift, and the
laughing mask of everlasting buffoonery worn by Rabelais: both employ in
their fictions the mock-marvellous and gigantic; but Swift observes,
throughout, a proportioned scale in his creations, whilst Rabelais outrages
all proportion and probability: for instance, in his absurd yet laughable
fiction of Panurge's six months' travels, and his discovery of mountains,
valleys, rocks, cities, in the mouth of the great giant Pantagruel. Sterne's
"Tristram Shandy" is more closely modelled upon the romance of Rabelais.
There is the same love of farce, whim, and burlesque, even to the theology
of the schoolmen; the same love of digression and wandering: but in Sterne,
a superior finesse of perception and expression, the relief of mirth and
pathos intermingled, and, above all, a tone of finer humanity.
Rabelais left, besides his romance, "Certain Books of Hippocrates;" and
"The Ars Medicinalis of Galen," revised, edited, and commented by him;
"The Second Part of the Medical Epistles of Manardi, a physician of
Ferrara," edited and commented; "The Will of Lucius Cuspidius;" and "A
Roman Agreement of Sale—venerable Remains of Antiquity:" (Rabelais
was deceived—they were forgeries: the one by Pomponius Lætus; the other
by Pontanus, whom Rabelais, on discovering his mistake, gibbeted in his
romance). "Marliani's Topography of Ancient Rome," merely republished
by him; "Several Almanacks, calculated under the Meridian of the noble
City of Lyons;" "Military Stratagems and Prowess of the renowned
Chevalier de Langey," a relative of his patron cardinal du Bellay (doubtful
whether his); "Letters from Italy, addressed to the Bishop of Maillezieux,"
with a historical commentary, far exceeding the bulk of the text, by the
brothers St. Marthe; "La Sciomachie" (sham battle)—a description of the
fête given at Rome by cardinal du Bellay, in honour of the birth of the duke
of Orleans, son of Francis I.; "Epistles," in Latin prose and French verse;
"Smaller Pieces" of French poetry; "The Pantagrueline Prognostication,"
connected with the romance; and "The Philosophical Cream," a burlesque
on the disputations of the schoolmen and the Sorbonne.

"The heroic Lives of the great Giants Garagantua and Pantagruel" have
gone through countless editions, various expurgations, and endless
commentaries; but the most valuable or curious are Duchat's, with a
historical and critical commentary, in French; Motteux's, with similar
commentaries, in English; an edition by the bookseller Bernard, of
Amsterdam, in 1741, with the annotations of the two former, revised and
criticised, and illustrations of the text engraved from drawings by Picart; an
edition, in three volumes, Paris, 1823, with a copious glossary, a curious
and highly illustrative table of contents, and "Rabelæsiana," collected from
the author's book, not from his life; another Paris edition, of the same date,
in nine volumes, with a "variorum" commentary, from the earliest
annotators down to Ginguené, valuable from its copiousness rather than
discernment. This last edition gives the 120 wood-cut Pantagruelian
caricatures, first published in 1655, under the title of "Songes drolatiques,"
and ascribed, upon questionable grounds, to Rabelais.
It has been said, with every appearance of truth, that the conversation and
character of Rabelais were greatly superior to his book. He knew fourteen
languages, dead and living, including Hebrew and Arabic, and wrote Greek,
Latin, and Italian. The Greek which he puts into the mouth of Panurge,
though not the purest, even for a modern, is fluent and correct. We may
remark, in passing, that the Greek word "αὐτὸ" given as part of the text in
the common character, is written "afto." He was conversant with all the
sciences and most of the arts of his time: a physician, a naturalist, a
mathematician, an astronomer, a theologian, a jurist, an antiquary, an
architect, a grammarian, a poet, a musician, a painter. His person and
deportment are described as noble and graceful, his countenance engaging
and expressive, his society agreeable, his disposition generous and kind. He
was the physician as well as pastor of his parishioners at Meudon, where he
passed his time between the society of men of letters and his friends, his
clerical and medical duties, and teaching the children who chanted in the
choir the elements of music. He died, it is supposed, in 1553, at the age of
seventy, in Paris, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul, Rue des
Jardins, at the foot of a tree, which, out of respect to his memory, was
religiously spared, until it disappeared by natural decay.
It is untrue that he sent to cardinal du Bellay, from his deathbed, this idle
message, by a page whom the cardinal had sent to know his state—"Tell the

cardinal I am going to try the great 'perhaps'—you are a fool—draw the
curtain—the farce is done;" or that he made this burlesque will,—"I have
nothing—I owe much—I leave the rest to the poor;" or that he put on a
domino when he felt his death approaching, because it is written, "beat! qui
moriuntur in Domino." They are impertinent fictions. Duverdier (quoted by
Nicéron in his Literary Memoirs, vol. XXXII.) had spoken ill of Rabelais in
his "Bibliothèque Française," but retracted in his "Prosographie," and bore
testimony to the Christian sentiments in which he died.
No monument has been placed over the grave of Rabelais, but he has been
the subject of many epitaphs. We select two of them; one in Latin, the other
in French:—

Ille ego Gallorum Gallus Democritus, ill.
Gratius, aut si quid Gallia progenuit.
Sic homines, sic et cœlestia Numina lusi,
Vix homines, vix ut Numina læsa putes.

Pluton, prince du sombre empire,
Ou les tiens ne rient jamais,
Reçois aujourd'hui Rabelais,
vous aurez, tous, de quoi rire.

[11]Guillaume Budé.

CORNEILLE

1606-1684

There is something forcible and majestic attached to the name of the father
of French tragedy. As Æschylus displayed a sublime energy before the
beauty of Sophocles, and the tenderness of Euripides threw gentler graces
over the Greek theatre, so (if we may compare aught French to the mightier

Athenian), before Racine added elegance and pathos, did Corneille, in
heroic verse and majestic situation, impart a dignity and simplicity to the
French drama afterwards wholly lost. We know little of him—a sort of
shadowy indistinctness confounds the course of his life; but in the midst of
this obscurity we trace the progress of a master mind—a man greater than
his works, and yet not so great; who conceived ideas more sublime than any
he executed, and who yet was held back from achieving all of which he
might have been capable by a certain narrowness of taste. Had Corneille
been English or Spanish, unfettered by French dramatic rules, unweakened
by the jejune powers of French verse, his talent had shown itself far more
mighty. As it is, however imperfect his plays may be, we admire the genius
of the man far more than that of his successors, as displayed in the same
career. It has been observed, that Shakspeare himself never portrayed a hero
—a man mastering fate through the force of virtue. Corneille has done this;
and some of his verses are instinct with an heroic spirit worthy a language
more capable of expressing them.
Pierre Corneille, master of waters and forests in the viscounty of Rouen,
and Marthe Le Pesant, a lady of noble family, were the parents of the poet,
Pierre Corneille, surnamed the great. They had two other children; Thomas,
who followed his brother's career, and was a dramatic author; and Marthe,
who also shared the talents of this illustrious family. She was consulted by
her brother, who read his plays to her before they were acted. She married,
and was the mother of Fontenelle, the author. Pierre was a pupil of the
Jesuits of Rouen, and always preserved feelings of gratitude towards that
society. He was educated for the bar, but neither displayed taste for, nor
obtained any success in, this career; while the spirit of the age and his own
genius pointed out another, in which he acquired high renown.
The civil dissensions which had hitherto desolated France prevented the
cultivation of the refined arts. Henry IV. bestowed peace on his country; but
the men of his day, brought up in the lap of war, were rough and unlettered.
It is generally found that national struggles develope, in the first instance,
warriors and statesmen; and, when these are at an end, intellectual activity,
finding no stage for practical exertion, turns itself to the creation of works
of the imagination. Thus, at least, it was in Rome, where Virgil and Horace
succeeded to Cato and Cæsar;—thus in France, where Corneille and
Fénélon replaced Sully and his hero king. The influence of Henry IV. had

been exerted to raise men fitted for the arts of government—that of
Richelieu, to depress them. In the midst of the peace of desolation,
bestowed by this minister on his country, which crushed all generous ardour
for liberty or political advancement, the arts had birth; and the cardinal had
not only sufficient discernment to encourage them in others, but entertained
the ambition of shining himself. The theatre as yet did not exist in France;
monastic exhibitions, mysteries and pageants, had been in vogue, which
displayed neither invention nor talent. By degrees the French gathered some
knowledge of the Spanish stage—the true source of modern drama, but they
imitated them badly. The total want of merit in the plays of Hardy has
condemned them to entire oblivion; and the dramas of Richelieu, though
mended and patched by the best authors in Paris, were altogether execrable:
1629 but the spirit was born and spread abroad. Pierre Corneille, in the
.
Ætat
provincial town of Rouen, imbibed it, and was incited to write. His
. first play was a comedy called "Melite." The plot was simple
23. enough, and suggested by an incident that occurred to himself. A
friend who was in love, and met with no return, introduced Corneille to the
lady, and asked him to write a sonnet, addressed to her, in his name. The
young poet found greater favour in the lady's eyes, and became a successful
rival; and this circumstance, which he mixed up with others less credible,
forms the plot of "Melite." "This," writes Corneille, "was my coup d'essai.
It is not in the rules, for I did not then know that such existed. Common
sense was my only guide, added to the example of Hardy. The success of
my piece was wonderful; it caused the establishment of a new company of
players in Paris; it equalled the best which had then appeared, and made me
known at court." The comedy itself has slight merit, and reads dully.
Perhaps the spectators felt this, for it had its critics. Corneille made a
1634 journey to Paris to see it acted. He there heard that the action of a
.
Ætat
play ought to be confined within the space of twenty-four hours; and
. he heard the meagerness of his plot and the familiarity of the
23. language censured. As a sort of bravado, to show what he could do,
he undertook to write a tragedy full of events, all of which should occur
during the space of twenty-four hours, and raised the language to a sort of
tragic elevation, while he took no pains to tax his genius to dc its best. At
this time Corneille neither understood the basis on which theatrical interest
rests (the struggle of the passions), nor had he acquired that force of
expression which elevates him above all other French dramatic writers. He

went on writing plays whose mediocrity renders them absolutely
unreadable, and produced six comedies, which met with great success, as
being the best which had then appeared, but which are now neither read nor
acted. Thus brought into notice, he became one among five authors who
corrected the plays of cardinal de Richelieu. His associates were L'Etoile,
Boisrobert, Colletet, and Rotrou; of whom the last only was a man of
genius, and he alone appreciated Corneille's merit. The others envied and
depreciated him. They were joined in this sort of cabal by men of greater
talent, and who ranked as the first literati of the day. Scuderi and Mairet
both attacked him; and at last he had the misfortune to awaken the ill
feelings of the cardinal-minister-author. Richelieu had caused a play to be
acted at his palace, called the "Comédie des Tuileries," the scenes of which
he himself arranged. Corneille ventured, unhidden, to alter something in the
1634 third act. Two of his associates represented this as an impertinence;
.
Ætat
and the cardinal reproved him, saying, that it was necessary to have
. "un esprit de suite," or an orderly mind, meaning a cringing one. This
29. circumstance probably disgusted Corneille with his occupation of
corrector to greatness; for, under the pretext that his presence was required
at Rouen for the management of his little property, he retired from his
subaltern employment.
Another reason may have induced him to take up his principal abode at
Rouen. The same lady who inspired the first conception of "Melite"
continued to have paramount influence over his thoughts. Her name was
madame du Pont; she was wife of a maitre des comptes of Rouen, and
perfectly beautiful. This was the serious and enduring passion of his life. He
addressed many love poems to her, which he always refused to publish, and
burnt two years before his death. She first inspired him with the love of
poetry; and her secret admiration for his productions rendered him eager to
write.[12] His genius was industrious and prolific.
We have few traces to denote that Corneille was a scholar. However, of
course, he read Latin, and Seneca furnished him with the idea of a tragedy
on the subject of Medea. The "Sophonisba" of Mairet was the only regular
1635 tragedy that had appeared on the French stage. Corneille aspired to
.
Ætat
classic correctness in this new play; but his piece met with little
. success. It was a cold imitation of a bad original—the interest was
29. null. Corneille was afterwards aware of its defects, and speaks

openly of them when he subsequently printed it. After "Medea" he wrote
another comedy, in his old style, called "The Illusion." It is strange that a
writer whose merit consists in energy and grandeur should have spent his
youth in writing tame and mediocre comedies.
At length Corneille broke through the sort of cloud which so long obscured
his genius and his glory. And let not the French ever forget that he owed his
initiation into true tragic interest to the Spanish drama. Difference of
manners, religion, and language renders the heroic subjects, which are so
sublime and vehement in their native Greek dress, in modern plays either
tame expositions of book learning, or false pictures, in which Frenchmen
take ancient names, but express modern sentiments. Spanish poets at once
escaped from these trammels: they portrayed men such as they knew them
to be; they represented events such as they witnessed; they depicted
passions such as they felt warm in their own hearts; and Corneille, by
recurring to these writers, at once entered into the spirit of stage effect and
interest, and opened to his countrymen a career, which, if they and he had
had discernment to follow, might have raised them far higher in the history
of modern drama. The incongruities of the Spanish theatre are, it is true,
numerous; and, in following their example, much was to be avoided, both in
plot and dialogue. Corneille felt this; but, in some degree, he fell into the
opposite extreme.
An Italian secretary of the queen, Mary d'Medici, named Chalons, having
retired to Rouen, advised Corneille to learn Spanish, and pointed out the
"Cid" of Guillen de Castro as affording an admirable subject for a drama.
[13]
There are several old Spanish romances which narrate the history of the
blow received by the father of the Cid from the Count Lozano—the death of
the former by the youthful hand of the avenging son—and the subsequent
demand which Ximena, daughter of Lozano, makes the king of the hand of
Rodrigo. The Spanish poet saw that, by interweaving the idea of a prior
attachment between Rodrigo and Ximena, the struggle of passion that must
ensue, ere she could consent to marry the slayer of her father, presented a
grand, deeply moving subject for a drama. Corneille followed closely in
Guillen de Castro's steps: he rejected certain puerilities adopted by the
Spaniard from the ancient ballads of their country, which were venerable in
Spain, but might excite ridicule in France; but he at the same time injured
his subject by too much attention to French rules. The senseless notion of

unity of time takes away from the probability of the circumstances; and that
which becomes natural after a lapse of years, is monstrous when crowded
into twenty-four hours; so that we repeat Scuderi's exclamation, "How
actively his personages were employed!" The French rule of having but two
or three persons on the stage at a time detracts from the spirited scene,
where, in the Spanish play, the nobles quarrel, and the blow is given at the
council board of the sovereign. Corneille mentions one or two defects
himself, which show rather his erroneous notions than defects in his play.
Speaking of the weakness of purpose and want of power which the king
displays as a fault, he says, no king ought to be introduced but as powerful
and prudent; though he gives no reason why a dramatic sovereign should be
an abstract idea, instead of an historic and real personage. When the king, in
Guillen de Castro, shows himself as he was, the lord paramount of turbulent
feudal nobles, whom he was unable to control, and yet to whom he will not
yield, and exclaims——

"Rey soy mal obecido,
Castigarè mis vasallos!"—

we see at once the various motives of action which rendered him eager to
crush a quarrel between two influential families by uniting them in
marriage. Corneille makes the scene take place at Seville, a city not in
possession of the Spaniards till many years after. Certainly, the countryman
of Shakspeare have no right to be severe on anachronisms; but the reason
Corneille gives for his choice of place displays slender knowledge of the
ancient state of a neighbouring country, or even of its geography. He says
he does it to make the sudden incursion of the Moors, and the unprepared
state of the king, more probable, by causing the attack to come by sea;
when, in fact, in those days the boundaries of the warring powers were so
uncertain, and the inroads so predatory, that nothing was more frequent than
unforeseen invasions; and, besides, Seville is on the Guadalquivir, and
several miles from the coast.
The real interest of the play, resting on the position of Rodrigo, who,
despite his affection for Ximena, avenges his father, and of the miserable
daughter, who feels her attachment for her lover survive the death of her
parent, and the mutual struggles that ensue, overpowers these minor defects,
aided as it is by powerful language and energy of passion. The success of

the tragedy was unprecedented, it was received with enthusiasm in Paris,
and all France re-echoed the praise, till a sort of epidemic transport was
spread through the country. It became a national phrase to applaud any
thing or person by calling them as excellent as the Cid (beau comme de
Cid); the name spread through the world; translations of the play were made
in all languages; a knowledge of it became incorporated with all minds. "I
knew two men," says Fontenelle, in his life of Corneille, "a soldier and a
mathematician, who had never heard of any other play that had ever been
written; but the name of the Cid had penetrated even the barbarous state in
which they lived."
So much renown of course inspired his would be rivals with rancour; they
tried to detract from the merit of the successful play, and to show that at
least it ought not to have succeeded. Scuderi published a bitter and
elaborate attack, remarkable chiefly for the entire ignorance it displays of
all the real springs of human passion and human interest. He calls Chimene
a monster, and speaks of "the odious struggle of love and honour." He
appealed to the French academy to decide on the justice of his criticism.
The academy, not long before instituted by the cardinal de Richelieu,
penetrated the minister's annoyance at Corneille's success, and his wish to
have a rival crushed; so they by no means liked to come forward in defence
of the poet; nor, on the other hand, did they relish the invidious task of
pronouncing against him; they signified, therefore, that they should remain
silent, unless invited by the author himself to decide on his merits. The
cardinal, eager for a blow against the young poet, commissioned Corneille's
intimate friend Boisrobert to write to him at Rouen on the subject. Corneille
evaded giving an assent, on the score that the task in question was unworthy
to occupy the academy; but, pressed by reiterated letters, he at last replied,
that the academy could do as it liked; adding, "and as you say that his
eminence would be glad to see their decision, and be diverted by it, I can
have no objection." On this, Richelieu urged the academy to its task. Three
of their number. De Bourzey, Des Marets, and Chapelain, were
commissioned to draw up a judgment: each performed his work apart; and
Chapelain cooked it into form, and presented it to the cardinal for his
approbation. Richelieu wrote his observations in the margin, and his grudge
against the poet suggested at least one ill-natured one. The academy, as an
excuse for their criticisms, remarked, that the discussions concerning the
greatest works, the "Jerusalem" of Tasso, and the "Pastor Fido," tended to

improve the art of poetry. Richelieu observed on this, "The praise and
blame of the 'Cid' is a dispute between the learned and the ignorant, while
the discussions on the other works mentioned were between clever men."
[14]
The work of the academy was, however, not over. The cardinal
recommended that a few handsful of flowers should be scattered over
Chapelain's criticism; but, when these flowers were added, he found them
far too fragrant and ornamental, and had them plucked up and thrown away.
1637 After a good deal of discussion, and five months' labour, the
.
Ætat
judgment of the academy was got up and printed. Scuderi hailed it as
. a sentence in his favour: Corneille was not so well pleased; but, after
31. some indecision, he resolved to abstain from all reply. Such a course
was the most dignified; and he excused the failure of respect it might show
to the academy on the score that it marked a higher degree towards the
cardinal.
He never, it may be believed, forgot the cardinal's ill offices on this
occasion, though his fear of offending caused him to dedicate his play of
1639 "Horace" to him in an adulatory address. This tragedy shows a
.
Ætat
considerable advance in the power of expressing noble and heroic
. sentiments. The framework is too slight, being the duel of the Horatii
33. and the Curiatii, and the subsequent murder of his sister by the
surviving Horatius, when she reproached him for slaying her betrothed.
Such a subject in the hands of Shakspeare had not, indeed, been threadbare.
He would have brought the jealousies of the states of Rome and Alba in
living scenes before our eyes. We should have beheld the collision of
turbulent, ambitious spirits, and felt that the world was not large enough for
both. The pernicious rule of unity of time and place prevented this: the
ambition of Rome could be displayed only in the single person of Horatius.
All we have, therefore, are various scenes between him, his sister, his wife,
and the Curiatius, betrothed to the former, and brother to the latter; and
these scenes are, for the most part, repetitions one of another; for the same
rules confining the time of action, restrict the whole play to the delineation
of the catastrophe; variety of incident and feeling is excluded, and the art of
the French dramatist consists principally in petty devices, to delay the
catastrophe, and so to drag it through long tête-à-tête conversations, till the
fifth act: often they are unable to defer it beyond the fourth, and then the
fifth is an appendix of little account.

"Horace" is, however, a masterpiece. Corneille could speak as a Roman,
and the character of the hero is conceived with a simplicity and severity of
taste worthy of his country.
In his next piece Corneille rose yet higher. "Cinna" is usually considered his
chef d'œuvre. It contains admirable scenes, unsurpassed by any author. Did
the scene in which Augustus asks the advice of Cinna and Maximus as to
his meditated abdication pass between the personages (Mecænas and
Agrippa) who really were called into consultation on the subject, it had
been faultless. The mixture of admirable reasoning, covert and delicate
flattery, forcible eloquence, and happy versification, is perhaps unequalled
in any work that exists. It is, to a degree, spoiled as it stands; for the false
part which the conspirators act, and the peculiarly base conduct of Cinna,
deteriorate from the interest of the whole drama; and, although in
subsequent portions of the play he appears in the more interesting light of a
man struggling between remorse and love, we cannot recover from the
impression, and thus the character wants that congruity and likelihood
necessary for an ideal hero. As works of art, we may say, once for all,
Corneille's tragedies are far from perfect. Very inferior poets have attained
happier combinations of plot: but not one among his countrymen—few of
any nation—have equalled him in scenes; in declamations full of energy
and poetry; in single expressions that embody the truth of passion and the
result of a life of experience; in noble sentiments, such as made the great
Condé weep from admiration. In this play he did not happily confine
himself to absolute unity of place. Such was his erroneous notion that he
mentions this as a fault; while Voltaire drolly, yet seriously, observes that
unity of place had been preserved had the stage represented two apartments
at once. How far this would have helped the imagination it is impossible to
say; but in real life no spectator commands a view of the interior of two
separate rooms at once, except, indeed, in a penitentiary.
1640 The tragedies that followed "Cinna" continued to sustain the
.
Ætat
reputation of the poet. "Polyeucte," which succeeded to it the
. following year, is, perhaps, the most delightful of all his plays. I
34. know no other work of the imagination in which a woman, loving
one man and marrying another, preserves at once dignity and sweetness.
Pauline loves Severus with all the enthusiasm of a girl's first passion;—she
fears to see him again, so well does she remember the power of that love;

but, though she fears, she does not lament: we perceive that conjugal
tenderness for a young and virtuous husband, a sense of duty, hallowed by
purity of feeling and softened by affection, have gathered over the ruins of a
former attachment for another, while the heroism and generosity of Severus
adds dignity to the character of her who once loved him so fondly. The only
fault that strikes at all forcibly in this piece is a sort of brusquerie, or want
of keeping, in the character of the martyr. The tragedy opens with his
wishing to defer the sacrament of baptism because his wife had had a bad
dream; and, after this, we are not prepared for his sudden resolution to
overthrow the altars of his country, and to devote himself on the instant to
martyrdom. The poet meant that we should feel this increase of fervour as
the effect of baptism; but he has somewhat failed, by not making us expect
it: and to raise expectation, so that no event should appear startling, is the
great art of dramatic writing. The real fault is in the senseless notion of
unity of time: had the author given his personages space to breathe, all had
been in harmony. It must not be omitted, that when Corneille read this play,
before its representation, to an assembly of beaux esprits, at the hotel de
Rambouillet, the learned conclave came to the decision that it would not
succeed, and deputed Voiture to persuade the author to withdraw it, as
Christianity introduced on the stage had offended many. Corneille,
frightened at this sentence, endeavoured to get it out of the hands of the
actors, but was persuaded by one among them to let it take its chance.[15]
The fine people of Paris could not imagine that a Christian martyr would
command the interest and sympathy of an audience. Where the scene,
however, is founded on truth and nature, the hearts of the listeners are
carried away; and Corneille could always command admiration for his
heroes, through the power of the situations he conceived, and the elevation
and beauty of his language.
Corneille again attempted a comedy. Voltaire justly observes, that the
French owe their first tragedy and their first comedy of character to the
Spanish. The "Menteur" of Corneille is taken from "El Verdad sospechosa"
of Lope de Vega; and bears marks of its Spanish origin in the intricacy of its
intrigue, and its love-making out of window, so usual in Spain, and
unnatural elsewhere. This comedy had the greatest success; many of the
verses passed into sayings—the very situations became proverbs. "The
Liar" had just arrived from Poietiers; and it grew into a fashion, when any
man told an incredible story, to ask whether he had come from Poietiers?

1646 "Rodogune," which succeeded, is (with the lamentable defect of the
.
Ætat
unlucky unity of time and place) more like a Spanish or an English
. play than any other of Corneille's, except the "Cid." The very
40. intricacy and faults of the plot, founded, as it is, on some old
forgotten tale, give it the same wild romantic interest. Corneille, indeed,
says he took the story from Appian and other historical sources; but, as the
tale existed, perhaps he saw that first, and then consulted the ancient
authorities. Voltaire, in his remarks, scarcely knows what to say to it. It
succeeded brilliantly, kept possession of the stage, and always ranks as one
of Corneille's best tragedies. He is forced, therefore, to acknowledge its
merit, although the fault in the conduct and story struck him forcibly. He
repeats, perpetually, "The pit was pleased; so we must allow this play to
have merit, though there is so much in it to shock an enlightened critic."
Corneille himself favoured this tragedy with particular regard. "I have often
been asked at court," he says, "which of my poems I preferred; and I found
all those who questioned me so partial either to 'Cinna or the 'Cid,' that I
never dared declare all the tenderness I felt for this one, to which I would
willingly have given my suffrage, had I not feared to fail in some degree in
the respect I owed to those who inclined the other way. My preference is,
perhaps, the result of one of those blind partialities which fathers sometimes
feel for one child rather than another: perhaps some self-love mingles with
it, since this tragedy seems to me more entirely my own than any of its
predecessors, on account of its surprising incidents, which are all my own
invention, and which had never before been witnessed on the stage; and,
finally, perhaps a little real merit renders this partiality not entirely unjust."
Fontenelle mentions, as another cause for it, the labour he bestowed; since
he spent a year in meditating the subject. There might be another reason, to
which neither Corneille nor his biographer allude—that this play
occasioned him a triumph over a rival. Gilbert brought out a tragedy on the
same subject a few months before: as it is acknowledged that Corneille's
was written first, he, perhaps, heard of the subject, and took the details from
the novel in question. However that may be, Gilbert's play was never acted
a second time; yet it met with powerful patrons in its fall, and was
published, with a flourishing dedication to the king's brother; but nothing
could preserve it from oblivion. The German critics are particularly severe
on "Rodogune," and with some justice: there is want of nature in the

situations and sentiments; we are attached to none of the characters; and the
heroine herself is utterly insignificant.
Corneille had now reached the acme of his fame. Other plays succeeded,
which did not deserve the name of tragedies, but ought, as Voltaire remarks,
to be entitled heroic comedies.[16] These pieces were of unequal merit;
having here and there traces of the great master's hand, but defective as
wholes. Usually, he introduces one character of power and interest that
elevates them, and which, when filled by a good actor, rendered them
successful; but they were not hailed with the enthusiasm that attended his
earlier plays. The great Condé looked cold on "Don Sancho," and it was
heard of no more; while the fastidious taste of the French revolted from the
subject of "Theodore." Worse overthrow was in store. "Pertharite," founded
on a Lombard story, failed altogether; and its ill fortune, he tells us, so
disgusted him as to induce him to retreat entirely from the theatre. He
turned his thoughts to other works. He wrote his "Essays on the Theatre,"
which contain much acute and admirable criticism; though, like all French
writers on that subject, he misses the real subject of discussion. He
translated, also, the "Imitation of Jesus Christ" into French—being
persuaded to this design by the jesuits. He fails, as our poets are apt to fail,
when they versify the psalms; the dignified simplicity of the original being
lost in the frippery of modern rhyme.
It had been happy for Corneille had he adhered to his resolves to write no
more for the theatre. But M. Fouquet, the celebrated and unfortunate
minister of finances to Louis XIV., caused him to break it. Fouquet begged
him to dramatise one of three subjects which he mentioned. Corneille chose
Œdipus, "Its success," he writes, "compensated to me for the failure of the
other; since the king was sufficiently pleased to cause me to receive solid
testimonials of his satisfaction; and I took his liberality as a tacit order to
consecrate to the amusement of his majesty all the invention and power
which age and former labours had spared." This was a melancholy resolve
—his subsequent plays were not worthy of their predecessors. They contain
fine scenes and eloquent passages; but a hard dry spirit crept over him,
which caused him to mistake exaggerated sentiments for nobleness of soul.
The plots, also, were bad; the conduct enfeebled by uninteresting episodes,
or by the worse expedient of giving the hero himself some under amatory
interest that lowered him entirely. Voltaire remarks, "Corneille's genius was

still in force. He ought to have been severe on himself, or to have had
severe friends. A man capable of writing fine scenes might have written a
good play. It was a great misfortune that no one told him that he chose his
subjects badly." It is sad to be obliged to make excuses for genius. No doubt
Corneille failed in invention as he grew older. His former power of boldness
and felicity of expression often shed rays of light upon his feebler works;
but he could no longer conceive a whole, whose parts should be
harmonious, whose entire effect should be sublime.
The bounty of the king in bestowing a pension on him, it is probable, was
one cause of his establishing himself in Paris, and his brother's recent
success as a dramatist a yet more urgent one. Hitherto Corneille had resided
at Rouen, visiting the capital only at intervals, when he brought out any new
play. In 1642 he had been elected member of the French academy; but that
circumstance caused no change in his mode of life. He was not formed to
shine at court, nor in the gay Parisian circles. Simple, almost rustic, in his
manners and appearance, his genius was not discernible to the casual
observer. "The first time I saw him," says a writer of the day, "I took him
for a merchant of Rouen—his exterior gave no token of his talents, and he
was slow, and even dull, in conversation." Corneille certainly neglected the
refinements of society too much; or, rather, nature, who had been so liberal
to him in rich gifts, had withheld minor ones. When his familiar friends,
who desired to see him perfect, spoke to him of his defects, he replied with
a smile, "I am not the less Pierre Corneille." La Bruyère bears the same
testimony: "Simple and timid; tiresome in conversation—he uses one word
for another—he knows not how to recite his own verses."[17]
In truth, Corneille's merit did not, as with many Frenchmen, lie on the
surface. Conscious of his own desert, ambitious of glory, proud, yet shy, he
shrunk from society where all excellence is despised that does not sparkle
and amuse. We are inclined to believe from these considerations that his
migration to Paris is attributable rather to his brother than to himself.
Thomas Corneille was twenty years the junior. The brothers had married
two sisters of the name of De Lampériere, between whom existed the same
difference of age. The family was united by all the bonds of affection and
virtue. Their property, even, was in common; and it was not until after
Corneille's death that the inheritance of their wives was divided, and that
each sister received her share. The brothers were fondly attached, and lived

under the same roof. We are told that Thomas wrote verses with much
greater facility than Pierre, and he well might, considering what his verses
are; and, when Pierre wanted a rhyme, he opened a trap door
communicating with his brother's room, and asked him to give one. Nor
was Pierre less attached to his sister, to whom he was accustomed to read
his pieces when written. She had good taste and an enlightened judgment,
and was worthy of her relationship to the poet.
Thomas Corneille had lately met with success in the same career as his
brother. His play of "Timocrates" was acted for six months together; and the
king went to the unfashionable theatre of the Marais, at which it was
brought out, for the purpose of seeing it. Nothing could be more dissimilar
than the productions of the brothers. Thomas Corneille had merit, and one
or two of his plays ("Le Comte d'Essex" in particular) kept possession of
the stage: he had, however, knack instead of genius. He could contrive
interesting situations to amuse the audience; but his verses are tame, his
dialogue trivial, his conceptions altogether mediocre. Still, in its day,
success is success, and, under its influence, the younger Corneille aspired to
the delights of a brilliant career in the capital.
The establishment of the family in Paris is ascertained by a 1662
procuration or power of attorney given by the brothers, empowering .Ætat
a cousin to manage their affairs at Rouen. Corneille seemed to feel .
the change as a new spur to exertion; but, unfortunately, invention no 56.
longer waited on industry, as of old. Considering it his duty to write for the
stage, he brought out piece after piece, in which he mistook involved
intrigue for interest, crime on stilts for heroism, and declamation for
passion. His tragedies fell coldly on the public ear; and, as he could not
understand why this should he, he always alleges some trivial circumstance
as the cause of his ill success; for, having laboured as sedulously as in his
early plays, he was insensible to the fact, that arid though pompous
dialogues were substituted for sublime eloquence. Boileau's epigram on
these unfortunate testimonies of decayed genius is well known:—when the
wits of Paris repeated after him:

"J'ai vu l'Agésilas;
Hélas!
Mais après Attila,

Hola!"
Corneille might well regret that he had not persevered in the silence to
which he condemned himself when Pertharite failed.
A young rival also sprung up—a rival whose graceful diction, whose
impassioned tenderness, and elegant correctness, are the delight of French
critics to this day. Yet, though Voltaire and others have set Racine far above
Corneille, and though Saint Evremond wrote at the time that the advanced
age of Corneille no longer alarmed him, since the French drama would not
die with him, the younger poet's superiority was by no means universally
acknowledged in his own time. Corneille had a party who still adhered to
their early favourite, and called Racine's elegance feebleness, compared
with the rough sublimity of the father of the art. "Racine writes agreeably,"
says madame de Sévigné, in a letter to her daughter; "but there is nothing
absolutely beautiful, nothing sublime—none of those tirades of Corneille
which thrill. We must never compare him with Racine; but be aware of the
difference. We must excuse Corneille's bad verses in favour of those divine
and sublime beauties which fill us with transport—these are traits of genius
which are quite inimitable. Despréaux says even more than me,—in a word,
this is good taste; let us preserve it." If, therefore, Corneille had ceased to
write, if he had let his nobler tragedies remain as trophies of past victory,
and not aimed at new, he might have held a proud position, guarded by
numerous partisans, who exalted him far above his rival. But he continued
to write, and he was unsuccessful—thus it became a living struggle, in
which he had the worst. He did not like to appear envious: he felt what he
said, and he said justly, that Racine's Greek or Mahometan heroes were but
Frenchmen with ancient or Turkish names; but he was aware that this
remark might be considered invidious. Yet he could not conceal his opinion,
nor the offence he took, when Racine transplanted a verse from the Cid into
his comedy of The "Plaideurs"—

"Ses rides sur son front ont gravés ses exploits."

"It ill becomes a young man," he said, "to make game of other people's
verses." It was still worse when he was seduced into what the French have
named a duel with Racine. Henrietta, daughter of our Charles I., wife of the
brother of Louis XIV., was a principal patroness of men of genius;—her

talents, her taste, her accomplishments; the generosity and kindness of her
disposition, made her respected and loved. Louis and she had been attached
to one another; their mutual position forced them to subdue the passion; but
their triumph over it was not achieved without struggles, which, no doubt,
appeared romantic and even tragical to the poor princess. She wished this
combat to be immortalised; and, finding in the loves and separation of Titus
and Berenice a similarity with her own fate, she deputed the marquis de
Dangeau to engage Corneille and Racine, unknown to one another, each to
write a tragedy on this subject—not a very promising one at best—and still
more difficult on the French stage, where the catastrophe alone forms the
piece. But Racine conquered these difficulties;—tenderness and truth of
passion interested in place of incident—the audience wept—and criticism
was mute. Corneille floundered miserably: love with him is always an
adjunct and an episode, but not the whole subject: it helps as a motive—it is
never the end. He fancied that his young rival was angry with him for
competing with him; and he gave signs of a querulousness which he had no
right to feel[18]; but there is something so naïve in his self praises, and such
ingenuousness in his repinings, that we look on them as traits portraying the
simplicity and singleness of his character, rather than as marks of vanity or
invidiousness.
After "Berenice," he wrote two other plays, "Pulcherie" and "Surena," and
then, happily, gave up composition. Though he saw the pieces of his young
rival hailed with delight, he had the gratification of knowing that his own
chef-d'œuvres were often acted with applause, that the best critics regarded
them with enthusiasm, and that his position was firmly established as the
father of French tragedy. He lived to a considerable age; and his mind
became enfeebled during the last year of his life. He died on the 1st
September, 1584, in the seventy-ninth year of his age.
There is a harmony between the works of Corneille and his character, which
his contemporaries, who appreciated only the brilliant, mistook, but which
strikes forcibly. He was proud and reserved. Though his dedications are
phrased according to the adulatory ceremonial of the day, his conduct was
always dignified and independent. He seldom appeared at court, where his
lofty, though simple, character found nothing to attract. He was, besides,
careless of the gifts of fortune: he detested the cares of property, shrinking,
with terror, from such details. Serious, and even melancholy, trifles had no

charms for him: dramatic composition absorbed his whole thoughts; his
studies tended to improvement in that vocation only. Strait-forward and
simple in manner,—his person, though tall, was heavy—his face was
strongly marked and expressive—his eyes full of fire,—there was
something in the whole man that bespoke strength, not grace—yet a
strength full of dignity.
His fortunes were low. The trifling pension allowed him by Cardinal
Richelieu expired with that minister. Many years afterwards, Louis XIV.
granted him a pension of 2000 francs as the first dramatic poet of the world.
He was wholly indifferent to gain; the actors paid him what they pleased for
his pieces; he never called them to account. He lived frugally, but had little
to live on. A few days before his death his family were in considerable
straits for want of money, and the king, hearing of this, sent him 200 louis.
In these traits, recorded chiefly by his brother and his nephew, Fontenelle,
we see the genuine traces of a poet. Of a man whose heart is set on the
ideal, and whose mind is occupied by conceptions engendered within itself
—to whom the outward world is of slight account, except as it influences
his imagination or excites his affections. The political struggles and civil
wars, in which his youth was spent, gave a sort of republican loftiness to his
mind, energy without fierceness, somewhat at variance with the French
character.
Once, on entering a theatre at Paris, after a longer retreat than usual in his
native town, the actors stopped short: the great Condé, the prince of Conti,
together with the whole audience, rose: the acclamation was general and
long continued. Such flattering testimonials embarrassed a man modest by
nature, and unused to make a show of himself; but they evince the generous
spirit of his country. Marks of veneration followed his death.
His character commanded and met with respect. He had long been the
eldest member of the academy: on his death his brother was elected to
succeed him. Racine contended for the honour of receiving the new
academician; on which occasion it was the custom to make a speech in
praise of the late member whose place the new one took. Racine's eulogy on
Corneille met with great applause, and he recited it a second time before the
king. He spoke with enthusiasm of his merits, and, in particular, of "a
certain strength, a certain elevation, which transports, and renders his very

defects, if he had any, more venerable than the excellence of others." This
testimony was honourable to Racine, who had, indeed, so heartfelt an
appreciation of his best passages, that, although he interdicted dramas and
poetry from his children, he caused them to learn, and taught them to
admire, various scenes in Corneille. Many years after Voltaire discovered a
descendant of the great poet[19]: he spread the discovery abroad; he invited
the young lady to Ferney as to her home; and published for her benefit his
two volumes of commentary on her great ancestor's works. This
commentary has been found fault with for the degree of blame it contains.
Voltaire says himself, he wrote it chiefly to instruct future dramatic poets,
and he was sincere in his views, even if he were mistaken. It is chiefly
remarkable for the extent of its verbal criticism, and his earnest endeavour
to banish all familiar expressions from tragic dialogue, thus rendering
French tragedies more factitious than ever. It is strange to remark the
different genius of various languages. We endeavour perpetually to bring
back ours to the familiar and antique Saxon. We regard our translation of
the Bible as a precious treasure, even in this light, being a source to which
all good writers resort for true unadulterated English. It has been remarked
that the sublimest passages of our greatest poets are written in short words,
that is, in Anglo-Saxon, or pure English. While Voltaire, on the contrary,
tried to substitute words unused in conversation, strangers to the real living
expression of passion, and which give a factitious and false air, peculiar to
the French buskin, and alien to true elevation of language.
So much has been said of Corneille's tragedies in the preceding pages that
we need scarcely revert to them. He originated the French theatre. It was yet
in the block when he took up his artist-tools. We grieve at the mistakes he
made—mistakes, as to the structure of the drama, confirmed by subsequent
writers, which mark classic French tragedy as an artificial and contracted
offspring of a school, instead of being the free and genuine child of nature
and genius. Corneille's originality, however, often bursts through these
trammels: he has more truth and simplicity than any of his successors, and,
as well as being the father of the French drama, we may name him the most
vigorous and sublime poet that France has produced.

[12]

"J'ai brûlé fort longtemps d'une amour assez grande,

Et que jusqu'au tombeau je dois bien estimer,
Puisque ce fut par-là que j'appris à rimer.
Mon bonheur commença quand mon ame fut prise.
Je gagnai de la gloire en perdant ma franchise.
Charmé de deux beaux yeux, mon vers charma la cour;
Et ce que j'ai de nom je le dois à l'amour.
J'adorai donc Phylis, et la secrète estime
Que ce divin esprit faisait de notre rime.
Me fit devenir poète aussitôt qu'amoureux:
Elle eut mes premiers vers, elle eut mes premiers feux,
Et bien que maintenant cette belle inhumaine
Traite mon souvenir avec un peu de haine,
Je me trouve toujours en état de l'aimer;
Je me sens tout ému quand je l'entends nommer;
Et par le doux effet d'une prompte tendresse,
Mon cœur, sans mon aveu, reconnaît sa maîtresse.
Après beaucoup de vœux et de soumissions,
Un malheur rompt le cours de nos affections;
Mais tout mon amour en elle consommée,
Je ne vois rien d'aimable après l'avoir aimée;
Aussi n'aimé-je plus, et nul objet vainqueur
N'a possédé depuis ma veine ni mon cœur."
CORNEILLE.—Poésies Diverses.
[13]See Voltaire's preface to his Commentary on the Cid, and also the admirable account of Guillen
de Castro, by Lord Holland.
[14]Voltaire says that he gives the cardinal credit for good faith in this remark, since he saw and felt
the defects of the "Cid." Voltaire was himself accused of envy on account of the mass of criticism he
accumulated on Corneille, and was glad to show toleration for that which he desired to be tolerated.
Both, probably, were sincere in their blame. The question is, how far covert envy (unacknowledged
even to themselves) opened their eyes to defects, which otherwise had passed unnoticed.
[15]Fontenelle.
[16]It is curious enough that such pieces often replace the higher tragedy with great effect in days
when poetry is at a low ebb, and an audience desires rather to be amused than deeply moved. Such at
this time are the delightful dramas of Sheridan Knowles, such the charming "Lady of Lyons," which
portray the serious romance of real life, and impart the interest of situation and character, without
pretending to the sublime terrors or pathos of heroic tragedy.
[17]Corneille gives much the same account of himself in some verses written in his youth, and which
he calls a slight picture of himself:—

"En matière d'amour je suis fort inégal;
J'en écris assez bien, et le fais assez mal;
J'ai la plume féconde, et la bouche sterile:
Bon galant au théâtre, et fort mauvais en ville;
Et l'on peut rarement m'écouter sans ennui;
Que quand je me produis par la bouche d'autrui."

[18]See his "Excuse à Arioste." In another place he says,—

"Si mes quinze lustres
Font encore quelque peine aux modernes illustres;
S'il en est de fâcheux jusqu'à se chagriner,
Je n'aurai pas longtemps à les importuner."

[19]Corneille had three sons: two entered the army; the third became an ecclesiastic; one fell at the
battle of Grave, in 1677; they all died without posterity. He had one daughter, from whom descended
the family of Guenebaud.

ROCHEFOUCAULD

1613-1680

Grimm, in his correspondence, records, that it was a saying of d'Alembert,
that, in life, "Ce n'est qu'heur et malheur," that it was all luck or ill luck. The
same thing may be said of many books; and, perhaps, of none more than
that which has given literary celebrity to François, duke de la
Rochefoucauld. The experience of a long life, spent for the most part in the
very nucleus of the intrigues of party and the artifices of a court, reduced
into sententious maxims, affords food for curiosity, while it flatters our
idleness. The most indolent person may read a maxim, and ponder on its
truth, and be led to meditate, without any violent exertion of mind. In
addition, knowledge of the world, as it is called, always interests. Voltaire
says of the "Maxims," "Though there is but one truth in this collection,
which is that self-love is the motive of all, yet this thought is presented
under such various aspects that it is always impressive. If we considered the
pervading opinion of the book theoretically, we might be inclined to parody
this remark, and say, "though there is but one multiformed falsehood in this
collection,"—but we defer our consideration of the principles of this work
till we have given an account of its author, who was no obscure man,
meditating the lessons of wisdom in solitude, but the leader of a party, a
soldier, a man of gallantry and of fashion; one such as is only produced, in
its perfection, in a society highly cultivated; yet the foundations of his
character were thrown in times of ignorance and turbulence."

The family of La Rochefoucauld is one of the noblest in France: it ranks
equal with that of the sovereign, and enjoyed almost monarchical power
when residing on its own possessions; while its influence might give
preponderance to the party it espoused, and even shake the throne. François,
the eldest son of the duke then in possession, was born at his paternal castle
of Rochefoucauld, in Angoumois, in 1613, two years subsequent to the
assassination of Henry IV. He grew up, therefore, during the reign of Louis
XIII., and first came to court during the height of cardinal de Richelieu's
power. His education had been neglected. Madame de Maintenon said of
him, in after times, that "his physiognomy was prepossessing, his
demeanour dignified; that he had great talent, and little knowledge." We
have no details of his early life at court. He was the friend of the duchess de
Chevreuse, favourite of the queen, Anne of Austria; and, when this lady was
banished, the family of la Rochefoucauld fell into disgrace, and retired to
the shelter of their estates.
But a few years before the nobles of France possessed greater power than
the king himself. The short reign and wise administration of Henry IV. and
Sully had infused a somewhat better spirit into the body politic of the
kingdom than that which for forty years had torn the country with civil war;
but the happy effects of that prosperous period were obliterated on the
accession of Louis XIII. After a series of struggles, however, Richelieu
became prime minister; and with unflinching courage, and resolute and
merciless policy, he proceeded to crush the nobility, and to raise the
monarchical power (invested, it may be said, in his own person,) into
absolute rule. The nobles in those days did not plot to supplant each other in
the favour of their royal master, nor to gain some place near the royal
person; they aimed at supremacy over the king himself: reluctantly, and not
without struggles that cost the lives and fortunes of many of the chief
among them, did the nobles yield to the despotism of Richelieu. The mother
of their sovereign was banished; his brother disgraced; his queen enslaved;
the prisons filled with victims; the provinces with exiles; the blood of many
flowed: the cardinal reigned secure, and the power of the contending nobles
was reduced to feudal command in their own domains.
At length Richelieu died; and, for a moment, his vanquished enemies
fancied that their turn was come for acquiring dominion. The state prisons
were thrown open; the exiles hastened to return. The friends of the family of

la Rochefoucauld wrote to advise them to appear at court. The reigning
duke and his sons immediately followed this counsel.[20] His eldest 1642
.
son was called prince de Marsillac: his name and person were well Ætat
known as the friend of the duchess of Chevreuse, and as a favourite .
of Anne of Austria. He has left us an account of that period, in which 29.
he details the high hopes of his party and subsequent disappointment.
"The persecution I had suffered," he writes[21], "during the power of the
cardinal de Richelieu, having finished with his life, I thought it right to
return to court. The ill health of the king, and the disinclination that he
manifested to confide his children and kingdom to the queen, made me
hope that I might soon find important occasions for serving her, and of
giving her, in the present state of things, the same marks of attachment
which she had received from me on all occasions when her interests, and
those of madame de Chevreuse, were in opposition to those of cardinal de
Richelieu. I arrived at court; and found it as submissive to his will after his
death as during his life. His relations and his creatures continued to enjoy
all the advantages they had gained through him; and by a turn of fortune, of
which there are few examples, the king, who hated him, and desired his fall,
was obliged, not only to conceal his sentiments, but even to authorise the
disposition made by the cardinal in his will of the principal employments
and most important places in his kingdom. He chose cardinal Mazarin to
succeed him in the government. Nevertheless, as the health of the king was
deplorable, there was a likelihood that every thing would soon change, and
that, the queen or monsieur (the duke of Orleans, brother to Louis XIII.)
acquiring the regency, they would revenge on the followers of Richelieu the
outrages they had received from himself."
Affairs, however, took a very different turn. Mazarin and others, the
creatures of and successors to Richelieu, were less arrogant, less ambitious,
and less resolute than their master. They were willing to acquire power by
allying themselves to the adverse party. Mazarin, in particular, felt that, on
the death of Louis XIII., he should not possess influence enough to cope
with the persons who, by rank, were destined to the regency; and he
perceived, at once, that it was his best policy to become the friend, instead
of the rival, of the queen and the duke of Orleans. Anne of Austria saw
safety in encouraging him in this conduct. Mazarin grew into a favourite,
and supplanted those who had stood by her during her years of adversity.

Thus, while the surface of things appeared the same, the spirit was changed.
Rochefoucauld saw that the queen entertained new views and new
partialities, and was supported by the same party by which she had been
hitherto oppressed. As her friend, he perceived the advantages she gained
by this line of conduct, and, by prudent concessions, retained her regard.
When the king died, and she became regent, Mazarin had made himself
necessary to her, for it was by his policy that the other members of the
council of the regency were reduced to insignificance; so that the queen,
entirely attached to him, anticipated with something of aversion the
reappearance of madame de Chevreuse, who, on the death of Louis XIII.,
hastened 1643 to return to Paris. The prince of Marsillac perceived 1643
her apprehensions, and asked her permission to meet madame de .Ætat
Chevreuse on her way, which the queen readily granted, hoping that .
the prince would dispose her former friend to seek the friendship of 30.
Mazarin. This was, indeed, Marsillac's purpose: he gave the fallen favourite
the best advice that prudence could suggest, and the duchess promised to
follow it. In this she failed. She fancied that she could supplant the cardinal
in the queen's favour; she acted with arrogance; and her imprudence insured
her ruin.
Le bon temps de la régence followed. For five years France enjoyed
external and internal prosperity. The former was insured by the battle of
Rocroi, and other successes, obtained by the prince of Condé and Turenne,
against the power of Spain. The latter was more fallacious. The intrigues,
cabals, and dissensions of the court were carried on with virulence.
Manners became every day more and more corrupt—the gulf between
Mazarin and his antagonists wider. We have little trace of Marsillac's
conduct during this interval. He followed the campaigns, and served
gallantly in several actions. He was present at the siege of Mardike, in
which he was wounded in the shoulder, which obliged him to return to
Paris. He bought the governorship of Poitou, and took up his residence
there. He visited Paris, but want of money prevented his remaining. His
secretary, Gourville, lets us into a view of the corruption of the times, when
he details how he enriched his master by only obtaining from Emery, the
comptroller of the finances, a man of low extraction, whose extortion,
luxuriousness, and debauchery disgusted the nation, a passport for a
thousand tons of wheat, to be brought from Poitou to the capital; and the

profit he gained by this transaction enabled the prince, to his infinite joy, to
remain in Paris.
There can be little doubt that, at this time, he had immersed himself in
political intrigue. Madame de Chevreuse was again banished; but affairs
had taken another and more important aspect than mere intrigues and
disputes among courtiers for royal favour. The extravagance of the court,
and corruption of the times, had thrown the finances into disorder; and
every means most subversive of the prosperity of the people, and of justice,
was resorted to by Emery to supply the royal treasury. The consequence
was universal discontent. Parliament resisted the court by its decrees; the
populace of Paris supported parliament; and a regular system of resistance
to the regent and her minister was formed. This opposition received the
name of the Fronde: the persons who formed it were called Frondeurs.
These were bent, the duke de la Rochefoucauld tells us, in his memoirs, on
arresting the course of the calamities at hand; having the same object,
though urged by a different motive, as those who were instigated by hatred
1648 of the cardinal. At first the remonstrances of parliament, and the
.
Ætat
opposition of the court, was a war of words only; but when the court,
. enraged at any opposition to its will, proceeded to arrest three
35. principal members of parliament, the people of Paris rose in a body;
the day of the barricades ensued, the members were set free, and the court
forced to yield.
But the tumults did not end here: the celebrated De Retz, then coadjutor to
the archbishop of Paris, who saw his towering ambition crushed by the
distrust of the court, resolved to make himself feared; and, instead of
permitting the spirit of sedition in the capital to subside, he excited it to its
utmost. It became necessary for him, in the system of opposition that
ensued, to secure some prince of the blood at the head of his party. His eyes
turned towards the great Condé; but he continued faithful to the queen: the
coadjutor was, therefore, forced to centre his hopes in this prince's younger
brother, the prince of Conti. Rochefoucauld gives an account, in his
memoirs, of the winning over of this prince. "The prince of Conti," he
writes, "was ill satisfied at not possessing a place in the council, and even
more at the neglect with which the prince of Condé treated him; and as he
was entirely influenced by his sister, the duchess de Longueville, who was
piqued at the indifference her elder brother displayed towards her, he

abandoned himself without reserve to his resentment. This princess, who
had a great share afterwards in these affairs, possessed all the advantages of
talent and beauty to so great a degree, joined to so many charms, that it
appeared as if nature had taken pleasure in forming a perfect and finished
work in her: but these qualities lost a part of their brilliancy through a
defect which was never before seen in a person of this merit; which was
that, far from giving the law to those who had a particular adoration for her,
she transfused herself so entirely into their sentiments that she entirely
forgot her own. At this time the prince de Marsillac had a share in her heart;
and, as he joined his ambition to his love, he inspired her with a taste for
politics, to which she had a natural aversion, and took advantage of her
wish to revenge herself on the prince of Condé by opposing Conti to him.
De Retz was fortunate in his project, through the sentiments entertained by
the brother and sister, who allied themselves to the Frondeurs by a treaty,
into which the duke de Longueville was drawn by his hopes of succeeding,
through the help of parliament, in his ill-founded pretensions of being
treated like a prince of the blood."[22]
The state of tumult and street warfare into which Paris was plunged by
these intrigues at last determined the queen to the most desperate measures:
she resolved to escape from the capital, with the young king, the cardinal,
and the whole court, and then to blockade it. In this plan she succeeded,
through her admirable presence of mind and fearlessness. The court
retreated to St. Germain. Here they were unprovided even with necessaries.
They lived in disfurnished apartments, they slept on straw, and were
exposed to a thousand hardships. The prince of Conti, and Marsillac, and
the duke de Longueville followed the court. De Retz was confounded by
their retreat; and sent the marquis de Noirmoutier to learn the cause of their
secession, and, if possible, to bring them back. The motive of these princes
in apparently deserting their party was, it would seem, to further their own
private interests.[23] Marsillac left his secretary, Gourville, behind, to
negotiate with the leading members of parliament for the electing the prince
of Conti generalissimo of the Parisian troops. When this transaction was
arranged, the princes determined on their return to the capital. It was a
matter of danger and difficulty to escape from St. Germain. When the
method of so doing was arranged, Marsillac held a long conversation with
Gourville, telling him what account he was to carry to Paris, in case he

should be made prisoner, in which case he felt sure that he should be
decapitated. Gourville, however, begged him to write his last instructions,
as he was resolved to share his fortunes to the last. Their attempt, however,
was attended with success: the adventurers made good their entrance into
Paris; and, after some opposition, gained their point, principally through the
appearance of the beautiful duchesses de Bouillon and Longueville, who
presented themselves before the people of Paris with their children, and
excited a commotion in their favour. The prince of Conti was elected
generalissimo.
Meanwhile Condé blockaded the metropolis; and the volunteers of Paris,
composed of its citizens, poured out to resist the blockade. The warfare was
of the most ridiculous kind: the people of Paris made a jest of their own
soldiery, which excelled only in the talent of running away. These troops
went to the field by thousands, dressed out in feathers and ribands: they fled
if they encountered but 200 of the royal troops: when they returned, flying,
they were received with laughter and shouts of ridicule. Couplets and
epigrams were multiplied and showered upon them and their leaders; the
populace were diverted, while the most frightful licence prevailed;
blasphemy was added to licentiousness, and the bands of society were
loosened, its core poisoned. At length the middling classes, most active at
first in the work of sedition and lawlessness, got tired of the wickedness
they saw exhibited round them, and of the dangers to which they were
perpetually exposed. Blood was spilt, and they scarcely knew for what they
fought: each side began to sigh for peace. De Retz failed in gaining the
assistance of Turenne, for, corrupted by an emissary of Mazarin, the army
of Turenne deserted him. The same arts were used to gain over the partisans
of De Retz. The prince de Marsillac was suffering from a severe wound. He
had headed a squadron sent out with other troops for the purpose of
escorting some convoys of provisions. The party was attacked, and fled on
the instant, with the exception of the party led by Marsillac, (who, de Retz
observes, had more valour than experience) that kept the ground till the
prince had a horse killed under him, and was seriously wounded himself,
when he returned to Paris. This circumstance led him, probably, to listen
1649 more readily to the representations of Mazarin's emissaries. He
.
Ætat
became an entire convert to the desire for peace, and by degrees,
. though with difficulty, the prince of Conti and the duchess de
36. Longueville were brought to acquiesce in its necessity.

A sort of unsettled tranquillity was thus restored. After a time the court
returned to Paris: but the peace was hollow, and the bad passions of men
fermented still. The capital, with the exception of not being under arms, was
in a state of perpetual and disgraceful tumult. The war of the Fronde has
been named a tragic farce; for it was carried on as much by mutual insults
and epigrams as by the sword. Never did mankind display so total a
disregard for decency and moral law: churchmen acknowledged their
mistresses openly; wives made no secret of favouring their lovers; and
infamy became too common to render any one conspicuous. As the nobility
of the Fronde were the most dissolute, so, by degrees, did it lose favour
with the people. Each noble sought his own interests: each changed side as
his hopes changed. The Fronde lost many of its chief partisans. The prince
of Condé became reconciled to the prince of Conti; and he, and the duke
and duchess de Longueville, and the prince Marsillac, now duke de la
Rochefoucauld, through the recent death of his father, fell off from the
Fronde, at the same time that they continued to oppose and insult the queen
and Mazarin. Meanwhile De Retz was eager to renew a warfare which
raised him to the rank of leader. He was still intriguing—still, as it were,
covertly in arms,—continuing to exercise unbounded influence over the
people of Paris, and to carry on intrigues with the discontented nobles. The
court, meanwhile, thoroughly frightened by the late events, was bent on
weakening its enemies by any means, however treacherous and violent.
While, therefore, the false security of peace prevented their being on 1650
their guard, suddenly one day the prince of Condé, his brother, and .Ætat
brother-in-law, were arrested, and sent to Vincennes; and the queen .
sent to the duchess de Longueville, requiring her immediate 37.
attendance. Rochefoucauld had seen reason to suspect this piece of
treachery, and had wished to warn the princes; but the person he intrusted
with the commission failed to execute it. When the duke de Vrillière
brought the order to the duchess requiring her attendance, Rochefoucauld
persuaded her, instead of obeying, to quit Paris on the instant, and hasten to
Normandy, to raise her friends in Rouen and Havre de Grace, in favour of
her husband and brothers. Rochefoucauld accompanied her; but the duchess
having failed in her attempt, and being pressed by the enemy, was forced to
embark, and take refuge in Holland, while Rochefoucauld repaired to his
government at Poitou. All was now prepared for war. Turenne, at Stenay,
was in revolt. The dukes of Bouillon and la Rochefoucauld collected troops

in Guienne. Rochefoucauld was the first in arms, though he had no
resource, except his credit and friends, in collecting troops. He made the
ceremony of the interment of his father the pretext for assembling the
nobility and tenants of his province, and thus raised 2000 horse and 600
foot.[24] His first attempt was to succour Saumur, besieged by the king's
troops. But Mazarin had not been idle: he had engaged what Frederick the
Great called his yellow hussars in his favour, and, by bribery and
corruption, possessed himself of the town. After this Bordeaux became the
seat of war. Bouillon and Rochefoucauld having entrenched themselves in
that city, and the royal troops attacking it. Ill defended by fortifications, it
soon capitulated, but obtained favourable terms. Bouillon and
Rochefoucauld were allowed to retire. Mazarin exerted all his powers of
persuasion to gain them, but they continued faithful to the princes.
Rochefoucauld retreated once again to his government of Poitou,
discontented at having received no compensation for his house of Verteuil,
which the king's party had razed.
Soon after the divisions in France took somewhat a new face. De Retz
gained over the duke of Orleans, and united himself to the party of the
princes. The Fronde, thus reinforced, turned all its force against Mazarin.
He was forced to fly, and the princes were liberated. It is not here that a
detail of the strange events of the war of the Fronde can be given. They are
introduced only because Rochefoucauld took a prominent part. Changes
were perpetually taking place in the state of parties; and a sort of confusion
reigns throughout, arising from the want of any noble or disinterested object
in any of the partisans, that at once confuses and wearies the mind. To detail
the conduct of a nobility emancipated from all legal as well as all moral and
religious restraint,—bent only on the acquisition of power,—influenced by
hatred and selfishness,—is no interesting task. It may be instructive; for we
see what an aristocracy may become, when it throws off the control of a
court, whose interest it is to enforce order,—and of the people, who
spontaneously love and admire virtue,—and at once tramples on religion
and law. The nobles of the Fronde had lost the dignity and grandeur of
feudal power; they aimed at no amelioration for the state of the kingdom;
they neither loved freedom nor power in any way permanently
advantageous, even to their own order. Turbulent, dissolute, and
unprincipled, they acted the parts of emancipated slaves, not of freemen
asserting their rights. We seek for some trace of better things in

Rochefoucauld's own views and actions, but do not find it. He avows
ambition; that and his love for the duchess de Longueville are all the
motives that are discernible in his own account of his conduct. When,
however, we find madame de Maintenon, who was an excellent and an
impartial judge, praise him, in the sequel, as a faithful, true, and prudent
friend, we are willing to throw the blame from him on those from whom he
divided. Madame de Longueville was certainly guilty of inconstancy; and
we are told how entirely she was influenced by the person to whom she
attached herself. She drew the prince of Conti after her. Meanwhile, the
party in opposition to Mazarin became divided into the new and old Fronde.
No one could tell to which De Retz would adhere long. He, for the moment,
headed the old, the prince of Condé the new. Rochefoucauld hated De Retz,
we are told, with a hatred seldom felt, except by rival men of talent.[25] He
now, therefore, sided with Condé, and endeavoured to alienate him entirely
from the coadjutor, and to draw over his brother and sister to the same side.
He entered zealously into the plan of breaking off a marriage proposed
between the prince of Conti and mademoiselle de Chevreuse, who was
known to be the mistress of De Retz, which event widened the separation
between the parties. This led to more violent scenes than ever. Condé was
forced to retreat, and only appeared strongly guarded; and the queen took
advantage of this show of violence to accuse him of high treason to
parliament. This occasioned the most tumultuous scenes. The two parties
met in the Palace of Justice; both Condé and De Retz surrounded by
followers eager to draw their swords on each other,—none more eager than
Rochefoucauld, whom De Retz detested, and (if we believe the duke's own
account) had several times sought to have assassinated. On this occasion
Rochefoucauld was on the alert to revenge himself. Molé, the intrepid and
courageous president, alone, by his resolution and firmness, prevented
bloodshed. He implored the prince and the coadjutor to withdraw their
troops from the palace: they assented. De Retz left the hall to command his
followers to retire. Rochefoucauld was sent by Condé on a similar mission
to his partisans. This was a more difficult task than they had apprehended:
both parties were on the point of coming to blows; and the coadjutor
hastened to return to the great chamber, when an extraordinary scene,
related by the duke in his memoirs, ensued. He had returned before the
coadjutor, and De Retz, pushing the door open, got half in, when
Rochefoucauld pressed against it on the other side, and held his enemy's

body in the doorway, half in and half out of the chamber. "This opportunity
might have tempted the duke de la Rochefoucauld," writes the duke
himself. "After all that had passed, both public and private reasons led him
to desire to destroy his most mortal enemy; as, besides the facility thus
offered of revenging himself, while he avenged the prince for the shame
and disgrace he had endured, he saw also that the life of the coadjutor ought
to answer for the disorder he occasioned. But, on the other side, he
considered that no combat had been begun; that no one came against him to
defend the coadjutor; that he had not the same pretext for attacking him as
if blows had already been interchanged—the followers of the prince, also,
who were near the duke, did not reflect on the extent of the service they
might have rendered their master in this conjuncture;—in fine, the duke
would not commit an action that seemed cruel, and the rest were irresolute
and unprepared; and thus time was given to liberate the coadjutor from the
greatest danger in which he had ever found himself."[26] Rochefoucauld
adds the description of another incident, not less characteristic of the times,
that happened subsequently. After this scene in the Palace of Justice, the
coadjutor avoided going there or meeting Condé; but, one day, the prince
was in his carriage with Rochefoucauld, followed by an immense crowd of
people, when they met the coadjutor, in his pontifical robes, leading a
procession of relics and images of saints. The prince stopped, out of respect
to the church, and the coadjutor went on till he came opposite to the prince,
whom he saluted respectfully, giving both him and his companion his
benediction. They received it with marks of reverence; while the people
around, excited by the rencontre, uttered a thousand imprecations against
De Retz, and would have torn him to pieces, had not the prince caused his
followers to interfere to his rescue. In all this we see nothing of the high
bearing of a man of birth, nor the gallantry and generosity of a soldier. That
Rochefoucauld did not murder De Retz scarcely redeems him, since we find
that he entertained the thought, and almost repented not having put it in
execution. In the heat of this quarrel the coadjutor had named him coward:
("I lied," De Retz writes in his memoirs, "for he was assuredly very brave;")
giving him, at the same time, his nickname, Franchise, which he got in
ridicule of his assumption of the appearance of frankness as a cloak to
double-dealing and real astuteness of disposition. We are willing, however,
to suppose that he practised this sort of astuteness only with his enemies,
and that he continued frank and true to his friends. He had now become the

firm partisan and friend of Condé. This prince, a soldier in heart and
profession, grew impatient of the miserable tumults and brawls of Paris, and
resolved to assert his authority in arms. He retreated to the south of France,
and raised Guienne, Poitou, and Anjou against the court. He was
surrounded by the prince of Conti, the duchess de Longueville,
Rochefoucauld, Nemours, and many others of his boldest and most
powerful adherents. He was received in Bordeaux with joy and
acclamations: ten thousand men were levied; and Spain eagerly lent her
succour to support him in his rebellion. This was, for France, the most
disastrous period of its civil dissensions. All the blessings of civilisation
were lost; commerce, the arts, and the sciences were, as it were, obliterated
from the face of society; the industrious classes were reduced to misery and
want; the peasantry had degenerated into bandits; lawlessness and
demoralisation were spread through the whole country. The total disregard
for honour and virtue that characterised the higher classes became ferocity
and dishonesty in the lower.
Condé, into whose purposes and aims we have small insight,—that he hated
Mazarin, and desired power, is all we know,—reaped little advantage from
the state to which he assisted, at least, to reduce his country. His friends and
partisans quarrelled with each other; supplies fell off; he saw himself on the
brink of ruin; and determined to retrieve himself by a total change of plan.
His scheme was to cross the whole of France, and to put himself at the head
of the veteran troops of the duke de Nemours. The undertaking was
encompassed with dangers. His friends at first dissuaded, but, finding him
resolved, they implored permission to accompany him. He made such
division as he considered advantageous for his affairs; leaving Marsin
behind, with the prince of Conti, to maintain his interests in Guienne, and
taking with him Rochefoucauld, his young son, the prince de Marsillac, and
several other nobles and officers. Gourville, Rochefoucauld's secretary, who
had made several journeys to and fro between Paris and Bordeaux, and was
a man of singular activity, astuteness, and presence of mind, was to serve as
their guide.
The party set out on Palm Sunday, disguised as simple cavaliers; the 1652
servants and followers being sent forward by water. The journey was .Ætat
continued by day and night, almost with the same horses. The .
adventurers never remained for two hours together in the same place, 39.

either for repose or refreshment. Sometimes they stopped at the houses of
two or three gentlemen, friends of one of the party, for a short interval of
rest, and for the purpose of buying horses: but these gentlemen were far
from suspecting that Condé was among them, and spoke so freely, that he
heard much concerning himself and his friends which had never before
reached his ears. At other times they took shelter in outhouses, or poor
public-houses by the way side, while Gourville went to forage in the towns.
Their fare was meager enough. In one little inn they found nothing but eggs.
Condé insisted on making the omelet himself, piquing himself on his skill:
the hostess showed him how to turn it; but he, using too much force in the
manœuvre, threw the supper of himself and his friends into the fire. During
the fatigues of this journey Rochefoucauld was attacked by his first fit of
the gout; but their greatest embarrassment arose from the young prince de
Marsillac, who almost sunk under the fatigues to which he was exposed.
Gourville was the safeguard of the party: he foraged for food, answered
impertinent questions, invented subterfuges, and executed a thousand
contrivances to ensure their safety, or extricate them from danger. When
refreshing their horses in a large village a peasant recognised Condé, and
named him. Gourville, hearing this, began to laugh, and told his friends as
they came up, and they joining in bantering the poor man, he did not know
what to believe. All the party, except the prince at the head of it, whose
frame was of iron, were overcome by fatigue. After passing the Loire, they
were nearly discovered by the sentinels at La Charité, whom they
encountered through a mistake of the guide. The sentinel demanded who
went there: Gourville replied that they were officers of the court, who
desired to enter. The Condé, pursuing the same tone, bade the man go to the
governor, and ask leave for them to be admitted into the town; some
soldiers, who were loitering near, were about to take this message, when
Gourville exclaimed, addressing the prince, "You have time to sleep here,
but our congé ends to-morrow, and we must push on;" and he proceeded,
followed by the others, who said to the prince, "You can remain if you
like;" but Condé, as if discontented, yet not liking to part company,
followed, telling them that they were strange people, and sending his
compliments to the governor. After passing the river, their dangers were far
from over. Some of the companions of the prince were recognised: the
report began to spread that he was of the party. They left the high road, and
continued their journey to Chatillon in such haste, that they went, according

to Rochefoucauld's account, the incredible distance of thirty-five leagues,
with the same horses, in one day—a day full of dangerous recognitions and
misadventures: they were surrounded by troops; and, one after the other,
Condé was obliged to send his companions on various missions to ensure
his safety, till he was left at last with only Rochefoucauld, and his son, the
prince de Marsillac. They proceeded guardedly, Marsillac an hundred steps
in advance of, and Rochefoucauld at the same distance behind, Condé, so
that he might receive notice of any danger, and have some chance of saving
himself. They had not proceeded far in this manner before they heard
various reports of a pistol, and, at the same moment, perceived four
cavaliers on their left, approaching at full trot. Believing themselves
discovered, they resolved to charge these four men, determined to die rather
than be taken; but, on their drawing near, they found that it was one of their
own number, who had returned, accompanied by three gentlemen; and
altogether they proceeded to Chatillon. Here Condé heard of the situation of
the army he was desirous of joining; but he heard, at the same time, that he
was in the close neighbourhood of danger, several of the king's guard being
then at Chatillon. They set out again at midnight; and were nearly
discovered and lost at the end of their adventure, being recognised by many
persons. However, as it turned out, this served instead of injuring them, as
several mounted on horseback, and accompanied the party till they fell in
with the advanced guard of the army, close to the forest of Orleans. They
were hailed by a qui vive. The answer, and the knowledge that spread, that
Condé had arrived, occasioned general rejoicing and surprise in the army,
which greatly needed his presence.
Condé was opposed by Turenne, who now adhered to the court. These two
great generals felt that they had a worthy match in each other. Before
Condé's presence was generally known, Turenne recognised his influence in
an attack that was made; and exclaimed, as he hurried to the spot, "The
prince of Condé is arrived!"
Warfare was thus transferred to the immediate neighbourhood of the capital,
and intrigues of all kinds varied the more soldierly manœuvres of the
contending armies. It is impossible here to detail either the vicissitudes of
minor combats, or the artifices of De Retz and the other leaders. Condé
found himself forced at last to give way before Turenne. Finding the
position he held at St. Cloud do longer tenable, he resolved to take up a new

one at Charenton. For this purpose he was obliged to make nearly the
circuit of Paris, then held by the duke of Orleans, who considered himself at
the head of the Fronde, but who displayed on this, as on every other
occasion, his timid and temporising character. As soon as Condé began his
march, Turenne became acquainted with it, and pursued him. Condé
advanced as far as the suburbs of Paris, and, for a moment, doubted whether
he would not ask permission to pass through the city; but, afraid of being
refused, he resolved to march on. Danger approaching nearer and gathering
thicker, he determined to make a stand in the fauxbourg St. Antoine. Here,
therefore, the battle commenced. The combat was hard contested and fierce:
it was attended by various changes in the fortune of the day. At one time
Condé had been enabled to advance, but he was again driven back to the
gates of St. Antoine, where he was not only assailed in front, but had to
sustain a tremendous fire carried on from the surrounding houses.
Rochefoucauld was at his side: he, and his son, and other nobles
dismounted, and sustained the whole attack, without the assistance of the
infantry, who refused to aid them. The duke de Nemours received thirteen
wounds, and Rochefoucauld was wounded by an arquebuse, just above the
eyes, which, in an instant, deprived him of sight; and he was carried off the
field by the duke of Beaufort and the prince of Marsillac. They were
pursued; but Condé came to their succour, and gave them time to mount.
The citizens were averse to opening the gates of the city to the prince's
army, fearing that the troops of Turenne would enter with him: its safety,
however, entirely depended on taking refuge in Paris. The duke of Orleans,
vacillating and dastardly, heard of the peril of his friends, and of the loss
they had sustained, and moved no finger to help them. His daughter,
mademoiselle de Montpensier, showed a spirit superior to them all. She
shamed her father into signing an order for the opening of the gates. She
repaired to the Bastille, and turned its cannon on the royal army; and then,
going herself to the gate St. Antoine, she not only persuaded the citizens to
receive the prince and troops, but to sally out, skirmish with, and drive back
their pursuers. Rochefoucauld, seeing the diversion made in their favour,
desired to take advantage of it; and, though his eyes were starting from his
head through the effects of his wound, he rode to the fauxbourg St.
Germain, and exhorted the people to come to Condé's aid. Success crowned
these efforts; and the prince, after displaying unexampled conduct and
valour, entered Paris with flying colours.

This was the crisis of the war of the Fronde. His success and gallantry had
raised Condé high in the affections of the Parisians; but popular favour is
proverbially short lived, and, in a very short time, he became the object of
hatred. De Retz never slept at the work of intrigue. The court, assisted by
Turenne, rallied. A popular tumult ensued, more serious than any that had
yet occurred; a massacre was the consequence, and the odium fell on Condé
and his party. He lost his power even over his own soldiery, and the utmost
license prevailed. Several of the leaders of the Fronde died also. The duke
of Nemours fell in a duel with his brother-in-law, the duke of Beaufort: the
dukes of Chavigni and Bouillon died of a typhus fever then raging in Paris.
Scarcity, the consequence of the presence of the soldiery and the state of the
surrounding country, became severely felt. Each party longed for repose.
The court acted with discretion. Mazarin was sacrificed for the time; and
the royal family returned to Paris, Condé having quitted it shortly before.
He hastened to Holland, eager, like a true soldier, to place himself at the
head of an army; but ill success pursued him: he was declared a rebel; and,
from that hour, his star declined. After much treaty, much intrigue, and
various acts of treachery, a peace was concluded between the court and the
remnant of the Fronde, and the authority of the king, now declared major,
was universally acknowledged.
On the retreat of Condé from Paris, Rochefoucauld retired with his 1653
family to Danvilliers, where he spent a year in retirement; recovering .Ætat
from his wounds; and making up his mind to extricate himself from .
the web of intrigue in which he had immeshed himself. The Fronde 40.
was already at an end: it crumbled to pieces under the influence of fear and
corruption. Rochefoucauld had already broken with the prince of Conti and
the duchess de Longueville[27]: his last tie was to Condé. He received
representations from his friends, and, doubtless, his own mind suggested the
advantage of breaking this last link to an overthrown party. One of the
bribes held out to him was the marriage of his son with mademoiselle de la
Roche-Guyon, his cousin and an heiress. Desirous of acting honourably, he
sent Gourville to Brussels, to disengage him from all ties with Condé.
Gourville executed the task with his usual sagacity: he represented to the
prince that the duke could no longer be of any service to him; and, having
family reasons for wishing to return to France, he asked his consent and
permission. The prince admitted his excuses, and freed him from every
bond. Gourville then went to Paris, to negotiate the duke's return with

cardinal Mazarin. After some difficulty he obtained an interview with the
minister, who readily granted leave to the duke to return, and completed his
work by gaining over Gourville himself.
Thus ended, as far as any trace remains to us, the active life of a man who
hereafter reaped lessons of wisdom from the busy scenes through which he
had passed. From various passages in Gourville's memoirs it is evident that
he spent the years immediately succeeding to the war on his own estate of
la Rochefoucauld. He was nearly ruined by the career he had gone through;
and, finding his affairs almost hopelessly deranged, he asked Gourville,
who had turned financier, to receive his rents and revenues, and to
undertake the management of his estate, household, and debts, allowing him
forty pistoles a month for dress and private expenses; which arrangement
lasted till his death. Subsequently he lived almost entirely in Paris, where he
made a part of what may emphatically be called the best society, of which
he was the greatest ornament; and was respected and beloved by a circle of
intimate and dear friends. He had always been one of the chief ornaments of
the Hotel de Rambouillet. We cannot tell how far he deigned to adopt the
jargon of the fair Précieuses; but, as the society assembled there was
celebrated as the most intellectual and the most virtuous in Paris, it was an
honour for a man to belong to it.
It is singular also to remark, that the most unaffected writers of the time of
Louis XIV. had once figured as Alcovistes or Précieuses. Madame de la
Fayette, who, in her works, adopted a simplicity of sentiment and
expression that contrasts forcibly with the bombast of the school of Scuderi;
madame de Sévigné, whose style is the most delightful and easy in the
world; Rochefoucauld, who, first among moderns, concentrated his ideas,
and, abjuring the diffuseness that still reigned in literature, aimed at
expressing his thoughts in as few words as possible, had all been
frequenters and favourites at the Hotel de Rambouillet. It would seem that
intellectual indolence is the mind's greatest foe; and, once incited to think,
persons of talent can easily afterwards renounce a bad school. Platonic
gallantries, metaphorical conceits, and ridiculous phraseology, were not the
only accomplishments prized by the Précieuses. Learning and wit
flourished among them; and when Molière, with happy ridicule, had
dissolved the charm that had steeped them in folly, these remained, and

shone forth brightly in the persons already named, and others scarcely less
celebrated—Ménage, Balzac, Voiture, Bourdaloue, &c.
To return to Rochefoucauld himself. His best and dearest friend was
madame de la Fayette, the authoress of "La Princesse de Clèves," and other
works that mark her excellent taste and distinguished talents. Madame de la
Fayette was, in her youth, a pupil of Ménage and Rapin. She learned Latin
under their tuition, and rose above her masters in the quickness of her
comprehension. In general society she carefully concealed her
acquirements. "She understood Latin," Segrais writes, "but she never
allowed her knowledge to appear; so not to excite the jealousy of other
women." She was intimately allied to all the clever men of the time, and
respected and loved by them. She was a woman of a strong mind; witty and
discerning, frank, kind-hearted, and true. Rochefoucauld owed much to her,
while she had obligations to him. Their friendship was of mutual benefit.
"He gave me intellect," she said, "and I reformed his heart."
This heart might well need reform and cure from all of evil it had
communicated with during long years of intrigue and adventure. The
easiness of his temper, his turn for gallantry, the mobile nature of his mind,
rendered him susceptible to the contamination of the bad passions then so
active around him. Ardent, ambitious, subtle,—we find him, in the time of
the Fronde, busiest among the intriguers; eager in pursuit of his objects, yet
readily turned aside; violent in his hatred, passionate in his attachments, yet
easily detached from both, after the first fire had burnt out. His vacillation
of conduct and feeling at that time caused it to be said, that he always made
a quarrel in the morning, and the employment of his day was to make it up
by evening. Cardinal de Retz, his great enemy, accuses him or thinking too
ill of human nature.[28] Thrown among the fools, knaves, and demoralised
women of the Fronde, we cannot wonder that he, seeing the extent of the
evil of which human nature is capable, was unaware that these very
passions, regulated by moral principle and religion, would animate men to
virtue as well as to vice. He read this lesson subsequently in his own heart,
when, turning from the libertine society with which he spent his youth, he
became the friend of madame de la Fayette, madame de Sévigné, and the
most distinguished persons of the reign of Louis XIV. Yet the taint could not
quite be effaced. It left his heart, but it blotted his understanding. He could
feel generous, noble, and pious sentiments; but having once experienced

emotions the reverse of these, and having found them deep-rooted in others,
he fancied that both virtue and vice, good and evil, sprang from the same
causes, and were based on the same foundations. Added to this, we may
observe that his best friends belonged to a court. True and just as was
madame de la Fayette,—amiable and disinterested as madame de Sévigné,
—brave as Turenne,—noble as Condé,—pious as Racine,—honest as
Boileau,—devout and moral as madame de Maintenon might be, and were,
the taint of a court was spread over all; the desire of being well with the
sovereign, and making a monarch's favour the cynosure of hearts and the
measure of merit. Rochefoucauld fancied that he could discern selfishness
in all; yet, had he turned his eye inward with a clearer view, he had surely
found that the impulses that caused his own heart to warm with friendship
and virtue, were based on a power of forgetting self in extraneous objects;
for he was a faithful, affectionate, and disinterested friend, a fond father,
and an honourable man. He was brave also; though madame de Maintenon
tells us that he was accustomed to say that he looked on personal bravery as
folly. This speech lets us into much of the secret recesses of his mind. His
philosophy was epicurean; and, wanting the stoic exaltation of sentiment,
and worship of good for good's sake, he mistook the principles of the
human mind, and saw no excellence in a forgetfulness of self, the capacity
for which he was thus led to deny.[29] Madame de Maintenon adds, in her
portrait, "M. de Rochefoucauld had an agreeable countenance, a dignified
manner, much intellect, and little knowledge. He was intriguing, supple,
foreseeing. I never knew a friend more constant, more frank, nor more
prudent in his advice. He loved to reign: he was very brave. He preserved
the vivacity of his mind till his death; and was always lively and agreeable,
though naturally serious."
The latter part of his life was embittered by the gout, which seldom left him
free from pain. The society of madame de la Fayette and other friends were
his resource during the intervals of his attacks, and his comfort throughout.
Madame de Sévigné makes frequent mention of him in her letters, and
always in a way that marks approbation and respect. She often speaks of his
fortitude in suffering bodily pain, and his sensibility when domestic
misfortunes visited him severely. His courage never abandoned him, except
when death deprived him of those he loved. One of his sons was killed and
another wounded in the passage of the Rhine. "I have seen," writes madame
de Sévigné, "his heart laid bare by this cruel disaster. He is the first among

all the men I ever knew for courage, goodness, tenderness, and sense. I
count his wit and agreeable qualities as nothing in comparison." It is from
her letters that we gather an account of his death. Mention is made of him,
as well and enjoying society, in the month of February. On the 13th 1680
of March she writes, "M. de la Rochefoucauld has been and is .Ætat
seriously ill. He is better to-day; but there is every appearance of .
death: he has a high fever, an oppression, a suppressed gout. There 67.
has been question of the English doctor and other physicians: he has chosen
his godfather; and frère Ange will kill him, if God has thus disposed. M. de
Marsillac is expected: madame de la Fayette is deeply afflicted." On the
15th of the same month she writes, "I fear that this time we shall lose M. de
la Rochefoucauld: his fever continues. He received the communion
yesterday. He is in a state worthy of admiration. He is excellently disposed
with regard to his conscience,—that is clear: for the rest, it is to him as if
his neighbour were ill: he is neither moved nor troubled. He hears the cause
of the physicians pleaded before him with an unembarrassed head, and
almost without deigning to give his opinion. It reminded me of the verse,

Trop dessous de lui, pour y prêter l'esprit.

He did not see madame de la Fayette yesterday, because she wept, and he
was to take the sacrament: he sent at noon to inquire after her. Believe me
that he has not made reflections all his life to no purpose. He has in this
manner approached so near to the last moments that their actual presence
has nothing new nor strange for him. M. de Marsillac arrived at midnight,
the day before yesterday, overwhelmed with grief. He was long before he
could command his countenance and manner. He entered at last, and found
his father in his chair, little different from his usual appearance. As M. de
Marsillac is his friend among his children, there must have been some
internal emotion; but he manifested none, and forgot to speak to him of his
illness. I am continually with madame de la Fayette, who could never have
experienced the delights of friendship and affection were she less afflicted
than she is." On the 17th of March the scene closed; and madame de
Sévigné writes, "M. de la Rochefoucauld died this night. My head is so full
of this misfortune, and of the extreme affliction of my poor friend, that I
must write about it. On Saturday, yesterday, the remedies had done
wonders; victory was proclaimed; his fever had diminished. In this state,

yesterday, at six o'clock, he turned to death: fever recurred; and, in a word,
gout treacherously strangled him: and, although he was still strong, and had
not been weakened by losing blood, five or six hours sufficed to carry him
off. At midnight he expired in the arms of M. de Condom (Bossuet). M. de
Marsillac never quitted him for a moment: he is plunged in inexpressible
affliction. Yet he will return to his former life; find the king and the court as
they were; and his family will still be around him. But where will madame
de la Fayette find such a friend, such society; a similar kindness, resource,
and reliance, or equal consideration for herself and her son? She is infirm;
she is always at home, and cannot run about town. M. de la Rochefoucauld
was sedentary. This state rendered them necessary to each other and nothing
could equal their mutual confidence, and the charm of their friendship."
This grief, this friendship, is the most honourable monument a man can
receive: who would not desire thus to be sepultured in the heart of one
loved and valued? One might regret the pain felt; but, as madame de la
Sévigné so beautifully observes, this pain is the proof of the truth and
warmth of the affection that united them, and the pleasure they mutually
imparted and received. In successive letters there are traces of the
inconsolable affliction of madame de la Fayette. "She has fallen from the
clouds: every moment she perceives the loss she has suffered;" and again,
"Poor madame de la Fayette knows not what to do with herself. The loss of
M. de la Rochefoucauld makes so terrible a void in her life that she feels
more sensibly the value of so delightful an intimacy. Every one will be
consoled at last, except her." A sadder testimonial of her affection is
contained in a short passage, saying, "I saw madame de la Fayette. I found
her in tears: a writing of M. de la Rochefoucauld had fallen into her hands
which surprised and afflicted her." We are not told the subject of this paper,
nor the cause of her affliction: was it some trace of past unkindness or
secret injustice? These are the stings, this the poison, of death. There is no
recall for a hasty word; no excuse, no pardon, no forgetfulness, for injustice
or neglect;—the grave that has closed over the living form, and blocked up
the future, causes the past to be indelible; and, as human weakness for ever
errs, here it finds the punishment of its errors. While we love, let us ever
remember that the loved one may die,—that we ourselves may die. Let all
be true and open, let all he faithful and single-hearted, or the poison-harvest
reaped after death may infect with pain and agony one's life of memory. We
may say, in defence of Rochefoucauld, that Gourville, in his memoirs,

alludes to a circumstance that annoyed him with regard to madame de la
Fayette: he says that, taking advantage of Gourville's attachment to his
former master, she and M. de Langlade plotted together to do him an ill
turn, which would have turned greatly to the lady's advantage; and that, at
the time of the duke's death, it was said that he was much hurt at having
discovered this little intrigue. At the same time madame de la Fayette may
have been innocent of the charge. Gourville disliked her, and might accuse
her unjustly, and have deceived Rochefoucauld by representations which
were false, though he believed in them himself.
We have entered thus fully into all the details known of Rochefoucauld's
life, that we might understand better on what principles and feelings the
"Maxims" were founded. We find a warm heart, an impetuous temper,
joined to great ductility, some insincerity, and no imagination we find a
penetrating understanding, joined to extreme subtlety, that might well
overshoot itself in its aim;—strong attachments, which took the colour
greatly of their object. Disease tamed his passions; but his mind was still
free to observe, and to form opinions. The result was an Epicurean
philosophy, which answered the cui bono by a perpetual reference to self—
to pleasure and to pain; while he passed over the first principle of morals,
which is, that it is not the pleasure we receive from good actions which
actuates us, but love of good. This passion produces pleasure or pain in its
result; but the latter is the effect forgotten till it arrives; the former the
cause, the impelling motive, the true source, from which our virtues spring.
Were we to praise a knife for being sharp, and a stander-by should say, "It
deserves no praise. No wonder that it is sharp: it is made of the finest
tempered steel, and infinite labour has been bestowed on the manufacture of
it:" should we not reply, "Therefore we praise it: because the material is
good, and has been rendered better by care, we consider it excellent." The
passions and the affections, by their influence over the soul, produce
pleasure or pain; but shall we not love and approve those who take pleasure
in cultivating virtuous affections, and rejecting vicious ones? Thus
considered, it may be said that the question is reduced to a mere war of
words; but in practice it is not so. No person could habitually entertain the
idea that he was selfish in all he did without weakening his love of good,
and, at last, persuading himself to make self-interest, in a confined and evil
sense, the aim of his actions; while if, on the contrary, we recognise and
appreciate that faculty of the soul, that permits us to forget self in the object

of our desire, we shall be more eagerly bent to entertain piety, virtue, and
honour, as objects to be attained; satisfied that thus we render ourselves
better beings, though, probably, not happier than those of meaner
aspirations.
We turn to Rochefoucauld's maxims, and find ample field for explanation of
our view in the observations that they suggest. We cannot turn to them
without discussing inwardly their truth and falsehood. Some are true as
truth: such as—
"There is in the human heart a perpetual generation of passions; so that the
destruction of one is almost always the birth of another."
"We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears."
"No one is either so happy or so unhappy as he imagines."
"Fortune turns every thing to the advantage of those whom she favours."
"There is but one true love; but there are a thousand copies."
"It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them."
"A fool has not stuff enough in him to be virtuous."
"Our minds are more indolent than our bodies."
"Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it."
"It would seem that nature has concealed talents and capacities in the depths
of our minds of which we have no knowledge: the passions alone can bring
these into day, and give us more certain and perfect views than art can
afford."
"We arrive quite new at the different ages of life; and often want experience
in spite of the number of years we have lived."
"It is being truly virtuous to be willing to be always exposed to the view of
the virtuous."
Some maxims are too subtle; and among such is to be ranked the celebrated
one, "That we often find something in the misfortunes of our best friends
that is not displeasing to us." Taking this in its most obvious sense it merely
means, that no evil is so great but that some good accompanies it. Our own
personal misfortunes even bring, at times, some sort of compensation,

without which they would be intolerable. Regarded more narrowly, it
appears that Rochefoucauld meant that we are ready to look upon the
sorrows of our friends as something advantageous to ourselves. This, in a
precise sense, is totally false, where there is question of real affection and
true friendship. There is an emotion, however, of a singular description that
does often arise in the heart on hearing bad news. The simple-minded
Lavater, in his journal, was aware of this. He mentions that, on hearing that
a friend had fallen into affliction, he felt an involuntary emotion of pleasure.
Examination explains to us the real nature of this feeling. The human mind
is adverse (we talk of the generality of instances, not of exceptions,) to
repose: any thing that gives it hope of exercise, and puts it in motion, is
pleasurable. The consciousness of existence is a pleasure; and any novelty
of sensation that is not personally painful brings this. When Lavater heard
that his friend was in affliction he was roused from the monotony of his
daily life. Novelty had charms: he had to tell his wife to set out on a journey
for the purpose of seeing and consoling his friend. All this made him
conscious of existence, gave him the hope of being useful, caused his blood
to flow more freely, and thus even imparted physical pleasure; and, indeed,
I should be apt to reduce the essence of this emotion to mere physical
sensation, occasioned by an accelerated pulsation, the result of excitement.
It may be, and it is, right to record this sensation in any history of the
human mind; but it ought to be appreciated at its true value as the mere
operation of the lower part of our nature for the most part, and, added to
that, pleasure in the expectation of being of use.
This sort of anatomy of mind, when we detect evil in the involuntary
impulses of the soul, resembles the scruples felt by an over-pious person,
who regards the satisfying hunger and receiving pleasure in eating a dry
crust as sin. Dissecting things thus, it becomes difficult to say what is a
misfortune. It is a misfortune to lose one's child; so natural and instinctive is
the sorrow that ensues that, perhaps, no other can be purer. If a friend lose a
child, if we loved that child also, the misfortune becomes our own, and our
sympathy may be perfect. If the child promised ill, the pain we feel from
our friend's grief may be mitigated by the sense that it is ill-founded, and
even that we may derive benefit from the loss lamented: not being blinded
by parental passion, we may rejoice in the alleviations foresight and reason
present to us. To call this selfishness is to quarrel with the structure of
human nature, which is based on personal identity and consciousness.

Passion enables us to throw off even these, sometimes, and totally to
amalgamate our interests with those of another. But this is, indeed, of rare
occurrence.
We may remark, also, that even in those instances in which the mind does
recognise benefit to arise from the misfortune of a friend, and feel
involuntary self-gratulation, we regard this as a crime or a vice, and reject it
as such, showing the power of disinterestedness over selfishness by
dismissing and abhorring the feeling.
The Fronde was the soil in which the "Maxims" had root: better times
softened their harshness, and inspired better and higher thoughts. But the
younger life of Rochefoucauld was spent in a society demoralised to a
degree unknown before—when self-interest was acknowledged as the
principle of all; and the affections alone kept a "few green spots"—rare
oases of beauty and virtue—amidst the blighted and barren waste of
ambition and vice. Usually public revulsions give birth to heroism as well
as crime; and war and massacre are elevated and redeemed by courage and
self-devotion. But, in the time of the Fronde, there were no very great
crimes, and no exalted actions: vice and folly, restless desire of power, and
an eager, yet aimless, party spirit, animated society. Hence the mean
opinion Rochefoucauld formed of human nature; and the very subtlety and
penetration of his intellect occasioned him to err yet more widely in his
conclusions. To adopt a maxim of his own, he erred, not by not reaching the
mark, but going beyond it. Not that he went so far as his followers. Dry
Scotch metaphysicians, men without souls, reduced to a system what he
announced merely as of frequent occurrence. They tell us that self-interest
is the mover of all our actions: Rochefoucauld only says "self-interest puts
to use every sort of virtue and vice." But he does not say that every sort of
virtue, or even vice, in all persons is impregnated with self-interest, though
with many it is; and there are a multitude of his remarks which display a
thorough appreciation of excellence. The maxims themselves are admirably
expressed; the language is pure and elegant; the thoughts clearly conceived,
and forcibly worded.
Besides the maxims, Rochefoucauld wrote memoirs of various periods of
the regency of Anne of Austria and the wars of the Fronde. Bayle bestows
great encomium on this work: "I am sure," he says, "there are few partisans
of antiquity who will not set a higher value on the duke de la

Rochefoucauld's memoirs than on Cæsar's commentaries."[30] To which
remark the only reply must be, that Bayle was better able to dissect motives,
appreciate actions, and reason on truth and falsehood, than to discover the
merit of a literary work. "Rochefoucauld's memoirs are still read:" such is
Voltaire's notice, while he bestows great praise on the maxims. The chief
fault of the memoirs is the subject of them,—the wars of the Fronde,—a
period of history distinguished by no men of exalted excellence; neither
adorned by admirable actions nor conducing to any amelioration in the state
of society: it was a war of knaves (not fools) for their own advancement,
ending in their deserved defeat.

[20]Mémoires de Gourville.
[21]Mémoires de la Regence d'Anne d'Autriche, par le duc de la Rochefoucauld.
[22]It is well known that the history of the troubles of the Fronde is recounted by a variety of eye-
witnesses, no two of which agree in their account of motives—scarcely of facts. Cardinal de Retz, in
his memoirs, gives a somewhat different account of the adhesion of madame de Longueville to his
party. It is singular to remark how each person in his relation makes himself the prime mover.
Rochefoucauld makes us to almost understand that he drew over the princess to the Fronde. The
cardinal tells us that, seeing madame de Longueville one day by chance, he conceived a hope, soon
realised, of bringing her over to his party. He tells us that at that time M. de la Rochefoucauld was
attached to her. He was living at Poitou; but came to Paris about three weeks afterwards; and thus
Rochefoucauld and De Retz were brought together. The former had been accused of deserting his
party, which rendered De Retz at first disinclined to join with him; but these accusations were
unfounded, and necessity brought them much together. The cardinal allows that madame de
Longueville had no natural love for politics,—she was too indolent;—anger, arising from her elder
brother's treatment, first led her to wish to oppose his party; gallantry led her onward; and this
causing party spirit to be but the second of her motives, instead of being a heroine, she became an
adventuress.
[23]Rochefoucauld's Mémoires; Mémoires de Gourville; James's Life and Times of Louis XIV.
[24]Mémoires du duc de Rochefoucauld.
[25]Cardinal de Retz relates a scene in which he spoke disparagingly of Rochefoucauld. He supposes
that this was reported to the duke: "I know not whether this was the case," he says; "but I could never
discover any other cause for the first hatred that M. de la Rochefoucauld conceived against me."
[26]Cardinal de Retz, in describing this scene, declares that Rochefoucauld called out to Coligny and
Recousse to kill De Retz, as he held him pinned in the doorway: they refused; while a partisan of the
coadjutor came to his aid, and, representing that it was a shame and a horror to commit such an
assassination, Rochefoucauld allowed the door to open. Joly relates the occurrence in the same
manner; and, although a little softened in expression, the duke's account does not materially differ.
[27]The couplet, written by Rochefoucauld at the bottom of a portrait of the duchess de Longueville
is well known.

"Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux,

J'ai fait la guerre aux rois: je l'aurois faite aux dieux."
When he quarrelled with her, after his wound in the combat of the fauxbourg de St. Antoine, he
parodied it.

"Pour ce cœur inconstant, qu'enfin je connois mieux,
J'ai fait la guerre aux rois; j'en ai perdu les yeux."

It may here be mentioned, that the prince of Conti and the duchess of Longueville held out in
Bordeaux and Guienne against the royal authority for several years. Through the interposition of
Gourville they acceded to terms in 1658. The conclusion of madame de Longueville's life was
singular. Cardinal de Retz and Rochefoucauld both describe her as naturally indolent; but they both
so inoculated her with a love of party intrigue, that, when the war of the Fronde ceased, she found it
impossible to reconcile herself to a quiet life. She became jansenist. She built herself a dwelling close
to the abbey of Port Royal aux Champs. She put herself forward in all the disputes, and was looked
up to with reverence by the leaders of the party, and contrived, when every one else had failed, to
suspend the disturbances caused by the formula. "A singular woman," the French biographer writes,
"who even became renowned while working out her salvation, and saved herself on the same plank
from hell and from ennui." Her piety was sincere, for she submitted to great personal privations, and
fasted so strictly, that she died, it is said, from inanition. She died about a month after the duke de la
Rochefoucauld. The bishop of Autun preached her funeral oration, as madame de Sévigné says, with
all the ability, tact, and grace that it was possible to conceive. The children and friends of
Rochefoucauld were among his audience, and wept his death anew.
[28]"Il y a toujours eût du je ne sais quoi en tout M. de la Rochefoucauld. Il a voulu se mêler
d'intrigues dès son enfance, et en un temps où il ne sentait pas les petits intérêts, qui n'ont jamais été
son faible, et où il ne connoissait pas les grands, qui, d'un autre sens, n'ont pas été son tort. Il n'a
jamais été capable d'aucune affaire, et je ne sais pourquoi; car il avait des qualités qui eussent suplié,
en tout autre celles qu'il n'avait pas. Sa vue n'était pas assez étendue, et il ne voyait pas même tout
ensemble ce qui était à sa portée; mais son bon sens, très bon dans la speculation, joint à sa douceur,
à son insinuation, et à sa facilité de mœurs, qui est admirable, devait recompenser plus qu'il n'a fait le
défaut de sa pénétration. Il a toujours eût une irrésolution habituelle; mais je ne sais même à quoi
attribuer cette irrésolution: elle n'a pu venir en lui de la fécondité de son imagination, qui est rien
moins que vive. Je ne puis la donner à la stérilité de son jugement, car quoiqu'il ne l'ait pas exquis
dans l'action, il à un bon fonds de raison. Nous voyons l'effect de cette irrésolution, quoique nous
n'en connaissons pas la cause. Il n'a jamais été guérier, quoiqu'il fut très soldat. Il n'a jamais été par
lui même bon courtisan, quoiqu'il ait eût toujours bonne intention de l'être. Il n'a jamais été bon
homme de parti, quoique toute sa vie il y ait été engagé. Cet air de honte et de timidité que vous lui
voyez dans la vie civile s'était tourné dans les affaires en air d'apologie. Il croyait toujours en avoir
besoin, ce qui jointes a ses maximes, qui ne marquent pas assez de foi à la vertu, et à sa pratique, qui
a toujours été à sortir des affaires avec autant d'impatience qu'il y est entré, me fait conclure qu'il eut
beaucoup mieux fait de se connaître et de se réduire à passer, comme il eût pu, pour le courtisan le
plus poli et pour le plus honnête homme, à l'égard de la vie commune, qui eût paru dans le siècle."
Such is the character de Retz gives of his rival. Madame de Sévigné has preserved a portrait of the
cardinal by Rochefoucauld. He gives him high praise for good understanding and an admirable
memory. He represents him as high minded, and yet more vain than ambitious; an easy temper, ready
to listen to the complaints of his followers; indolent to excess, when allowed to repose, but equal to
any exertion when called into action; and aided on all occasions by a presence of mind which enabled
him to turn every chance so much to his advantage that it seemed as if each had been foreseen and
desired by him. He relates that he was fond of narrating his past adventures; and his reputation was
founded chiefly on his ability in placing his very defects in a good light. He even regards his last

retreat as resulting from vanity, while his friend, madame de Sévigné, more justly looks upon it as
resulting from the grandeur of his mind and love of justice.
[29]We doubt the exact truth of these assertions even while we write them. It is true that
Rochefoucauld detects self-love as mingling in many of our actions and feelings, but he does not
advance the opinion that no disinterested virtue can exist, and, still less, the Helvetian metaphysical
notion that self-love is the spring of every emotion, which it is, inasmuch as it is we that feel, and that
our emotions cause our pulses to beat, not another's; but is not, inasmuch as we do not consult our
own interest or pleasure in all we feel and do. Madame de Sévigné relates an anecdote of an officer
who had his arm carried off by the same cannon-ball that killed Turenne, but who, careless of the
mutilation, threw himself weeping on the corpse of the hero. She adds that Rochefoucauld shed tears
when he heard this told. Such tears are a tribute paid to disinterested virtue; and prove, though the
author of the "Maxims" could trace dross in ore wherever it existed, yet that he believed that virtue
could be found in entire purity.
[30]Bayle's Dictionary, article Cæsar.

MOLIÈRE

1622-1673

Louis XIV. one day asked Boileau "Which writer of his reign he considered
the most distinguished;" Boileau answered, unhesitatingly, "Molière." "You
surprise me," said the king; "but of course you know best." Boileau
displayed his discernment in this reply. The more we learn of Molière's
career, and inquire into the peculiarities of his character, the more we are
struck by the greatness of his genius and the admirable nature of the man.
Of all French writers he is the least merely French. His dramas belong to all
countries and ages; and, as if as a corollary to this observation, we find,
also, an earnestness of feeling, and a deep tone of passion in his character,
that raises him above our ordinary notions of Gallic frivolity.
Molière was of respectable parentage. For several generations his family
had been traders in Paris, and were so well esteemed, that various members
had held the places of judge and consul in the city of Paris; situations of
sufficient importance, on some occasions, to cause those who filled them to
be raised to the rank of nobles. His father, Jean Poquelin, was appointed
tapestry or carpet-furnisher to the king: his mother, Marie Cressé[31],
belonged to a family similarly situated; her father, also, was a manufacturer

of carpets and tapestry. Jean Baptiste Poquelin (such was Molière's real
name) was horn on the 15th January, 1622, in a house in Rue Saint Honoré,
near the Rue de la Tonnellerie. He was the eldest of a numerous family of
children, and destined to succeed his father in trade. The latter being
afterwards appointed valet de chambre to the king, and the survivorship of
the place being obtained for his son, his prospects in life were sufficiently
prosperous. His mother died when he was only ten years of age, and thus a
family of orphans were left on his father's hands.
Brought up to trade, Poquelin's education during childhood was restricted to
reading and writing; and his boyish days were passed in the warehouse of
his father. His heart, however, was set on other things. His paternal
grandfather was very fond of play-going, and often took his grandson to the
theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where Corneille's plays were being
acted. From this old man the youth probably inherited his taste for the
drama, and he owed it to him that his genius took so early the right bent. To
him he was indebted for another great obligation. The boy's father
reproached the grandfather for taking him so often to the play. "Do you
wish to make an actor of him?" he exclaimed. "Yes, if it pleased God that he
became as good a one as Bellerose[32]," the other replied. The prejudices of
the age were violent against actors. We almost all take our peculiar
prejudices from our parents, whom, in our nonage (unless, through
unfortunate circumstances, they lose our respect), we naturally regard as the
sources of truth. To this speech, to the admiration which the elder Poquelin
felt for actors and acting, no doubt the boy owed his early and lasting
emancipation from those puerile or worse prejudices against the theatre,
which proved quicksands to swallow up the genius of Racine.
The youth grew discontented as he grew older. The drama 1637
enlightened him as to the necessity of acquiring knowledge, and to .Ætat
the beauty of intellectual refinement: he became melancholy, and, .
questioned by his father, admitted his distaste for trade, and his 14.
earnest desire to receive a liberal education. Poquelin thought that his son's
ruin must inevitably ensue: the grandfather was again the boy's ally; he
gained his point, and was sent as an out-student to the college of Clermont,
afterwards of Louis-le-Grand, which was under the direction of the jesuits,
and one of the best in Paris. Amand de Bourbon, prince of Conti, brother of
the grand Condé, was going through the classes at the same time. After

passing through the ordinary routine at this school, the young Poquelin
enjoyed a greater advantage than that of being a schoolfellow of a prince of
the blood. L'Huilier, a man of large fortune, had a natural son, named
Chapelle, whom he brought up with great care. Earnest for his welfare and
good education, he engaged the celebrated Gassendi to be Iris private tutor,
and placed another boy of promise, named Bernier, whose parents were
poor, to study with him. There is something more helpful, more truly
friendly and liberal, often in French men of letters than in ours; and it is one
of the best traits in our neighbours' character. Gassendi perceived Poquelin's
superior talents, and associated him in the lessons he gave to Chapelle and
Bernier. He taught them the philosophy of Epicurus; he enlightened their
minds by lessons of morals; and Molière derived from him those just and
honourable principles from which he never deviated in after life.
Another pupil almost, as it were, forced himself into this little circle of
students. Cyrano de Bergerac was a youth of great talents, but of a wild and
turbulent disposition, and had been dismissed from the college of Beauvais
for putting the master into a farce. He was a Gascon—lively, insinuating,
and ambitious. Gassendi could not resist his efforts to get admitted as his
pupil; and his quickness and excellent memory rendered him an apt scholar.
Chapelle himself, the friend afterwards of Boileau and of all the literati of
Paris, a writer of songs, full of grace, sprightliness, and ease, displayed
talent, but at the same time gave tokens of that heedless, gay, and unstable
character that followed him through life, and occasioned his father, instead
of making him his heir as he intended, to leave him merely a slight annuity,
over which he had no control. Bernier became afterwards a great eastern
traveller.
1641 Immediately on leaving college Poquelin entered on his service of
.
Ætat
royal valet de chambre. Louis XIII. made a journey to Narbonne; and
. he attended instead of his father.[[33] This journey is only remarkable
19. from the public events that were then taking place. Louis XIII. and
cardinal de Richelieu had marched into Rousillon to complete the conquest
of that province from the house of Austria—both monarch and minister
were dying. The latter discovered the conspiracy of Cinq-Mars, the
unfortunate favourite of the king, and had seized on him and his innocent
friend De Thou—they were condemned to death; and conveyed from
Tarrascon to Lyons in a boat, which was towed by the cardinal's barge in

advance. Terror at the name of the cardinal, contempt for the king, and
anxiety to watch the wasting illnesses of both, occupied the court: the
passions of men were excited to their height; and the young and ardent
youth, fresh from the schools of philosophy, witnessed a living drama, more
highly wrought than any that a mimic stage could represent.
The cardinal had a magnificent spirit; he revived the arts, or rather nursed
their birth in France. It has been mentioned in the life of Corneille, that he
patronised the theatre; and even wrote pieces for it. The tragedy of the
"Cid," while it electrified France, by what might be deemed a revelation of
genius, gave dignity as well as a new impulse to the drama. Acting became
a fashion, a rage; private theatricals were the general amusement, and knots
of young men formed themselves into companies of actors. Poquelin, 1643
having renounced his father's trade, and having received a liberal .Ætat
education, entered, it is believed, on the study of the law; having .
been sent to Orleans for that purpose. He returned to Paris, to 21.
commence his career of advocate; here he was led to associate with a 1645
few friends of the same rank, in getting up plays: by degrees he .Ætat
became wedded to the theatre; and when the private company .
resolved to become a public one, and to derive profit from their 23.
representations, he continued belong to it; and, according to the fashion of
actors in those days assumed a new name—that of Molière. His father was
displeased, and took every means to dissuade him from his new course; but
the enthusiasm of Molière overcame all opposition. There is a story told,
that one respectable friend, who was sent by his father to argue against the
theatre, was seduced by the youth's arguments to adopt a taste for it, and led
to turn comedian himself. His relations did not the less continue their
opposition; they exiled him as it were from among them; and erased the
most illustrious name in France for their genealogical tree. What would
their tree be worth now did it not bear the name of Molière as its chief
bloom, which more rare than the flower of the aloe, which blossoms once in
a hundred years, has never had its match.
There were many admirable actors in Molière's time, chiefly however in
comedy. There were the three, known in farce under the names of Gauthier
Garguille, Turlupin, and Gros Guillaume, who in the end died tragically,
through the effects of fear. Arlechino (Harlequin) and Scaramouche, both
Italians, were however the favourites: the latter is said to have been

Molière's master in the art of acting; and he never missed a representation at
the Italian theatre when he could help it. The native comedy of the Italians
gave him a taste for the true humour of comic situation and dialogue; and
we owe to his well-founded predilection what we and the German cities (in
contradistinction to the French, who judge always by rule and measure, and
not by the amusement they receive, nor the genius displayed) prefer to his
five act pieces. Nor was this the only source whence he derived instruction.
The bustle and intrigue of the Spanish comedies had been introduced by
Corneille in his translation of Lope de Vega's "Verdad Sospechosa."
Corneille, however, made the character of the Liar, who is the hero, more
prominent. Molière is said to have declared, that he owed his initiation into
the true spirit of comedy from this play. He took the better part; rejecting
the intrigue, disguises, and trap-doors, and discerning the great effect to be
produced by a character happily and truly conceived, and then thrown into
apposite situations.
There is much obscurity thrown over the earlier portion of Molière's life.
We know the names of some of his company. There was Gros René, and his
beautiful wife; there were the two Bejarts, brothers, whose excellent
characters attached Molière to them, and Madeleine Bejart, their sister, a
beautiful girl, the mistress of a gentleman of Modena—to whom Molière
was also attached. Molière himself succeeded in the more farcical comic
characters.
The disorders of the capital during the regency at the beginning of Louis
XIV.'s reign, and the war of the Fronde, replunged France in barbarism; and
1646 torn by faction, the citizens of Paris had no leisure for the theatre.
.
Ætat
Molière and his troop quitted the city for the provinces, and among
. other places visited Bordeaux, where he was powerfully protected by
24. the duc d'Epernon, governor of Guienne. It is said, that Molière
wrote and brought out a tragedy, called "The Thebaid," in this town, which
succeeded so ill, that he gave up the idea of composing tragic dramas,
though his chief ambition was to succeed in that higher walk of his art.
When we consider the impassioned and reflective disposition of Molière,
we are not surprised at his desire to succeed in impersonating the nobler
passions; we wonder rather how it was that he should have wholly failed in
delineating such, while his greatest power resided in the talent for seizing
and portraying the ridiculous.

After a tour in the provinces he returned to Paris. His former schoolfellow,
the prince of Conti, renewed his acquaintance with him; and caused him
and his company to bring out plays in his palace: and when this prince went
to preside at the states of Languedoc, he invited them to visit him there.
Finding Paris still too distracted by civil broils to encourage the 1653
theatre, Molière and his company left it for Lyons. Here he brought .Ætat
out his first piece, "L'Etourdi," which met with great and deserved .
success. We have an English translation, under the name of "Sir 31.
Martin Marplot," originally written by the celebrated duke of Newcastle,
and adapted for the stage by Dryden; the French play, however, is greatly
superior. In that the lover, Lelie, is only a giddy coxcomb, full of conceit
and gaiety of heart. Sir Martin is a heavy plodding fool; and the mistakes
we sympathise with, even while we laugh, when originating in mere
youthful levity, excite our contempt when occasioned by dull obesity. Thus
in the English play, the master appears too stupid to deserve his lady at last
—and she is transferred to the servant; a catastrophe which must shock our
manners; and we are far more ready to rejoice in the original, when the
valet at last presents Celie, with her father's consent, to his master, asking
him whether he could find a way even then to destroy his hopes.
The "Dépit Amoureux" followed, which is highly amusing. Although
Molière improved afterwards, these first essays are nevertheless worthy his
genius.
The company to which he belonged possessed great merit, both in public
and private. We cannot expect to find strictness of moral conduct in French
comedians, in an age when the manners of the whole country was corrupt,
and civil war loosened still more the bonds of society, and produced a state
characterised as being "a singular mixture of libertinism and sedition, rife
with wars at once sanguinary and frivolous; when the magistrates girded on
the sword, and bishops assumed a uniform; when the heroines of the court
followed at once the camp and church processions, and factious wits made
impromptus on rebellion, and composed madrigals on the field of battle."
The war of the Fronde produced a state of license and intrigue: and of
course it must be expected that such should be found in a company of
strolling actors; to detail the loves of Molière at this time would excite little
interest, except inasmuch as it would seem that he brought an affectionate
heart and generous spirit, to ennoble what in a less elevated character would

have been mere intrigue. Madeleine Bejart was a woman of talent as well as
beauty; her brothers were men of good principles and conduct. The sort of
liberal, friendly, and frank-hearted spirit that characterised the circle of
friends, is well described in the autobiography of a singular specimen of the
manners of those times. D'Assouçy was a sort of troubadour; a good
musician, and an agreeable poet, who travelled from town to town, lute in
hand, and followed by two pages, who took parts in his songs; gaining his
bread, and squandering what he gained without forethought. At Lyons, he
fell in with Molière, and the brothers Bejart. He continues: "The stage has
charms, and I could not easily quit these delightful friends. I remained three
months at Lyons, amidst plays and feasts, though I had better not have staid
three days, for I met with various disasters in the midst of my amusements
(he was stripped of all his money in a gambling-house.) Having heard that I
should find a soprano voice at Avignon, whom I could engage to join me, I
embarked on the Rhone with Molière, and arrived at Avignon with forty
pistoles in my pocket, the relics of my wreck." He then goes on to state how
he was stripped of this sum among gamblers and jews; and adds, "But a
man is never poor while he has friends; and having Molière and all the
family of Bejart as allies, I found myself, despite fortune and jews, richer
and happier than ever; for these generous people were not satisfied by
assisting me as friends, they treated me as a relation. When they were
invited to the States, I accompanied them to Pezenas, and I cannot tell the
kindness I received from all. They say that the fondest brother tires of a
brother in a month; but these, more generous than all the brothers in the
world, invited me to their table during the whole winter; and, though I was
really their guest, I felt myself at home. I never saw so much kindness,
frankness, or goodness, as among these people, worthy of being the princes
whom they personated on the stage."
At Pezenas, to which place they were invited by the prince of Conti,
Molière's company found a warm welcome and generous pay from the
prince himself. Molière got up, for the prince's amusement, not only the two
regular plays which he had written, but other farcical interludes, which
became afterwards the groundwork of his best comedies. Among these were
the "Le Docteur Pedant;[34]" "Gorgibus dans le Sac" (the forerunner of "La
Fourberies de Scapin"); "Le grand Benet de Fils," who afterwards
flourished as "Le Médecin malgré Lui;" "Le grand Benet de fils," who
appears to have blossomed hereafter into Thomas Diafoirus, in the "Malade

Imaginaire." There were also "Le Docteur Amoureux," "Le Maître d'École,"
and "La Jalousie de Barbouillé." All these farces perished. Boileau,
notwithstanding his love for classical correctness, lamented their loss; as he
said, there was always something spirited and animating in the slightest of
Molière's works.
These theatrical amusements delighted the prince of Conti; and their author
became such a favourite, that he offered him the place of his secretary,
which Molière declined. We are told that the prince, with all his kindness of
intention, was of such a tyrannical temper, that his late secretary had died in
consequence of ill treatment, having been knocked down by the prince with
the fire-tongs, and killed by the blow. We do not wonder, therefore, at
Molière's refusing the glittering bait. And in addition to the independence of
his spirit, he loved his art, and no doubt felt the workings of that genius
which hereafter gave such splendid tokens of its existence, and which is
ever obnoxious to the trammels of servitude.
He continued for some time in Languedoc and Provence, and formed a
friendship at Avignon with Mignard, which lasted to the end of their lives,
and to which we owe the spirited portrait of Molière, which represents to
the life the eager, impassioned, earnest and honest physiognomy of this
great man. As Paris became tranquil Molière turned his eyes thitherward,
desirous of establishing his company in the metropolis. He went first to
Grenoble and then to Rouen, where, after some negotiation and delay, and
several journeys to Paris, he obtained the protection of monsieur, the king's
brother; was presented by him to the king and queen-mother, and finally
obtained permission to establish himself in the capital.
The rival theatre was at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; here Corneille's tragedies
were represented by the best tragic actors of the time.[34] The first
appearance of Molière's company before Louis XIV. and his mother, Anne
of Austria, took place at the Louvre. "Nicomede" was the play selected;
success attended the attempt, and the actresses in particular met with great
applause. Yet even then Molière felt that his company could not compete
with its rival in tragedy: when the curtain fell, therefore, he stepped
forward, and, after thanking the audience for their kind reception, asked the
king's leave to represent a little divertisement which had acquired a
reputation in the provinces: the king assented; and the performers went on,
to act "Le Docteur Amoureux" one those farces, several of which he had

brought out in Languedoc, conceived in the Italian taste, full of buffoonery
and bustle. The king was amused, and the piece succeeded; and hence arose
the fashion of adding a short farce after a long serious play. The success
also secured the establishment of his company; they acted at first at the
Theatre du Petit Bourbon, and afterwards, when that theatre was taken
down to give place to the new building of the colonnade of the Louvre, the
king gave him that of the Palais Royal, and his company assumed the name
of Comédiens de Monsieur.
Parisian society opened a new field for Molière's talents; subjects for
ridicule multiplied around him. The follies which appeared most ludicrous
were so nursed and fostered by the high-born and wealthy, that he almost
feared to attack them. But they were too tempting. In addition to the
amusement to be derived from exhibiting in its true colours an affectation
the most laughable, he was urged by the hope of vanquishing by the arms of
wit, a system of folly, which had taken deep root even with some of the
cleverest men in France;—we allude to the coterie of the Hôtel de
Rambouillet; and to the farce of the "Précieuses Ridicules," which entered
the very sanctum, and caused irremediable disorder and flight to all the
darling follies of the clique.
The society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had a language and conduct all its
own; these were embodied in the endless novels of mademoiselle Scuderi.
Gallantry and love were the watchwords, and metaphysical disquisitions
were the labours of the set. But these were not allowed to subsist in homely
phrase or a natural manner. The euphuism of our Elizabethian coxcombs
was tame and tropeless in comparison with the high flights of the heroes
and heroines of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. All was done by rule; all adapted
to a system. The lover had a regular map laid out, and he entered on his
amorous journey, knowing exactly the stoppages he must make, and the
course he must pass through on his way to the city of Tenderness, towards
which he was bound. There was the village of Billets galans; the hamlet of
Billets doux; the castle of Petits Soins; and the villa of Jolis Vers. After
possessing himself of these, he still had to fear being forced to embark on
the sea of Dislike, or the lake of Indifference; but if, on the contrary, he
pushed off on the river of Inclination, he floated happily down to his
bourne. Their language was a jargon, which, as Sir Walter Scott observes, in
his "Essay on Molière," resembled a highlander's horse, hard to catch, and

not worth catching. They gave enigmatic names to the commonest things,
which to call by their proper appellations, was, as Molière terms it, du
dernier bourgeois. When an "innocent accomplice of a falsehood" was
mentioned, a Précieuse (they themselves adopted and gloried in this name;
Molière only added ridicules, to turn the blow a little aside from the centre
of the target at which he aimed) could, without a blush, understand that a
night-cap was the subject of conversation; water with them was too vulgar
unless dignified as celestial humidity; a thief could be mentioned when
designated as an inconvenient hero; and a lover won his mistress's applause
when he complained of her disdainful smile, as "a sauce of pride."
Purity of feeling however was the soul of the system. Authors and poets
were admitted as admirers, but they never got beyond the villa of Jolis Vers.
When Voiture, who had glorified Julie d'Angennes his life-long, ventured to
kiss her hand, he was thrown from the fortifications of the castle of Petit
Soins, and soused into the lake of Indifference: even her noble admirer, the
duke Montauzier, was forced to paddle on the river of Inclination, for
fourteen years[35], before he was admitted to the city of Tenderness, and
allowed to make her his wife. Their style of life was as eccentric as their
talk. The lady rose in the morning, dressed herself with elegance, and then
went to bed. The French bed, placed in an alcove, had a passage round it,
called the ruelle; to be at the top of the ruelle was the post of honour; and
Voiture, under the title of Alcovist, long held this envied post, beside the
pillow of his adored Julie, while he never was allowed to touch her little
finger. The folly had its accompanying good. The respect which the women
exacted, and the virtue they preserved, exalted them, and in spite of their
high-flown sentiments, and metaphysical conceits, wits did not disdain to
"put a soul into the body of" nonsense. Rochefoucauld, Menage, madame
de Sévigné, madame Des Houillères, Balzac, Vaugelas, and others,
frequented the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and lent the aid of their talents to
dignify their galimathias.
But it was too much for the honest comic poet to bear. He perceived the
whole of society infected—nobles and prelates, ladies and poets,
marquisses and lacqueys, all wandered about the Pays de Tendre, lost in a
very labyrinth of inextricable nonsense. They assumed fictitious names[36],
they promulgated fictitious sentiments; they admired each other, according
as they best succeeded in being as unnatural as possible. Molière stripped

the scene and personages of their gilding in a moment. His fair Précieuses
were the daughters of a bourgeois named Gorgibus, who quitted their
homely names of Cathos and Madelon, for Aminte and Polixene, dismissed
their admirers for proposing to marry them, scolded their father for not
possessing le bel air des choses, and are taken in by two valets whom they
believe to be nobles, who easily imitate the foppery and sentimentalism,
which these young ladies so much admire.[37]
1659 The success of the piece was complete—from that moment the Hôtel
.
Ætat
de Rambouillet talked sense. Menage says: "I was at the first
. representation of the "Précieuses Ridicules" of Molière, at the Petit
37. Bourbon, mademoiselle de Rambouillet, madame de Grignan, M.
Chapelain, and others, the select society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, were
there. The piece was acted with general applause; and for my own part I
was so delighted that I saw at once the effect that it would produce. Leaving
the theatre, I took M. Chapelain by the hand, and said We have been used to
approve all the follies so well and wittily satirised in this piece; but believe
me, as St. Remy said to king Clovis—'We must burn what we have adored,
and adore what we have burnt.' It happened as I predicted, and we gave up
this bombastic nonsense from the time of the first representation." A better
victory could not have been gained by comic poet: to it may be said to have
been added another. While the Précieuses yielded to the blow,
unsophisticated minds enjoyed the wit: in the midst of the piece, an old man
cried out suddenly from the pit, "Courage, Molière, this is true comedy!"
The author himself felt that he had been inspired by the spirit of comic
drama. That this consisted in a true picture of the follies of society, idealised
and grouped by the fancy, but in every part in accordance with nature. He
became aware, that he had but to examine the impression made on himself,
and to embody the conceptions they suggested to his mind. As he went on
writing, he in each new piece made great and manifest improvement.
"Sganarelle" was his next effort: it is, perhaps, not in his best taste; it is like
a tale of the Italian novelists—that the husband's misfortune had existence
in his fancy only is the author's best excuse.
Success ought to have taught Molière to abide by comedy, and to 1661
become aware that a quick sense of the ridiculous, and a happy art in .Ætat
the scenic representation of it, was the bent of his genius. But a .
desire to succeed in a more elevated and tragic style still pursued 39.

him. He brought out "Don Garcie de Navarre," a very poor play,
unsuccessful in its début, and afterwards so despised by the author as not to
be comprised in his edition of his works. He quickly dissipated this cloud,
however, by bringing out "L'École des Maris," one of his best comedies.
The splendours of the reign of Louis XIV. were now beginning to shine out
in all their brilliancy. The first attempt, however, at a fête—superior in
magnificence, originality, and beauty to any thing the world had yet seen—
was made, not by the king himself. In an evil hour for himself, Fouquet, the
minister of finances, got leave to entertain royalty at his villa, or rather
palace of Vaux. Blinded by prosperity, this unfortunate man thought to
delight the king by the splendor of his entertainment; he awoke indeed a
desire to do the like in Louis's mind, but he gave the final blow to his own
fortunes, already undermined. Fouquet had admired mademoiselle de la
Vallière; he had expressed his admiration, and sought return with the
insolence of command rather than the solicitations of tenderness: he was
rejected with disdain. His mortification made him suspect another more
successful lover: he discovered the hidden and mutual passion of the king
and the beautiful girl; and, with the most unworthy meanness, he threatened
her with divulging the secret; and added the insolence of an epigram on her
personal appearance. La Vallière informed her royal lover of the discovery
which Fouquet had made—and his fall was resolved on.
The minister had lavished wealth, taste, and talent on his fête. Le Brun
painted the scenes; Le Nôtre arranged the architectural decorations; La
Fontaine wrote verses for the occasion; Molière not only repeated his
"École des Maris," but brought out a new species of entertainment: a ballet
was prepared, of the most magnificent description; but, as the principal
dancers had to vary their characters and dresses in the different scenes, that
the stage might not be left empty and the audience get weary with waiting,
he composed a light sketch, called "Les Fâcheux" (our unclassical word
bore is the only translation), in which a lover, who has an assignation with
his mistress, is perpetually interrupted by a series of intruders, who each
call his attention to some subject that fills their minds, and is at once
indifferent and annoying to him. A novel sort of amusement added therefore
charms to luxury and feasting; but the very perfection of the scene awoke
angry feelings in Louis's mind: he saw a portrait of La Vallière in the
minister's cabinet, and was roused to jealous rage: disdaining to express this

feeling, he pretended another cause of displeasure, saying that Fouquet
must have been guilty of peculation, to afford so vast an expenditure. He
would have caused him to be arrested on the instant, had not his mother
stopped him, by exclaiming, "What, in the midst of an entertainment which
he gives you!"
Louis accordingly delayed his revenge. A glittering veil was drawn over the
reality. With courtly ease he concealed his resentment by smiles; and, while
meditating the ruin of the master and giver of the feast, entered with an
apparently unembarrassed mind on the enjoyment of the scene. He was
particularly pleased with "Les Fâcheux;" but, while he was expressing his
approbation to Molière, he saw in the crowd Grand Veneur, or great
huntsman to the king, a Nimrod devoted to the chase; and he said, pointing
to him, "You have omitted one bore." On this Molière went to work; he
called on M. de Soyecourt, slily engaged him in one of his too ready
narrations of a chase; and, on the following evening, the lover had added to
his other bores a courtier, who insists on relating the history of a long
hunting-match in which he was engaged. English followers of the field find
ample scope for ridicule in this scene, which in their eyes contrasts the rules
of French sport most ludicrously with their more manly mode of running
down the game. Another more praiseworthy effort to please and flatter the
king in this piece was the introducing an allusion to Louis's efforts to
abolish the practice of duelling.
The success of Molière and his talent naturally led to his favor among the
great. The great Condé delighted in his society; and with the delicacy of a
noble mind told him, that, as he feared to trespass on his time inopportunely
if he sent for him; he begged Molière when at leisure to bestow an hour on
him to send him word, and he would gladly receive him. Molière obeyed;
and the great Condé at such times dismissed his other visitors to receive the
poet, with whom he said he never conversed without learning something
new. Unfortunately this example was not followed by all. Many little-
minded persons regarded with disdain a man stigmatised with the name of
actor, while others presumed insolently on their rank. The king generously
took his part on these occasions. The anecdotes indeed which displays
Louis's sympathy for Molière are among the most agreeable that we have of
that monarch, and are far more deserving of record than the puerilities
which Racine has commemorated. When brutally assaulted by a duke, the

king reproved the noble severely. Madame Campan tells a story still more
to this monarch's honour. Molière continued to exercise his functions of
royal valet de chambre, but was the butt of many impertinences on account
of his being an actor. Louis heard that the other officers of his chamber
refused to eat with him, which caused Molière to abstain from sitting at
their table. The king, resolved to put an end to these insults, said one
morning, "I am told you have short commons here, Molière, and that the
officers of my chamber think you unworthy of sharing their meals. You are
probably hungry, I always get up with a good appetite; sit at that table
where they have placed my en cas de nuit" (refreshment, prepared for the
king in case he should be hungry in the night, and called an en cas.) The
king cut up a fowl; made Molière sit down, gave him a wing, and took one
himself, just at the moment when the doors were thrown open, and the most
distinguished persons court entered, "You see me," said the king, "employed
in giving Molière his breakfast, as my people do not find him good enough
company for themselves." From this time Molière did not need to put
himself forward, he received invitations on all sides. Not less delicate was
the attention paid him by the poet Bellocq. It was one of the functions of
Molière's place, to make the king's bed; the other valets drew back, averse
to sharing the task with an actor; Bellocq stept forward, saying, "Permit me,
M. Molière, to assist you in making the king's bed."
It was however at court only that Molière met these rebuffs; elsewhere his
genius caused him to be admired and courted, while his excellent character
secured him the affection of many friends. He brought forward Racine; and
they continued intimate till Racine offended him by not only transferring a
tragedy to the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but seducing the best
actress of his company to that of the rival stage. With Boileau he continued
on friendly terms all his life. His old schoolfellow, "the joyous Chapelle,"
was his constant associate; though he was too turbulent and careless for the
sensitive and orderly habits of the comedian.
Molière indeed was destined never to find a home after his own heart.
Madeleine Bejart had a sister[38] much younger than herself, to whom
Molière became passionately attached. She was beautiful, sprightly, clever,
an admirable actress, fond of admiration and pleasure. Molière is said to
describe her in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," as more piquante than
beautiful—fascinating and graceful—witty and elegant; she charmed in her

very caprices. Another author speaks of her acting; and remarks on the
judgment she displays both in dialogue and by-play: "She never looks
about," he says, "nor do her eyes wander to the boxes; she is aware that the
theatre is full, but she speaks and acts as if she only saw those with whom
she is acting. She is elegant and rich in her attire without affectation: she
studies her dress, but forgets it the moment she appears on the stage; and if
she ever touches her hair or her ornaments, this bye-play conceals a
judicious and inartificial satire, and she thus enters more entirely into
ridicule of the women she personates: but with all these advantages, she
would not please so much but for her sweet-toned voice. She is aware of
this, and changes it according to the character she fills." With these
attractions, young and lovely, and an actress, madame (or as she was called
according to the fashion of the times, which only accorded the madame to
women of rank, mademoiselle) Molière, fancying herself elevated to a high
sphere when she married, giddy and coquettish, disappointed the hopes of
her husband, whose heart was set on domestic happiness, and the
interchange of affectionate sentiments in the privacy of home. Yet the
gentleness of his nature made him find a thousand excuses for her:—"I am
unhappy," he said, "but I deserve it; I ought to have remembered that my
habits are too severe for domestic life: I thought that my wife ought to
regulate her manners and practices by my wishes; but I feel that had she
done so, she in her situation would be more unhappy than I am. She is gay
and witty, and open to the pleasures of admiration. This annoys me in spite
of myself. I find fault—I complain. Yet this woman is a hundred times more
reasonable than I am, and wishes to enjoy life; she goes her own way, and
secure in her innocence, she disdains the precautions I entreat her to
observe. I take this neglect for contempt; I wish to be assured of her
kindness by the open expression of it, and that a more regular conduct
should give me ease of mind. But my wife, always equable and lively, who
would be unsuspected by any other than myself, has no pity for my
sorrows; and, occupied by the desire of general admiration, she laughs at
my anxieties." His friends tried to remonstrate in vain. "There is but one
sort of love," he said, "and those who are more easily satisfied do not know
what true love is." The consequence of these dissensions was in the sequel a
sort of separation; full of disappointment and regret for Molière, but to
which his young wife easily reconciled herself. Her conduct disgraced her;
but she had not sufficient feeling either to shrink from public censure or the

consciousness of rendering her husband unhappy. To these domestic
discomforts were added his task of manager; the difficulty of keeping rival
actresses in good humour, the labour of pleasing a capricious public.
The latter task, as well as that of amusing his sovereign, was by far the
easiest; as in doing so he followed the natural bent of his genius. He had
begun the "Tartuffe." He brought out "L'École des Femmes," one of his
gayest and wittiest comedies. It is known in England, through the
adaptation of Wycherly; and called "The Country Girl." Unfortunately, in
his days, the decorum of the English stage was less strict than the French;
and what in Molière's play was fair and light raillery, Wycherly mingled
with a plot of a licentious and disagreeable nature. The part, however, of the
Country Girl herself, personated by Mrs. Jordan, animated by her
bewitching naïveté, and graced by her frank, joyous, silver-toned voice, was
an especial favourite with the public in the days of our fathers. In Paris, the
critics were not so well pleased; truth of nature they called vulgarity,
familiarity of expression was a sin against the language. Molière deigned so
far to notice his censurers as to write the "Critique de l'École des Femmes,"
in which he easily throws additional ridicule on those who attacked him.
The "Impromptu de Versailles" was written in the same spirit, at the
command of the king. The war of words thus carried on, and replied to,
grew more and more bitter: personal ridicule was exchanged by his enemies
for calumny. Monfleuri, the actor, was malicious enough to present a
petition to the king, in which he accused Molière of marrying his own
daughter. Molière never deigned to reply to his accusation; and the king
showed his contempt by, soon after, standing godfather to Molière's eldest
child, of whom the duchess of Orleans was godmother.
In those days, as in those of our Elizabeth, the king and courtiers took parts
in the ballets.[39] These comédie-ballets were of singular framework;
comedies, in three acts, broad almost to farce, were interspersed with
dances: to this custom, to the three act pieces that thus came into vogue, we
owe some of the best of Molière's plays; when, emancipated from the
necessity of verse and five acts, he could give full play to his sense of the
ridiculous, and talent for comic situation; and when, unshackled by rhyme,
he threw the whole force of his dry comic humour into the dialogue, and by
a single word, a single expression, stamp and immortalise a folly, holding it
up for ever to the ridicule it deserved. This seizing as it were on the bared

inner kernel of some fashionable vanity, and giving it its true and
undisguised name and definition, often shocked ears polite. They called that
"vulgar," which was only stripping selfishness or ignorance of its cloak, and
bringing home to the hearts of the lowly-born the fact, that the follies of the
great are akin to their own: the people laughed to find the courtier of the
same flesh and blood; but the courtier drew up, and said, that it was vulgar
to present him en dishabille to the commonalty. "Let them rail," said
Boileau, to the poet, whose genius he so fully appreciated, "let them
exclaim against you because your scenes are agreeable to the vulgar. If you
pleased less how much better pleased would your censurers be!" "Le
Mariage Forcé" was the first of these comédies ballets. The king 1664
danced as an Egyptian in the interludes while in the more intellectual .Ætat
part of the performance Molière delighted the audience as .
"Sganarelle"—the unfortunate man, who with such rough courtesy is 42.
obliged to take a lady for better or for worse; a plot, founded on the last
English adventure of the count de Grammont, who, when leaving this
country, was followed by the brothers of la belle Hamilton, who, with their
hands on the pummels of their swords, asked him if he had not forgotten
something left behind. "True," said the count, "I forgot to marry your sister
and instantly went back to repair his lapse of memory, by making her
countess de Grammont." The dialogue of this play is exceedingly amusing;
the metaphysical or learned pedants, whom Sganarelle consults, are
admirable and witty specimens of advisers, who will only give counsel in
their own way, in language understood only by themselves. The "Amants
Magnifiques" followed; it was written in the course of a few days: it is now
considered the most feeble of Molière's plays; but it suited the occasion, and
by a number of delicate and witty impersonations of the manners of the
times, lost to us now, it became the greatest ornament of a succession of
festivals; which under the name of "Plaisirs de l'Ile enchantée," were got up
in honour of mademoiselle de Vallière; and, being prepared by various men
of talent, gave the impress of ideal magnificence to the pleasures of Louis
XIV. On this occasion Molière ventured to bring out the three first acts of
the "Tartuffe," hoping to gain the king's favourable ear at such a moment.
But it was ticklish ground; and Louis, while he declared that he appreciated
the good intentions of the author, forbade its being acted, under the fear that
it might bring real devotion into discredit. The "Tartuffe" was a favourite
with Molière, who, degraded by the clergy on account of his profession, and

aware that virtue and vice were neither inherent in priest nor actor
according to the garb, was naturally very inimical to false devotion. He still
hoped to gain leave to represent his satire on hypocrites. He knew the king
in his heart approved the scope of his play, and was pleased that his own wit
should have been considered worthy of transfer to Molière's scenes—
Molière himself venturing to remind him of the incident, which occurred
during a journey to Lorraine, when Molière accompanied the monarch as
his valet. When travelling, Louis was accustomed to make his supper his
best meal, to which, of course, he brought a good appetite: one afternoon he
invited his former preceptor, Perefixe, bishop of Rhodes, to join him; but
the prelate, with affected sanctity, declined, as he had dined, and never ate a
second meal on a fast-day. The king saw a smile on a bystander's face at this
answer, and asked the cause. In reply, the courtier said, that it arose from his
sense of the bishop's self-denial, considering the dinner he enjoyed. The
detail of the dinner followed, dish after dish in long succession; and the
king, as each viand was named, exclaimed, le pauvre homme! with such
comic variety of voice and look, that Molière, who was present, felt the wit
conveyed, and transferred it to his play, in which Orgon, in the simplicity of
his heart, repeats this exclamation when the creature-comforts in which
Tartuffe indulges are detailed to him. But though this compliment was not
lost on the king, he did not yield; and Molière was obliged to content
himself—after acting it at Rainey, the country house of the prince of Condé
—by reading it in society, and thus giving opportunity for it to awaken the
most lively curiosity in Paris. There is a well-known print of his reading it
to the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos, whose talents and wonderful tact for
seizing the ridiculous he appreciated highly; and to whom he partly owed
the idea of the play, from an occurrence that befel her.[40] Yet he was not
consoled by these private readings and the sort of applause he thus gained,
and he grew more bitter against the devotees for their opposition: in his play
on the subject of Don Juan, "Le Festin de Saint Pierre," brought out soon
after, he alludes bitterly to the interdiction laid on his favourite work. "All
other vices," he says, "are held up to public censure; but hypocrisy is
privileged to place the hand on every one's mouth, and to enjoy impunity."
The hypocrites revenged themselves by calling his Festin blasphemous. The
king, however, remained his firm friend, and tried to compensate for the
hardship he suffered on this occasion by giving his name to his company,
and granting him a pension in consequence.

It was the custom for the soldiers of the body guard of the king, and other
privileged troops, to frequent the theatre without paying. These people filled
the pit, to the great detriment of the profits of the actors. Molière, incited by
his comrades, applied to the king, who issued an order to abrogate this
privilege. The soldiers were furious; they went in crowds to the theatre,
resolved to force an entrance; the unfortunate door-keeper was killed by a
thousand sword-thrusts, and the rioters rushed into the house, resolved to
revenge themselves on the actors, who trembled at the storm they had
brought on themselves. The younger Bejart encountered their fury with a
joke, that somewhat appeased them: he was dressed for the part of an old
man; and came tottering forward, imploring them to spare the life of a poor
old man, seventy-five years of age, who had only a few days of life left.
Molière made them a speech; and peace was restored, with no greater injury
than fear to the actors—except to one, who in his terror tried to get through
a hole in the wall to escape, and stuck so fast that he could neither get out
nor in, till, peace being restored, the hole was enlarged. The king was ready
to punish the soldiers as mutineers, but Molière was too prudent to wish to
make enemies; when the companies were assembled, and put under arms,
that the ringleaders might be punished, he addressed them in a speech, in
which he declared that he did not wish to make them pay, but that the order
was levelled against those who assumed their name and claimed their
privilege: and that, in truth, a gratuitous entrance to the theatre was a right
beneath their notice; and, by touching their pride, he brought them for a
time to submit to the new order.
In holding up follies or vices to ridicule Molière made enemies; and by
attacking whole bodies of men, dangerous ones; yet, how much did the
public owe to the spirit and wit with which he exposed the delusions to
which they were often the victims. He first attacked the faculty, as it is
called in "L'Amour Médecin," in which he brings forward four of the
physicians in ordinary to the king, empirics of the first order, under Greek
names, invented by Boileau for the occasion: nor can we wonder, when we
read the mémoires and letters of the times, at the contempt in which Molière
held the medicinal art. One specific came into fashion after the other; quack
succeeded to quack; and the more ignorant the greater was the pretension,
the greater also the number of dupes. Reading these, and turning to the
pages of Molière, we see in a minute that he by no means exaggerated,
while he with his happy art seized exactly on the most ridiculous traits.

1666 It has been said that the "Misanthrope," now considered by the
.
Ætat
French as Molière's chef-d'œuvre, was coldly received at first—a
. tradition contradicted by the register of the theatre; it went through
42. twenty-one consecutive representations, and excited great interest in
Paris. Still in this he raises his voice against the false taste of the age; and
this with so little exaggeration, that the pit applauded the sonnet introduced
in ridicule of the prevailing poetry, and were not a little astonished when
Alceste proves that it possesses no merit whatever. The audience, seeing
that ridicule of reigning fashions was the scope of the play, fancied that
various persons were intended to be represented; and, among others, it was
supposed that the duke de Montauzier, the husband of the Précieuse Julie
d'Angennes, was portrayed in Alceste. It is said, that the duke went to see
the play, and came back quite satisfied; saying, that the "Misanthrope" was
a perfectly honest and excellent man, and that a great honour, which he
should never forget, was done him by assimilating them together. There is
indeed in Alceste a sensibility, joined to his sincerity and goodness of heart,
that renders him very attractive; and thus, as is often the case when genius
mirrors nature, the ridicule the author pretends to wish to throw on the
victim recoils on the apparently triumphant personages: the time-serving
Philinthe is quite contemptible; and every honest heart echoes the disgust
Alceste feels for the deceits and selfishness of society. In truth, there is
some cause to suspect that Molière found in his own sensitive and upright
heart the homefelt traits of Alceste's character, as that of his wife furnished
him with the coquetry of Célimène; and when, in the end, the Misanthrope
resolves to hide from the world, one of the natures of the author poured
itself forth; a nature, checked in real life by the necessities of his situation
and the living excitement of his genius.
During the same year the "Médecin malgré Lui" was brought out; whose
wit and comedy stamps it as one of his best: other minor pieces, by
command, occupied his time, without increasing his fame. His mind was set
on bringing out the "Tartuffe." The king had yielded to the outcry against it;
but in his heart he was very desirous of having it acted. On occasion of a
piece being played, called "Scaramouche Hermite," which also delineated
immorality cloaked by religion; the king said to the great Coudé, "I should
like to know why those who are so scandalised by Molière's play, say
nothing against that of Scaramouche?" The prince replied. "The reason is,
that Scaramouche makes game of heaven and religion, which these people

care nothing for; but Molière satirises them themselves, and this they
cannot bear."[41] Confident in the king's support, and anxious to bring out
his play, Molière entertained the hope of mollifying his opponents by
concessions: he altered his piece, expunged the parts most disliked, and
changed the name Tartuffe, already become odious to bigot ears, to the
Imposteur. In this new shape his comedy was acted once; but, on the
following day the first president, Lamoignon, forbade it. Molière dispatched
two principal actors to the king, then in Flanders, to obtain permission; but
Louis only promised that the play should be re-examined on his return.
Thus, once more, the piece was laid aside; and Molière forced to content
himself with private readings, and the universal interest excited on the
subject. Meanwhile he brought out "Amphitryon," "L'Avare," and "George
Dandin" all of which rank among his best plays. The first has a more
fanciful and playful spirit added to its comedy than any other of his
productions, and displays more elegance and a more subtle wit.
As a specimen of mingled wit and humour, let us take the scene between
Sosia and Mercury, when the latter, assuming his name and appearance,
attempts to deprive him of his identity by force of blows. Sosia exclaims,—

"N'importe. Je ne puis m'anéantir pour toi,
Et souffrir un discours si loin de l'apparence.
Être ce que je suis est-il en ta puissance?
Et puis-je cesser d'être moi?
S'avisa-t-on jamais d'une chose pareille?
Et peut-on démentir cent indices pressants?
Rêvé-je? Est-ce que je sommeille?
Ai-je l'esprit troublé par des transports puissants?
Ne sens-je bien que je veille?
Ne suis-je pas dans mon bon sens?
Mon maître Amphitryon ne m'a-t-il pas commis
À venir en ces lieux vers Alemène sa femme?
Ne lui dois-je pas faire, en lui vantant sa flamme,
Un récit de ses faits contre notre ennemi?
Ne suis-je pas du port arrivé tout à l'heure?
Ne tiens-je pas une lanterne en main?

Ne te trouvé-je pas devant notre demeure?
Ne t'y parlé-je pas d'un esprit tout humain?
Ne te tiens-tu pas fort de ma poltronnerie,
Pour m'empêcher d'entrer chez nous?
N'as-tu pas sur mon dos exercé ta furie?
Ne m'as tu pas roué de coups?
Ah, tout cela n'est que trop veritable;
Et, plût au ciel, le fût-il moins!
Cesse donc d'insulter au sort d'un misérable;
Et laisse à mon dévoir s'acquitter de ses soins.
MERCURE.

Arrête, ou sur ton dos le moindre pas attire
Un assommant éclat de mon juste courroux.
Tout ce que tu viens de dire,
Est à moi, hormis les coups.

SOSIE.

Ce matin du vaisseau, plein de frayeur en l'âme,
Cette lanterne sait comme je suis parti.
Amphitryon, du camp, vers Alemène sa femme,
M'a-t-il pas envoyé?

MERCURE.

Vous avez menti.
C'est moi qu'Amphitryon députe vers Alemène
Et qui du port Persique arrivé de ce pas;
Moi qui viens annoncer la valeur de son bras,
Qui nous fait remporter une victoire pleine,
Et de nos ennemis a mis le chef à bas.
C'est moi qui suis Sosie enfin, de certitude,
Fils de Dave, honnête berger;
Frère d'Arpage, mort en pays étranger;
Mari de Cléanthis la prude,
Dont l'humeur me fait enrager;

Qui dans Thèbes ai reçu mille coups d'étrivière
Sans en avoir jamais dit rien;
Et jadis en public fus marqué par derrière
Pour être trop homme de bien.
SOSIE (bas, à part).

Il a raison. A moins d'être Sosie,
On ne peut pas savoir tout ce qu'il dit;
Et, dans l'étonnement dont mon âme est saisie,
Je commence, à mon tour, a le croire un petit.
En effet, maintenant que je le considère,
Je vois qu'il à de moi taille, mine, action.
Faisons-lui quelque question,
Afin, d'éclaircir ce mystère.

(Haut.)

Parmi tout le butin fait sur nos ennemis,
Qu'est-ce qu'Amphitryon obtient pour son partage?

MERCURE.

Cinq fort gros diamants en nœud proprement mis,
Dont leur chef se paroit comme d'un rare ouvrage.

SOSIE.

A qui destine-t'-il un si riche présent?

MERCURE.

A sa femme, et sur elle il le veut voir paroitre.

SOSIE.

Mais où, pour l'apporter, est-il mis à présent?

MERCURE.

Dans un coffret scellé des armes de mon maître.

SOSIE (à part).

Il ne ment pas d'un mot à chaque repartie,
Et de moi je commence à douter tout de bon.
Près de moi par la force, il est déjà Sosie,
Il pourroit bien encore l'être par la raison;
Pourtant quand je me tâte et que je me rappelle,
Il me resemble que je suis moi.
Où puis-je rencontrer quelque clarté fidèle.
Pour démêler ce que je voi?
Ce que j'ai fait tout seul, et que n'a vu personne,
A moins d'être moi-même, on ne le peut savoir:
Par cette question il faut que je l'étonne;
C'est de quoi le confondre, et nous allons le voir.

(Haut.)

Lorsqu'on étoit aux mains, que fis-tu dans nos tentes,
Où tu courus seul te fourrer?

MERCURE.

D'un jambon——

SOSIE (bas, à part).

L'y voila!

MERCURE.

Que j'allai déterrer,
Je coupai bravement deux tranches succulentes,
Dont je sus fort bien me bourrer.
Et, joignant à cela d'un vin que l'on ménage,
Et dont, avant le goût, les yeux se contentoient.
Je pris un peu de courage,
Pour nos gens qui se battoient.

SOSIE.

Cette preuve sans pareille
En sa faveur conclut bien,
Et l'on n'y peut dire rien,
S'il n'étoit dans la bouteille."

And again, when Sosia tries to explain to Amphitryon how another himself
prevented him from entering his house:—

"Faut-il le répéter vingt fois de même sorte?
Moi vous dis-je, ce moi, plus robuste que moi,
Ce moi qui s'est de force emparé de la porte,
Ce moi qui m'a fait filer doux;
Ce moi qui le seul moi veut être,
Ce moi de moi-mème jaloux,
Ce moi vaillant, dont le courroux
Au moi poltron s'est fait connoître,

Enfin ce moi qui suis chez nous
Ce moi qui s'est montré mon maitre;
Ce moi qui m'a roué de coups."

And his conclusive decision with regard to his master:—

"Je ne me trompois pas, messieurs, ce mot termine,
Toute l'irrésolution:
Le véritable Amphitryon
Est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."

The "Avare" has certainly faults, which a great German critic has pointed
out[42]; but these do not interfere with the admirable spirit of the dialogue,
and the humorous display of the miser's foibles. "George Dandin" was
considered by his friends as a more dangerous experiment. There were so
many George Dandins in the world. One in particular was pointed out to
him as being at the same time an influential person, who, offended by his
play, might cause its ill success. Molière took the prudent part of offering to
read his comedy to him, previously to its being acted. The man felt himself
very highly honoured: he assembled his friends; the play was read, and
applauded; and in the sequel supported by this very person when it
appeared on the stage. Poor George Dandin! there is an ingenuousness and
directness in him that inspires us with respect, in spite of the ridiculous
situations in which he is placed: and while Molière represents to the life the
annoyances to arise to a bourgeois in allying himself to nobility, he makes
the nobles so very contemptible, either by their stupidity or vice, that not by
one word in the play can a rank-struck spirit be discerned. As, for instance,
which cuts the most ridiculous figure in the following comic dialogue? The
nobles, we think. George Dandin comes with a complaint to the father and
mother of his wife, with regard to her ill-conduct. His father-in-law, M. de
Sotenville (the very name is bien trouvé,—sot en ville,) asks—

"Qu'est-ce, mon gendre? vous paroissez troublé.

GEORGE DANDIN.
Aussi en ai-je du sujet; et——
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Mon dieu! notre gendre, que vous avez peu de civilité, de ne pas saluer
les gens quand vous les approchez!
GEORGE DANDIN.
Ma foi! ma belle-mère, c'est que j'ai d'autres choses en tête; et——
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Encore! est-il possible, notre gendre, que vous sachiez si peu votre
monde, et qu'il n'y ait pas moyen de vous instruire de la manière qu'il faut
vivre parmi les personnes de qualité?
GEORGE DANDIN.
Comment?
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Ne vous déférez-vous jamais, avec moi, de la familiarité de ce mot de
belle-mère, et ne sauriez-vous vous accoutumer à me dire Madame?
GEORGE DANDIN.
Parbleu! si vous m'appelez votre gendre, il me semble que je puis vous
appeler belle-mère?
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Il y a fort à dire, et les choses ne sont pas égales. Apprenez, s'il vous
plait, que ce n'est pas à vous à vous servir de ce mot-là avec une personne
de ma condition; que, tout notre gendre que vous soyez, il y a grande
différence de vous à nous, et que vous devez vous connoître.
MONSIEUR DE SOTENVILLE.
C'en est assez, m'amour: laissons cela.
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Mon dieu! Monsieur de Sotenville, vous avez des indulgences qui
n'appartiennent qu'à vous, et vous ne savez pas vous faire rendre par les

gens ce qui vous est dû.
MONSIEUR DE SOTENVILLE.
Corbleu! pardonnez-moi; on ne peut point me faire des leçons là-dessus;
et j'ai su montrer en ma vie, par vingt actions de vigueur, que je ne suis
point homme à démordre jamais d'une partie de mes prétentions: mais il
suffit de lui avoir donné un petit avertissement. Sachons un peu, mon
gendre, ce que vous avez dans l'esprit.
GEORGE DANDIN.
Puisqu'il faut donc parler catégoriquement, je vous dirai, Monsieur de
Sotenville, que j'ai bien de——
MONSIEUR DE SOTENVILLE.
Doucement, mon gendre. Apprenez qu'il n'est pas respectueux d'appeler
les gens par leur nom, et qu'à ceux qui sont au-dessus de nous, il faut dire
Monsieur, tout court.
GEORGE DANDIN.
Hé bien! Monsieur tout court, et nonplus Monsieur de Sotenville, j'ai à
vous dire que ma femme me donne——
MONSIEUR DE SOTENVILLE.
Tout beau! Apprenez aussi que vous ne devez pas dire ma femme,
quand vous parlez de notre fille.
GEORGE DANDIN.
J'enrage! Comment, ma femme n'est pas ma femme?
MADAME DE SOTENVILLE.
Oui, notre gendre, elle est votre femme; mais il ne vous est pas permis
de l'appeler ainsi; et c'est tout ce que vous pourriez faire si vous aviez
épousé une de vos pareilles.
GEORGE DANDIN.
Ah! George Dandin, ou t'es-tu fourré?"

But we must leave off. Sir Walter Scott says that, as often as he opened the
volume of Molière's works during the composition of his article on that
author, he found it impossible to lay it out of his hand until he had
completed a scene, however little to his immediate purpose of consulting it;
and thus we could prolong and multiply extracts to the amusement of
ourselves and the reader; but we restrain ourselves, and, returning to the
subject that caused this quotation, we must say, that we differ entirely from
Rousseau and other critics who adopt his opinions; and even Schlegel, who
accuses the author of being guilty of currying favour with rank in this
comedy, and making honest mediocrity ridiculous. If genius was to adapt its
works to the rules of philosophers, instead of following the realities of life,
we should never read in books of honesty duped, and vice triumphant:
whether we should be the gainers by this change is a question. It may be
added, also, that Molière did not represent, in "George Dandin," honesty ill-
used, so much as folly punished; and, at any rate, where vice is on one side
and ridicule on the other, we must think that class worse used to whom the
former is apportioned as properly belonging. In spite of philosophers, truth,
such as it exists, is the butt at which all writers ought to aim. It is different,
indeed, when a servile spirit paints greatness, virtue, and dignity on one side
—poverty, ignorance, and folly, on the other.
At length the time came when Molière was allowed to bring out the
"Tartuffe" in its original shape, with its original name. Its success was
unequalled: it went through forty-four consecutive representations. At a
period when religious disputes between molinist and jansenist ran high in
France—when it was the fashion to be devout, and each family had a
confessor and director of their consciences, to whom they looked up with
reverence, and whose behests they obeyed—a play which showed up the
hypocrisy of those who cloaked the worst designs, and brought discord and
hatred into families, under the guise of piety, was doubtless a useful
production; yet the "Tartuffe" is not an agreeable play. Borne away by his
notion of the magnitude of the evil he attacked, and by his idea of the
usefulness of the lesson, Molière attached himself greatly to it. The plot is
admirably managed, the characters excellently contrasted, its utility
probably of the highest kind; but Molière, hampered by the necessity of
giving as little umbrage as possible to true devotees, was forced by the
spirit of the times to regard his subject more seriously than is quite
accordant with comedy: there is something heavy in the conduct of the

piece, and disgust is rather excited than amusement. The play is still
popular; and, through the excellent acting of a living performer, it has
enjoyed great popularity in these days in its English dress: still it is
disagreeable; and the part foisted in on our stage, of the strolling methodist
preacher, becomes, by its farce, the most amusing part in the play.[43]
Molière may now be considered as having risen to the height of his
prosperity. Highly favoured by the king, the cabals formed against him, and
the enemies that his wit excited, were powerless to injure. He was the
favorite of the best society in Paris; to have him to read a play, was giving
to any assembly the stamp of fashion as well as wit and intellect. He
numbered among his chosen and dearest friends the wits of the age.
Disappointment and vexation had followed him at home; and his wife's
misconduct and heartlessness having led him at last to separate from her, he
endeavoured to secure to himself such peace as celibacy permitted. As
much time as his avocations as actor and manager permitted he spent at his
country house at Auteuil: here he reserved an apartment for his old
schoolfellow, the gay, thoughtless Chapelle; here Boileau also had a house;
and at one or the other the common friends of both assembled, and repasts
were held where wit and gaiety reigned. Molière himself was too often the
least animated of the party: he was apt to be silent and reserved in
society[44], more intent on observing and listening than in endeavouring to
shine. There was a vein of melancholy in his character, which his domestic
infelicity caused to increase. He loved order in his household, and was
annoyed by want of neatness and regularity: in this respect the heedless
Chapelle was ill suited to be his friend; and often Molière shut himself up in
solitude.
There are many anecdotes connected with this knot of friends: the famous
supper, which Voltaire tries to bring into discredit, but which Louis Racine
vouches for as being frequently related by Boileau himself occurred at
Molière's house at Auteuil. Almost all the wits were there except Racine,
who was excluded by his quarrel with Molière. There were Lulli, Jonsac,
Boileau, Chapelle, the young actor Barron, and others. Molière was
indisposed—he had renounced animal food and wine, and was in no
humour to join his friends, so went to bed, leaving them to the enjoyment of
their supper. No one was more ready to make the most of good cheer than
Chapelle, whose too habitual inebriety was in vain combatted, and

sometimes imitated by his associates. On this occasion they drank till their
good spirits turned to maudlin sensibility. Chapelle, the reckless and the
gay, began to descant on the emptiness of life—the vain nature of its
pleasures—the ennui of its tedious hours: the other guests agreed with him.
Why live on then, to endure disappointment after disappointment? how
much more heroic to die at once! The party had arrived at a pitch of
excitement that rendered them ready to adopt any ridiculous or senseless
idea; they all agreed that life was contemptible, death desirable: Why then
not die? the act would be heroic; and, dying all together, they would obtain
the praise that ancient heroes acquired by self-immolation. They all rose to
walk down to the river, and throw themselves in. The young Barron, an
actor and protégé of Molière, had more of his senses about him: he ran to
awake Molière, who, hearing that they had already left the house, and were
proceeding towards the river, hurried after them: already the stream was in
sight. When he came up, they hailed him as a companion in their heroic act,
and he agreed to join them: "But not to-night:" he said "so great a deed
should not be shrouded in darkness; it deserves daylight to illustrate it: let
us wait till morning." His friends considered this new argument as
conclusive: they returned to the house; and, going to bed, rose on the
morrow sober, and content to live.
1570 Among such friends—wild, gay, and witty—Molière might easily
.
Ætat
have his attention directed to farcical and amusing subjects. Some
. say that "Monsieur Porceaugnac" was founded on the adventure of a
40. poor rustic, who fled from pursuing doctors through the streets of
Paris: it is one of the most ridiculous as well as lively of his smaller pieces;
but so excellent is the comic dialogue, that Diderot well remarks, that the
critic would be much mistaken who should think that there were more men
capable of writing "Monsieur Porceaugnac" than of composing the
"Misanthrope." This piece has of course been adapted to the English stage;
and an Irishman is burdened with all the follies, blunders, and discomfitures
of the French provincial; with this difference, that the "brave Irishman"
breaks through all the evils spread to catch him, and, triumphing over his
rival, carries off the lady. The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" deserves higher
praise; and M. Jourdain, qualifying himself for nobility, has been the type
of a series of characters, imitating, but never surpassing, the illustrious
original. This play was brought out at Chambord, before the king. Louis
listened to it in silence; and no voice dared applaud: as absence of praise

denoted censure to the courtiers, so none of them could be amused; they
ridiculed the very idea of the piece, and pronounced the author's vein worn
out. They scouted the fanciful nonsense of the ballet, in which the
Bourgeois is created Mamamouchi by the agents of the grand signor, and
invested with a fantastic order of knighthood. The truth is, that Molière
nowhere displayed a truer sense of fanciful comedy than in varying and
animating with laughable doggrel and incidents the ballets that
accompanied his comedies; the very nonsense of the choruses, being in
accordance with the dresses and scenes, becomes wit. The courtiers found
this on other occasions, but now their faces elongated as Louis looked
grave: the king was mute; they fancied by sarcasm to echo a voice they
could not hear. Molière was mortified; while the royal listener probably was
not at all alive to the damning consequences of his hesitation. On the
second representation, the reverse of the medal was presented. "I did not
speak of your play the first day," said Louis, "for I fancied I was carried
away by the admirable acting; but indeed, Molière, you never have written
any thing that diverted me so much: your piece is excellent." And now the
courtiers found the point of the dialogue, the wit of the situations, the
admirable truth of the characters. They could remember that M. Jourdain's
surprise at the discovery that he had been talking prose all his life, was a
witty plagiarism from the count de Soissons' own lips—they could even
enjoy the fun of the unintelligible mummery of the dancing Turks; and one
of the noblest among them, who had looked censure itself on the preceding
evening, could exclaim in a smiling ecstasy of praise: "Molière is inimitable
—he has reached a point of perfection to which none of the ancients ever
attained."
The "Fourberies de Scapin" followed—the play that could excite Boileau's
bile; so that not all his admiration of its author could prevent his
exclaiming:—

"Dans ce sac ridicule où Scapin s'envelope,
Je ne reconnais plus l'auteur du Misanthrope."

Still the comedy of tricks and hustle is still comedy, and will amuse; and
there crept into the dialogue also the true spirit of Molière; the humour of
the father's frequent question: "Que diable alla-t-il faire dans cette galère,"
has rendered the expression a proverb.

The Countess d'Escarbagnas is very amusing. The old dowager, teaching
country bumpkins to behave like powdered gold-caned footmen; her disdain
for her country neighbours, and glory in her title, are truly French, and give
us an insight into the deep-seated prejudices that separated noble and
ignoble, and Parisians from provincials, in that country before the
revolution.
The "Femmes Savantes" followed, and was an additional proof that his vein
not only was not exhausted, but that it was richer and purer than ever; and
that while human nature displayed follies, he could put into the framework
of comedy, pictures, that by the grouping and the vivid colouring showed
him to be master of his art. The pedantic spirit that had succeeded to the
sentimentality of les Précieuses, the authors of society, whose impromptus
and sonnets were smiled on in place of the exiled Platonists of the ruelle,
lent a rich harvest. "Les Femme Savantes" echoed the conversations of the
select coteries of female pretension. The same spirit of pedantry existed
some five and twenty years ago, when the blues reigned; and there was
many a

"Bustling Botherby to show 'em
That charming passage in the last new poem."

That day is over: whether the present taste for mingled politics and inanity
is to be preferred is a question; but we may imagine how far posterity will
prefer it, when we compare the many great names of those days with the
"small and far between" of the present. Bluism and pedantry may be the
poppies of a wheat-field, but they show the prodigality of the Ceres which
produces both. We are tempted, as a last extract, to quote portions of the
scene in which the learned ladies receive their favourite, Trissotin, with
enthusiasm, and he recites his poetry for their delight.

"PHILAMINTE.

Servez nous promptement votre aimable repas.

TRISSOTIN.

Pour cette grande faim qu'à mes yeux on expose,
Un plat seul de huit vers me semble peu de chose;
Et je pense qu'ici je ne ferai pas mal
De joindre à l'épigramme, ou bien au madrigal,
Le ragoût d'un sonnet qui, chez une princesse,
Est passé pour avoir quelque délicatesse.
Il est de sel attique assaisonné partout,
Et vous le trouverez, je crois, d'assez bon goût.

ARMANDE.

Ah! je n'en doute point.

PHILAMINTE.

Donnons vite audience.

BÉLISE (interrompant Trissotin chaque fois
qu'il se dispose à lire).

Je sens d'aise mon cœur tressaillir par avance.
J'aime la poésie avec entêtement,
Et surtout quand les vers sont tournés galamment.

PHILAMINTE.

Si nous parlons toujours, il ne pourra rien dire.

TRISSOTIN.

So——

BÉLISE.

Silence, ma nièce.

ARMANDE.

Ah! laissez-le donc lire!

TRISSOTIN.

Sonnet à la Princesse Uranie, sur sa fièvre.

Votre prudence est endormie,
De traiter magnifiquement,
Et de loger superbement,
Votre plus cruelle ennemie.

BÉLISE.

Ah! le joli début.

ARMANDE.

Qu'il a le tour galant!

PHILAMINTE.

Lui seul des vers aisés possède le talent.

ARMANDE.

A prudence endormie il faut rendre les armes.

BÉLISE.

Loger son ennemie est pour moi plein de charmes.

PHILAMINTE.

J'aime superbement et magnifiquement:
Ces deux adverbes joints font admirablement.

BÉLISE.

Prêtons l'oreille au reste.

TRISSOTIN.

Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die.
De votre riche appartement,
Où cette ingrate insolemment
Attaque votre belle vie.

BÉLISE.

Ah! tout doux, laissez-moi, de grace, respirer.

ARMANDE.

Donnez-nous, s'il vous plait, le loisir d'admirer.

PHILAMINTE.

On se sent, à ces vers, jusqu'au fond de l'âme
Couler je ne sais quoi, qui fait que l'on se pâme.

ARMANDE.

'Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die.
De votre riche appartement.'
Que riche appartement est là joliment dit!
Et que la métaphore est mise avec esprit!

PHILAMINTE.

'Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die.'
Ah! que ce quoi qu'on die est d'un goût admirable,
C'est, à mon sentiment, un endroit impayable.

ARMANDE.

De quoi qu'on die aussi mon cœur est amoureux.

BÉLISE.

Je suis de votre avis, quoi qu'on die est heureux.

ARMANDE.

Je voudrois l'avoir fait.

BÉLISE.

Il vaut toute une pièce.

PHILAMINTE.

Mais en comprend-on bien, comme moi, la finesse?

ARMANDE et BÉLISE.

Oh, oh!

PHILAMINTE.

'Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die.'
Que de la fièvre on prenne ici les intérêts;
N'ayez aucun égard, moquez-vous des caquets:
'Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die.
Quoi qu'on die, quoi qu'on die.'
Ce quoi qu'on die en dit beaucoup plus qu'il ne semble.
Je ne sais pas, pour moi, si chacun me ressemble;
Mais j'entends là-dessous un million de mots.

BÉLISE.

Il est vrai qu'il dit plus de choses qu'il n'est gros.

PHILAMINTE, à Trissotin.

Mais quand vous avez fait ce charmant quoi qu'on die.
Avez-vous compris, vous, toute son énergie?
Songiez-vous bien vous-mème à tout ce qu'il nous dit,
Et pensiez-vous alors y mettre tant d'esprit?

TRISSOTIN.

Hai! hai!"

This scene proceeds a long time; and at length the pedant, Vadius, enters,
and Trissotin presents him to the ladies.

TRISSOTIN.

"Il a des vieux auteurs la pleine intelligence,
Et sait du grec, madame, autant qu'homme de France.

PHILAMINTE.

Du grec! O ciel! du grec! il sait du grec, ma sœur.

BÉLISE.

Ah, my nièce, du grec!

ARMANDE.

Du grec! quelle douceur!

PHILAMINTE.

Quoi! monsieur sait du grec? Ah! permettez, de grace,
Que, pour l'amour du grec, monsieur, on vous embrasse."

The pedants at first compliment each other extravagantly, and then quarrel
extravagantly; and Vadius exclaims,—

"Oui, oui, je te renvoie à l'auteur des Satires.

TRISSOTIN.

Je t'y renvoie aussi.

VADIUS.

J'ai le contentement
Qu'on voit qu'il m'a traité plus honorablement.
* * * *
Ma plume t'apprendra quel homme je puis être.

TRISSOTIN.

Et la mienne saura te faire voir ton maître.

VADIUS.

Je te défie en vers, en prose, grec et latin.

TRISSOTIN.

Eh bien! nous nous verrons seul à seul chez Barbin."

It must be remarked that, in the favourite of these learned ladies of the
stage, Trissotin, the spectators perceived the Magnus Apollo of the real
ones, l'abbé Cotin; and, as the epigram Trissotin recites was really written
by Cotin, there can be no doubt that Molière held up the literary
productions of the man to ridicule—but it is false that he made him
personally laughable. Cotin was a priest; and, when Molière made Trissotin
a layman, who aspired to the hand of one of the personages, he might
believe that he took all personal sting from his satire. The public fixed the
name of Vadius on Menage: the latter was far too clever to allow that the
cap fitted. "Is it to be borne that this man should thus make game of us?"
said madame de Rambouillet to Menage, on their return from the first
representation of the play. "Madame," said Menage, "the play is admirable;
there is not a word to be said against it."
Molière's career was drawing to a close; he was overworked, and did not
take sufficient care of his health: he despised the medicinal art such as it

then existed, and rejected its remedies. "What do you do with your doctor?"
asked the king, when Molière applied for a canonicate for the son of M. de
Mauvillain, the physician, whose patient he said "he had the honour to be."
"We converse together," he replied; "he writes prescriptions which I do not
take, and I recover." A weak chest and a perpetual cough was indeed best
medicated by the sober regimen and milk diet to which he long adhered;
and while he adhered to it his life seemed safe. Mutual friends had
interfered with success in reconciling him and his wife; and the order of his
simple table being altered by her presence, he yielded to her instigations in
adopting a more generous diet: his cough became worse, in consequence.
1673 When he brought out the "Malade Imaginaire" he was really ill; but
.
Ætat
such was his sense of duty towards his fellow comedians, that he
. would not be turned from his intention of acting the principal
character. The play was warmly received. Though more adverse to
our taste and tone than almost any of Molière's, it is impossible not to be
highly amused. Sir Walter Scott well remarks, that the mixture of frugality
and love of medicine in the "Malade Imaginaire" himself is truly comic: his
credulity as to the efficacy of the draughts, and his resolution only to pay
half-price for them—his anxious doubts of whether, in the exercise
prescribed to him he is to walk across his room, or up and down—his
annoyance at having taken one third less physic this month than he had
done the last and his expostulation at the cost,—"C'est se moquer, il faut
vivre avec les malades—si vous en usez comme cela, on ne voudra plus être
malade—mettez quatre francs, s'il vous plait,"—is very comic; as is also the
sober pedantry of Thomas Diafoirus, and his long orations, when he
addresses his intended bride as her mother, is in the most amusing spirit of
comedy. Meanwhile, as the audience laughed, the poet and actor was dying.
On the fourth night he was evidently worse; Barron and others tried to
dissuade him from his task. "How can I?" he replied, "There are fifty poor
workmen whose bread depends on the daily receipt. I should reproach
myself if I deprived them of it." It was with great difficulty however that he
went through the part; and in the last entrée of the ballet, as he pronounced
the word juro, he was seized by a vehement cough and convulsions, so
violent that the spectators became aware that something was wrong; and the
curtain failing soon after, he was carried home dying. His cough was so
violent that a blood-vessel broke; and he, becoming aware of his situation,
desired that a priest might be sent for. One after another was sent to, who, to

the disgrace of their profession, refused the consolations of religion to a
dying fellow-creature—to the greatest of their countrymen. It was long
before one was found, willing to obey the summons; and, during this
interval, he was suffocated by the blood that flowed from his lungs. He
expired, attended only by a few friends, and by two sisters of charity, whom
he was accustomed to receive in his house each year, when they came to
Paris to collect alms during Lent.
Dying thus, without the last ceremonies of the catholic religion, and,
consequently, without having renounced his profession, Harley, archbishop
of Paris, refused the rites of sepulture to the revered remains. Harley was a
man of vehement, vindictive temper. His life had been so dissolute that he
died the victim of his debaucheries—this was the very man to presume on
his station, and to insult all France by staining her history with an act of
intolerance.[45] Molière's wife was with him at his death; and probably at
the moment was truly grieved by his loss—at least she felt bitterly the
clerical outrage. "What," she cried, "refuse burial to one who deserves that
altars should be erected to him!" She hastened to Versailles, accompanied
by the curate of Auteuil, to throw herself at the king's feet, and implore his
interference. She conducted herself with considerable indiscretion, by
speaking the truth to royal ears; telling the king, that if "her husband was a
criminal, his crimes had been authorised by his majesty himself." Louis
might have forgiven the too great frankness of the unhappy widow—but her
companion, the curate, rendered him altogether indisposed to give ear;
when, instead of simply urging the request for which he came, he seized
this opportunity of trying to exculpate himself from a charge of jansenism.
The king, irritated by this mal à propos, dismissed both supplicants
abruptly; merely saying, that the affair depended on the archbishop of Paris.
Nevertheless he at the same time gave private directions to Harley to take
off his interdiction. The curate of the parish, however, in a servile and
insolent spirit, refused to attend the funeral; and it was agreed that the body
should not be presented in church, but simply conveyed to the grave,
accompanied by two ecclesiastics. How deeply does one mourn the
prejudice that caused the survivors to submit to this series of outrages; and
the manners of the times that prevented their choosing some spot more holy
than a parish churchyard, since it would be consecrated solely to Molière;
and, disdaining clerical intolerance, bear him in triumph to the grave over
which bigotry could have no control.

How far such an act was impossible at that time, when religious disputes
and persecutions raged highly, is demonstrated by the conduct of the mob
on the day of his funeral. Excited by some low and bigotted priests, a crowd
of the vilest populace assembled before Molière's door, ready to insult the
humble procession. The widow was alarmed—she was advised to throw a
quantity of silver among the crowd: nearly a thousand francs, thus
distributed, changed at once the intentions of the rioters; and they
accompanied the funeral respectfully, and in silence. The body was 1673
carried, on the evening of the 21st of February, to the cemetery of St. .
Joseph, Rue Mont Martre, followed by two priests, and about a hundred
persons, either friends or acquaintances of the deceased, each bearing a
torch. No funeral chaunt or prayer honoured the interment; but it must have
been difficult in the hearts of attached friends or upright men to suppress
the indignation such a vain attempt at contumely naturally excited.
Every one who knew Molière loved him. He was generous, charitable, and
warm-hearted. His sense of duty towards his company induced him to
remain an actor, when his leaving the stage would have opened the door to
honours eagerly sought after and highly esteemed by the first men of the
day. It was deliberated, to elect him a member of the French academy. The
academicians felt that they should be honoured by such a member, and
wished him to give up acting low comedy; without which they fancied that
the dignity of the academy would be degraded. Boileau tried to persuade his
friend to renounce the stage, Molière refused: he said, he was attached to it
by a point of honour. "What honour?" cried Boileau, "that of painting your
face, and making a fool of yourself?" Molière felt that by honour he was
engaged to give all the support he could to a company whose existence (as
it was afterwards proved) depended on his exertions: and besides, his point
of honour might mean a steady adherence to the despised stage; so that the
slur of his secession might not be added to the ignominy already heaped
upon it. He had a delicacy of feeling that went beyond Boileau—that of
shrinking from insulting his fellow actors by seceding from among them,
and of choosing to show to the world that he thought it no dishonour to
exercise his talent for its amusement. In his heart, indeed, he knew the
annoyances attached to his calling; when a young man came to ask him to
facilitate his going on the stage, and Molière, inquiring who he was, learnt
that his father was an advocate in good practice, on which he represented
forcibly the evils that attend the life of an actor. "I advise you," he

continued, "to adopt your father's profession—ours will not suit you; it is
the last resource of those who have nothing better, or who are too idle to
work. Besides, you will deeply pain your relations. I always regret the
sorrow I occasioned mine; and would not do so could I begin again. You
think perhaps that we have our pleasures; but you deceive yourself.
Apparently we are sought after by the great; it is true, we are the ministers
of their amusement—but there is nothing so sad as being the slaves of their
caprice. The rest of the world look on us as the refuse of mankind, and
despise us accordingly." Chapelle came in while this argument was going
on; and, taking the opposite side, exclaimed: "Do you love pleasure? then
be sure you will have more in six months as an actor than in six years at the
bar." But Molière's earnest and well-founded arguments were more
powerful than the persuasions of his volatile friend.
In every point of view Molière's disposition and actions demand our love
and veneration. He was generous to a high degree—undeviating in his
friendship; charitable to all in need. His sense of Barron's talent and
friendless position caused him to adopt him as a son; and he taught him the
art in which both as a comic and tragic actor Barron afterwards excelled.
One day the young man told him of a poor stroller who wanted some small
sum to assist him in joining his company—Molière learnt that it was
Mondorge, who had formerly been a comrade of his own; he asked Barron,
how much he wished to give; the other replied, four pistoles. "Give him,"
said Moliere, "four pistoles from me—and here are twenty to give from
yourself." His charities were on all sides very considerable; and his hand
was never shut to the poor. Getting into a carriage one day, he gave a piece
of money to a mendicant standing by; the man ran after the carriage, and
stopt it, "You have made a mistake, sir," he cried out, "You have given me a
louis d'or." "And here is another, to reward your honesty," replied Molière;
and, as the carriage drove off, he exclaimed, "Where will virtue next take
shelter" (où la vertu va-t-elle se nicher!), showing that he generalised even
this simple incident, and took it home to his mind as characteristic of
human nature. The biographer, Grimarest—who by no means favours him,
and dilates on anecdotes till he turns them into romance—says, that he was
very irritable, and that his love of order was so great that he was
exceedingly discomposed by any want of neatness or exactitude in his
domestic arrangements. That ill health and the various annoyances he
suffered as manager of a theatre, may have tended to render him irritable, is

possible; but there are many anecdotes that display sweetness of disposition
and great gentleness of mind and manner. Boileau, who was an excellent
mimic, amused Louis XIV. one day by taking off all the principal actors—
the king insisted that he should include Molière, who was present; and
afterwards asked him, What he thought of the imitation? "We cannot judge
of our own likeness," replied Molière; but if he has succeeded as well with
me as with the others, it must needs be admirable. One day La Fontaine
having drawn on himself an unusual share of raillery by his abstraction and
absence of mind, Molière felt that the joke was being carried too far
—"Laissons-le," he said, "nous n'effacerons jamais le bon-homme,"—the
name bestowed on La Fontaine by his friends. We cannot help considering
also in the same light, that of a heart true to the touch of a nature, which
"makes the whole world kin," his habit of reading his pieces, before they
were acted, to his old housekeeper, La Forêt. From the dulness or vivacity
which her face expressed as he read, he judged whether the audience would
yawn or applaud his scenes as acted. That she was a sensible old woman
cannot be doubted; as when a play, by another author, was read to her as
written by her master, she shook her head, and told Molière that he was
cheating her.
As a comic actor Molière had great merit: he played broad farcical parts;
and a description of his style is handed down to us both by his enemies and
friends. Montfleuri (the son of the actor), in his satire, says,——

——"Il vient le nez au vent,
Les pieds en parenthèse, et l'épaule en avant;
Sa péruque, qui suit le côté qui avance,
Plus pleine de lauriers qu'un jambon de Mayence;
Les mains sur les côtés, d'un air peu négligé,
La tête sur le dos, comme un mulet chargé,
Les yeux fort égarés, puis débitant ses roles,
D'un hoquet perpétuel sépare les paroles."

No doubt, though a caricature, there is truth in this picture. We still see in
his portraits the wig, thickly crowned with laurels; and theatrical historians
have mentioned the sort of catching of the breath—exaggerated in the
verses above quoted into a hoquet, or hiccough,—which he had acquired by
his endeavour to moderate the rapidity of his articulation. The newspapers

of the day, in giving an account of him when he died, describe him as "actor
from head to foot: he seemed to have many voices—for all spoke in him;
and by a step, a smile, a trick of the eye, or a motion of the head, he said
more in a moment than words could express in an hour." "He was," we find
written in another newspaper, "neither too fat nor too thin; he was rather
above the middle height, and carried himself well—he walked gravely, with
a very serious manner; his nose was thick; his mouth large, his complexion
dark; his eyebrows black and strongly marked, and the way in which he
moved them gave great comic expression to his countenance." He acted
well also, because, in addition to his genius, his heart was in all he did; and
he wrote well from the same cause. He had that enthusiasm for his art
which marks the man of genius. He did not begin to write till thirty-four—
but the style of his productions, founded on a knowledge of mankind and of
life, necessitates a longer apprenticeship than any other. When he did write
it was with facility and speed. The whole of his comedies—each rising in
excellence—were composed during the space of fourteen years; and
Boileau addresses him as——

"Rare et fameux esprit, dont la fertile veine
Ignore en écrivant le travail et la peine."

But although when having conceived the project of a play his labour was
light, his life, like that of all great authors, was spent in study—the study of
mankind. Boileau called him the contemplator. He was silent and abstracted
in company—he listened, and felt; and carried away a knowledge that
displayed itself afterwards in his conception of character, in his perception
of the ridiculous, in his portraitures of the human heart. Perhaps nothing
proves more the original and innate bent of genius than the fact, that
Molière was a comic writer. His sense of the ridiculous being intuitive,
forced him to a species of composition, which, by choice, he would have
exchanged for tragic and pathetic dramas: but he could only idealise in one
view of life; his imagination was tame when it tried to soar to the sublime,
or to touch by tenderness. Of course he has not escaped criticism even in
the pieces in which his genius is most displayed. Voltaire says that his farce
is too broad, and his serious pieces want interest; and that he almost always
failed in the dénouement of his plots. The latter portion of this remark is
truer than the former; though there is foundation for the whole. Voltaire,

like Boileau, was bitten by the then Gallic mania for classical (i.e. in
modern literature, imitative instead of original) productions. Boileau too
often considers that Molière sacrificed good taste to the multitude when he
made his audience laugh. Boileau's poetry is arid, with all its wit; and he
had no feeling for humour: his very sarcasms, full of point and epigram as
they are, turn entirely on manner; he seldom praises or blames the higher
portions of composition. Schlegel, in his bigotted dislike for all things
French, by no means does Molière justice[46]; and many of his criticisms are
quite false. As, for instance, that on the "Avare;" where he says, that no
miser at once hides a treasure and lends money on usury. Any one who
consults the history of our celebrated English misers of the last century will
find that they, without exception, united the characters of misers and
money-lenders.
It has been mentioned that Molière did not succeed in the serious, the
sentimental, the fanciful. Voltaire mentions his little one-act piece of
"L'Amour Peintre" as the only one of the sort that has grace and spirit. This
slight sketch is evidently the groundwork of the "Barber of Seville;" it
contains the same characters and the same situations in a more contracted
space.
Similar to our Shakspeare, Molière held up a faithful mirror to nature; and
there is scarcely a trait or a speech in any of his pieces that does not charm
the reader as the echo of reality. It is a question, how far Molière
individualised general observations, or placed copies of real persons in his
canvass. All writers of fiction must ground their pictures on their
knowledge of life; and comic writers (comedy deriving so much of its
excellence from slight but individual traits) are led more entirely into
plagiarisms from nature. Sir Walter Scott is an instance of this, and could
point out the original of almost all his comic characters. This may be carried
too far; and the question is, to what extent Molière sinned against good taste
and good feeling in holding up well-known persons to public ridicule. We
have mentioned the story of his having paid M. de Soyecourt a visit, for the
purpose of transferring his conversation to the stage, for the amusement of
the king on the following day. This was hardly fair; while, on the other
hand, he had full right to the count de Soissons naïve annunciation of the
discovery that he had been speaking prose all his life, and putting it into M.
Jourdain's mouth; and also to the anecdote we have related concerning

Louis XIV. and the bishop of Rhodes, which he introduced into the
"Tartuffe." Nor was it his fault that the name of Tartuffe became fixed on
the bishop of Autun, as several allusions in madame de Sévigné's letters
testify. There is, however, a difference to be drawn between the cap fitting
after it is made, and its being made to fit. And in Trissotin, in the "Femmes
Savantes," where the works of the abbé Cotin were held up to ridicule, we
are apt to think that he went beyond good taste in his personality. The effect
was melancholy. Cotin had long suffered from Boileau's attacks; but this
last public one from Molière completely overwhelmed him, and he fell into
a state of melancholy that soon after caused death. "Sad effect," writes
Voltaire, "of a liberty more dangerous than useful; and which does not so
much inspire good taste as it flatters the malice of men. Good poems are the
best satires that can be levelled against bad poets; and Molière and Boileau
need not, in addition, have had recourse to insult."
Molière died on the 17th of February, 1673, aged fifty-one. His friends
deeply mourned his loss, and many epitaphs were written in his honour. By
degrees France became aware of the honour the country received from
having given birth to such a man. The academicians of the eighteenth
century endeavoured to atone for the folly of their predecessors. The bust of
Molière was placed in their hall, with an appropriate inscription by Saurin:
—

"Rien ne manque à sa gloire, il manquait à la nôtre."

In 1769, his eulogy was made the subject of a prize. It was gained by
Chamfort; and, on the day of its public recital, two Poquelins were hunted
out from their obscurity, and an honourable place assigned them among the
audience; and there they sat, living epigrams on the bigotry which in former
days expunged Molière's name from their genealogical tree.
His remains, unhonoured at first, were destined to several mutations during
the revolution. A stone is at present erected to their honour, in the cemetery
of Père la Chaise; but it may be considered a cenotaph, as there is every
reason to doubt the identity of the remains placed beneath.
His troop of comedians did not long survive him. The theatre had been shut
on his death, and not reopened till a fortnight after; when his widow, in
contempt of decency, filled a part. She became manager; but was speedily

deserted by the best actors, and soon after the use of the theatre was
transferred to Lulli. Madame Molière applied to the king, and obtained the
use of another; but within a few years this company no longer existed:
amalgamated at first with that of the Marais, and soon after with that of the
Hôtel de Bourgogne, there remained only one company of actors in France,
called the king's troop. Molière's widow soon after married Guerin, an
actor; her career was not reputable: frivolity and misconduct long deprived
her of the public esteem. She continued to act till the 14th October, 1694,
when she retired from the stage with a pension of 1000 livres. From this
time she partly redeemed past errors by leading a perfectly respectable life
till she died, 30th November, 1700. Of Molière's three children one only
survived, a daughter. She was placed in a convent by her mother; but,
resisting her wish to take the veil, she returned home. A grown up daughter
interfered with madame Guerin's arrangements; and Molière's orphan child
was unhappy and neglected. Unable to induce her mother to make any
arrangement for her marriage, she allowed herself to be carried off by M.
Claude Rachel, sieur de Montalant, a widower with four children, and forty-
nine years of age. Her mother was soon reconciled; and they all together
went to live at Argenton. Madame de Montalant died in 1723, at the age of
fifty-seven. She had no children; and not only does the posterity of Molière
no longer exist, but even the many descendants of his numerous brothers
and sisters have left no trace—and the family of Poquelin is extinct.

[31]A thousand mistakes were current, even in Molière's own day, with regard to various particulars
of his history, which he took no pains to contradict, and which have been copied and recopied by
succeeding biographers. Even the calumny that he had incurred the hazard of marrying his own
daughter, which he disdained to confute in print, aware that facts known to every one acquainted with
him bore the refutation with them, was faintly denied. These days, however, have brought forth a
commentator, unwearied in the search for documents on the subject. M. L. F. Beffara hunted through
parish registers and other public records, and, by means of these simple but irrefutable instruments,
has thrown light on all the darker passages of Molière's history, exonerated him from every
accusation, and set his character in a higher point of view than ever.
[32]Bellerose (whose real name was Pierre Le Meslier) was the best tragic actor of the reign of Louis
XIII.: he was the original Cinna of Corneille's play. He was elegant in manner, and his elocution was
easy. Scarron accuses him of affectation: and we are told, in the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz,
that a lady objected to M. de la Rochefoucauld, that he resembled Bellerose in the affectation of
gentleness.
[33]Biographers are apt to invent, if they cannot discover the causes of even trifling events. That the
son replaced the father on this occasion, made the elder biographers state that the latter was
prevented by his advanced age. Beffara has discovered that the grandfather of Molière married 11th

July, 1594, consequently that the father could not be more than forty-six years of age in 1641. A
thousand reasons may be found for the substitution of the son. The aversion that Parisians have for
travelling might suffice—the large motherless family that the elder Poquelin must leave behind, or a
wish to introduce his son to the notice of the king, &c.
[34]Molière's company then consisted of, in actors, the two brothers, Bejart, Du Parc, De Brie, De
Croisal: in actresses, of the sisters Bejart, Du Parc, De Brie, and Hervé. Du Croisy and La Grange,
two first-rate actors, were soon afterwards added.
[35]For him surely was written Miss Lamb's pretty song—

"High born Helen
Round your dwelling
These twenty years I've paced in vain.
Haughty Beauty,
Your lover's duty
Has been his pleasure and his pain."

Vide Poet. Works of Charles Lamb.
Molière in the farce in question gives a diverting account of a Précieuse courtship: "Il faut qu'un
amant, pour être agréable, sache débiter les beaux sentiments, pousser le doux, le tendre, et le
passionné, et que sa recherche soit dans les formes. Premièrement, il doit voir au temple, ou à la
promenade, ou dans quelque cérémonie publique, la personne dont il devient amoureux, ou bien être
conduit fatalement chez elle par un parent ou un ami, et sortir de la tout rêveur ou mélancholique. Il
cache, un temps, sa passion à l'objet aimé, et cependant lui rends plusieurs visites où l'on ne manque
jamais de mettre sur le tapis une question galante qui exerce les esprits de l'assemblée. Le jour de la
déclaration arrive, qui se doit faire ordinairement dans une allée de quelque jardin, tandis que la
compagnie s'est un peu éloignée: et cette déclaration est suivie d'un prompte courroux, qui parait à
notre rougeur, et qui, pour un temps, bannit l'amant de notre présence. Ensuite il trouve moyen de
nous appaiser, de nous accoutumer insensiblement au discours de sa passion, et de tirer de nous cet
aveu qui fait tant de peine. Après cela viennent les aventures, les rivaux qui se jettent à traverse d'une
inclination établie, les persécutions des pères, les jalousies conçues sous des fausses apparences, les
plaintes, les désespoirs, les enlèvemens, et ce qui s'ensuit."
[36]When Fléchier delivered a funeral oration on the death of madame de Montauzier, he spoke of
her mother by her assumed name of Athénice. "You remember, my brothers," he exclaimed, "those
cabinets, which we still regard with so much veneration; where the mind was purified and where
virtue was revered under the name of the incomparable Athénice; where persons of quality or talent
assembled, and composed a select court—numerous without confusion, modest without constraint,
learned without pride, refined without affectation." La Bruyère describes this society in somewhat
different terms: "Not long ago we witnessed a circle of persons of either sex, drawn together by
conversation and the cultivation of talent. They left the art of speaking intelligibly to the vulgar. One
remark, enveloped in mysterious phrase, brought on another yet more obscure; and they went on
exaggerating till they spoke in absolute enigmas, which were most applauded. By talking of delicacy,
sentiment, and finesse of expression, they managed neither to make themselves understood, nor to
understand. There was need of neither good sense, memory, nor cleverness for these conversations.
Wit was all in all—not true wit, but that which consists in conceits and extravagant fancies."
[37]It has been frequently asserted this piece was written while the author was in the country; his
preface favours this notion, in which he says that he only ridicules les fausses Précieuses, that name
being then held in esteem. Contemporary notices, however, make it apparent that this piece came out

first in Paris; and it was impossible that he could have so well seized the peculiar tone of these
sentimental pedants any where except in their very birth-place.
[38]It is well known that even during his life-time the calumny was spread abroad, that Molière
married his own natural daughter. The great difference of age between the sisters, Madeleine and
Armande Bejart gave to those who were ignorant of their true relationship some foundation for a
report, which sprung from a former intimacy between Molière and the elder sister. He always
disdained to contradict the falsehood; and it has generally been assumed by biographers, while they
acquitted him of the alleged crime, that his wife was the daughter of Madeleine. We owe the
discovery of this falsehood to the pains which M. Beffara took to discover the certificate of Molière's
marriage; which is as follows:—"Jean Baptiste Poquelin, son of sieur Jean Poquelin, and of the late
Marie Cressé, on the one side: and Armande Gresinde Bejart, daughter of the late Joseph Bejart and
of Marie Hervée, on the other: both of this parish, opposite the Palais Royal, affianced and married
together, by permission of M. Comtes, deacon of Notre-Dame, and grand vicar of Monseigneur the
cardinal de Retz, archbishop of Paris; in presence of the said Jean Poquelin, father of the bridegroom,
and of André Boudet, brother-in-law of the bridegroom; the said Marie Hervée, mother of the bride,
and Louis Bejart and Madeleine Bejart, brother and sister of the said bride." This certificate is signed
by J. B. Poquelin, J. Poquelin, Boudet, Marie Hervée, Armande Gresinde Bejart, Louis Bejart, and
Bejart (Madeleine). Madeleine's daughter, by the noble Modena, who was the cause of this calumny,
was older than the wife of Molière; her baptismal register names her the daughter of Madeleine
Bejart et Messire Esprit de Raymond, noble of Modena, and chamberlain to Monsieur, brother of the
king, born 11th July, 1638; her name was Françoise, and she is mentioned as illegitimate in her
baptismal register. It is singular that in his "Essay on Molière," Sir Walter Scott slurs over the
complete refutation which this certificate brings with it of the calumny in question, and speaks of the
relationship of Molière and his wife as a doubtful point. This is neither just nor generous; but Sir
Walter seems to insinuate that as Molière's life was not entirely exempt from the stain of illicit love, a
little more or less was of no account.
[39]The king often danced in these ballets, till struck by some lines in the "Britannicus" of Racine, in
allusion to Nero's public exhibitions of himself, he entirely gave up the practice; and soon after the
appearing in them fell into such discredit, that, when Lulli took a part in that appended to the
"Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the secretaries of the king refused to receive him among them on this
account, and the king was obliged to interpose to bring them to reason.
[40]The following is the story of Ninon de l'Enclos and the "Tartuffe":—When Gourville, the
vicissitudes of whose life were many and great, was, in 1661, in danger of being hanged, and was
indeed hanged in effigy, he left two caskets full of money, one with Ninon, the other with a priest of
his acquaintance, who affected great devotion. On his return, Ninon restored him his casket, and the
value of money being increased, he was richer than before. He offered this surplus to his friend; but
she replied by threatening to throw the money out of window, if he said a word more on the subject.
The priest acted in a different way: he said he had employed the sum deposited with him in pious
works, having preferred the good of Gourville's soul to pelf, which might have occasioned his
perdition. This story Ninon used to tell with such clever mimicry of the false devotee, that Molière
declared he owed his best inspiration to her.
[41]Preface to "Tartuffe."
[42]Schlegel.
[43]There are some excellent observations on the moral of the "Tartuffe" in Sir Walter Scott's article
on Molière, published in the seventeenth vol. of his prose works, in answer to Bourdaloue's violent
philippic against this play. Scott argues with force and justice on the propriety of affixing the stigma
of ridicule to the most hateful vice ever nurtured in the human heart—the assumption of the
appearance of religion for worldly and wicked purposes; and he represents also the utility of the

picture drawn to arrest in his course one in danger of incurring the sin of spiritual pride, by showing
him that the fairest professions and strictest observances may be consistent with the foulest purposes.
"The case of the 'Tartuffe,'" Sir Walter Scott thus sums up in his argument, "is that of a vilely wicked
man, rendering the profession of religion hateful by abusing it for the worst purposes: and if such
characters occurred, as there is little reason to doubt, in the time and court of Louis XIV., we can see
no reason against their being gibbeted in effigy. The poet himself is at pains to show that he draws
the true line of distinction between the hypocrite and the truly religious man. When the duped Orgon,
astonished at the discovery of Tartuffe's villainy, expresses himself doubtful of the existence of real
worth Cléante replies to him, with his usual sense and moderation:

'Quoi! parce qu'un fripon vous dupe avec audace,
Sous le pompeux éclat d'une austère grimace,
Vous voulez que partout on soit fait comme lui,
Et qu'aucun vrai dévot ne se trouve aujourd'hui?
Laissez aux libertins ces sottes conséquences:
Démêlez la vertu d'avec ses apparences;
Ne bazardez jamais votre estime trop tôt.
Ne soyez pour cela dans le milieu qu'il faut.
Gardez-vous, s'il se peut, d'honorer l'imposture,
Mais au vrai zèle, aussi, n'allez pas faire injure;
Et s'il vous faut tomber dans une extrémité,
Péchez plutôt encor de cet autre côté.'
[44]Molière thus describes himself in one of his pieces. A Lady says: "I remember the evening when,
impelled by the reputation he has acquired, and the works he has brought out, Célimène wished to
see Damon. You know the man, and his indolence in keeping up conversation. She invited him as a
wit; but he never appeared so stupid as in the midst of a dozen persons she had made it a favour to
invite to meet him, who looked at him with all their eyes, fancying that he would be different from
every body else. They fancied that he would amuse the company with bon mots; that every word he
should say would be witty, each speech an impromptu, that he must ask to drink with a point; and
they could make nothing of his silence."
[45]Chapelle's Epigram on this insult to his friend's remains deserves mention:—

"Puisqu'à Paris on dénie
La terre après le trépas,
À ceux qui, pendant leur vie,
Ont joué la comédie,
Pourquoi ne jette-t-on pas
Les bigots à la voirie?
Ils sont dans le même cas."

Boileau also alludes to the scandalous and impious treatment of his friend's remains.
[46]He does less justice to his personal character even than to his works. No one can read the
biographies of Molière without admiring the honourable, generous, and kindly nature of the man;
Schlegel slurs over these qualities, and endeavours to stamp him as a mere court buffoon.

LA FONTAINE

1621-1695

The life of this celebrated fabulist is marked by fewer incidents than the
generality even of literary lives. Unambitious, indolent, "simple," it has
been said, "as the heroes of his own fables," and subject to the most
whimsical lapses of thought and memory, his habitual state was a sort of
abstracted ruminating quietism, roused from which, he amused by his
singularities, or delighted by his inspirations. He lived almost a stranger to
the literary disputes of his time. Personal resentment or dislike was a feeling
too uncongenial, and an effort too fatiguing, for him to sustain, beyond the
excitement of the moment, even on two occasions when he was wantonly ill
used. His designation of "bon homme," first applied to him by Boileau and
Racine, then by the public, and since by posterity, paints him very happily.
The particulars recorded of him are what would naturally be expected—
traits of character rather than events.
Jean de la Fontaine was born on the 8th day of July, 1621, at Château
Thierry. Some of his biographers have maintained his pretensions to
nobility with a silly zeal. His father, Jean de la Fontaine, was master or
keeper of the royal domains in his district, which appears to have been an
honourable charge. The youth of the poet gave no promise of his future
success. He was remarkable only for his dulness, and a certain easy
tractable good nature. His teachers pronounced him a well disposed but
hopeless dunce; but his father, a very zealous and still more undiscerning
admirer of poetry, resolved that he should cultivate the muses,—and poor
La Fontaine laboured with all the complaisance of filial duty. His efforts
were vain. He could not produce a rhyme,—he who afterwards rhymed with
so much felicity and abundance,—and who alone, of all the poets of his
country, before and since his time, has, by the disposition of his rhymes and
the structure of his verses, completely vanquished the monotony of French
versification.
The father did not abandon his cherished hopes until he beheld his son
arrived at the age of nineteen, when, disappointed of making him a poet, he
took the more feasible resolution of making him a priest. With no other
fruits of education than such a stock of Latin as a dull boy could have

acquired under a village schoolmaster, La Fontaine, now in his twentieth
year, entered the religious order of the "oratoire,"—in passive compliance
with the wishes of his father, and the example of his brother, a respectable
ecclesiastic, who was affectionately attached to the poet, and who
subsequently made over to him his share of their paternal inheritance. It
may be set down among the instances of La Fontaine's characteristic
simplicity, that he did not perceive his utter inaptitude for such a life. He
renounced the cloister and returned to society after eighteen months. "The
wonder is not," says the abbe Olivet, "that La Fontaine threw off the fetters
of a monastic life, but that he ever assumed them;" to which it may be
added, as a second wonder, that after living, as he did, in ease and freedom,
without system or control, he was able to bear them so long.
It seems to have been his destiny in early life to have conditions chosen for
him by others, and adopted by himself, with a curious opposition to his
habits and character. Upon his return to the paternal roof, his father
proposed to him the transfer of his charge, and a marriage with Marie
d'Hericart, the daughter of a friend of his family. La Fontaine accepted both,
with the same unthinking docility. The duties of his mastership of the royal
domains were light and few, and his wife had talents and beauty; but he
neglected alike his official and domestic obligations, with an innocent
unconsciousness of both which disarmed censure and silenced complaint.
It would appear that his father now thought once more of seeing him a poet,
hopeless as this appeared to everybody else, and to none more than to La
Fontaine. His perseverance was strangely rewarded at last. An accident, or
an incident so described, called forth the latent fire at the age of twenty-two.
The best company of the neighbourhood, and more particularly those who
had any pretensions to literature, visited the father of La Fontaine. Among
them an officer of the garrison at Château Thierry, a great admirer and
reciter of verse, brought with him the poems of Malherbe, and read before
young La Fontaine the ode on the assassination of Henry IV. beginning—

"Que direz vous races futures."

Between the lyric spirit of the poet, and the energy of the declaimer, La
Fontaine's dormant faculty was suddenly excited. For some days he could
think of nothing but the odes of Malherbe. He read them, recited them,

spoke of them, with an unconscious and comic disregard of time, place, and
persons. He commenced immediately writing odes in imitation of his great
idol; and the happy father, on beholding his first essay, wept for joy. But if
La Fontaine had written nothing else, or if he had always adhered to the
same model, he would have left only the proofs of his own mediocrity, and
of his father's want of taste. The choice of Malherbe was as unhappy a
mistake of his peculiar genius as his previous destination had been of his
character. That poet's forced thoughts and lofty diction are directly opposed
to the simple graces of expression and imagination which characterise La
Fontaine. He fortunately discovered his mistake, and the secret of his
strength, chiefly through the advice of a judicious friend. This was a man of
cultivated mind, named Pintrel, translator of the letters of Seneca. His name
and his translation would doubtless have sunk into oblivion, were they not
thus associated with the early studies of La Fontaine, who, ever grateful to
the memory of his guide and friend, republished the forgotten translation.
La Fontaine's modern reading was hitherto confined to Malherbe,—his
education, to just as much or as little Latin as was requisite for his
admission to a religious order. Pintrel recommended to him the
abandonment of Malherbe and verse-making for a time, and the studious
perusal of Virgil, Horace, Terence, Livy, and Quintilian. He adopted this
judicious counsel, and improved at the same time his knowledge of the
Latin language and his taste. Horace, he long afterwards declared, in a letter
to the learned Huet, bishop of Avranches, saved him from being spoiled by
Malherbe.
It is a curious fact that, as La Fontaine became more conversant with those
antique and eternal models of true beauty, he disrelished the French
literature of his own time. He went back from the age of Louis XIV. to that
of Francis I., preferring the simple and undisciplined manner of the one to
the civilised, fastidious, and artificial system of the other. The mere English
reader will understand the nature and the justice of this preference, by
imagining an English writer, of the reign of Charles II., discarding the wits
of that reign for the redundant and unadulterated literature of Elizabeth or
Henry VIII.; and they who understand the ancient classics in their spirit and
genius, not in external forms, will not be surprised by their producing this
effect. The true antique is simple and indulgent, as well as elegant, noble,
and governed by rules. It should not be forgotten, or lost sight of, however,

that at this period the French literature of the age of Louis XIV. had not yet
reached its distinctive character and excellence. The Balzacs, Voitures, and
Cotins, with their conceits and mannerisms, had not yet been banished by
the force of satire, and the example of better taste in Boileau and Molière.
Boileau had not yet written his satires and art of poetry; Molière had not yet
dissected, and exposed on the stage, the verses of an admired court poet of
the day.[47]
La Fontaine's favourite French writers, from the commencement to the end
of his literary career, were Rabelais and Clement Marot; the one for his
humour, invention, and happy manner of narrating, in his episodical and
most eccentric tales,—the other for his gaiety and naïveté,—and both for
the archaic simplicity of their diction. He also read with delight Ariosto,
Boccaccio, and Machiavelli,—the last named not only in his lighter, but
more serious works. Being asked why he preferred the writers of Italy to
those of his own nation, he replied, in that tone of simplicity, bordering on
silliness, which obtained him the name of "bon homme," that "they diverted
him more." This avowed predilection for the great writers of Italy, at a time
when they were not appreciated in France, when Boileau had the
impertinence to speak lightly of "Messire Arioste," proves not only the
instinctive correctness of his taste, but the independence of his judgment.
Wholly ignorant of the Greek language in his youth, he was too indolent to
acquire it at a later period. Translations, and the help of a friend, named
Maucroix, who aided him in his studies, like Pintrel, supplied this defect,—
as far as it could be supplied. La Fontaine, in return, associated Maucroix, a
good scholar, an indifferent poet, and a true friend, with his own
immortality, in his letters and minor poems. It may be observed, that, when
he resorts to the Greek writers, he seizes their spirit with a justness which
would imply a knowledge of their language. This is ascribed to his early
intimacy with Racine, who was the most accomplished Greek scholar of his
country, and explained as well as translated several portions of the Greek
classics for the use of his friend. La Fontaine chiefly delighted in Plutarch
and Plato. His partiality to the former may be easily conceived. The lives of
Plutarch were calculated to charm his indolence and his imagination. There
is something not quite so obvious in his choice of Plato. But the attentive
reader will discover, in his fables and tales, traits of observation and ethical
philosophy the most profound, as well as ingenious,—worthy of Plato, or of

Machiavelli,—yet so happily disposed, and so simply expressed, as to
appear perfectly in their place. The abbé Olivet mentions his having seen a
copy of Plato once possessed by La Fontaine, and noted by him in such a
manner as to betray the source of many of his maxims and observations.
It is curious and instructive to observe one who has been regarded as
essentially the poet of nature—one supposed never to have meditated or
read—thus storing his mind with knowledge from the best sources, and
forming his taste after the best models. His verses even, indolent as he was,
and easy and careless as they seem, were slowly and laboriously produced.
He has declared this in his letters and prefaces, and it is attested by some
who knew him. The fact cannot be too strongly impressed. Mistaken or
misrepresented instances of uncultivated genius, and of composition
without labour or length of time, too frequently stimulate ignorant and
pretending mediocrity to teaze the press and the public with commonplaces,
without value as without number.
La Fontaine continued some years at Château Thierry, obscure and indolent,
—neglecting his charge, his family, and his fortune,—reading his favourite
authors, writing verse, and translating Terence. The preface to his poem of
"Adonis," and its being composed in heroic verse, for which he had an early
predilection, would imply that it was written during this period. Most of his
other earlier verses have been lost through his neglect of the manuscripts;
but, judging by some early pieces given in his posthumous works, their
disappearance is scarcely to be regretted.
The monotony of his rural life was broken only by a visit to Paris, or some
village adventure. The following affair is truly curious, as illustrating the
character of the man:—Some self-called friends, either in jest or malice,
intimated to him that the frequent visits of an old military officer, named
Poignan, at his house, compromised the reputation of madame La Fontaine,
and that her husband was bound in honour to challenge him. La Fontaine,
the most negligent of husbands, and the most easy and credulous of
mankind, listened implicitly to their counsel, made an extraordinary effort
to rise at five in the morning, girded on his sword, sallied forth, and found
Poignan in bed. "My dear friend," said the old captain, "what brings you out
so early? Has any misfortune happened? Is your house on fire?" "Rise, and
follow me," said the poet. The captain repeated and reiterated his entreaties
for some explanation, but in vain. He was obliged to leave his bed, arm

himself, and follow La Fontaine, without the remotest idea of his purpose.
After they had gone some short distance. La Fontaine stopped, drew his
sword, and desired his companion to draw and defend himself.
The latter, having no alternative, drew in his own defence; and, with his
superior address as a military man, disarmed the poet at the first pass. He
now obtained an explanation. "They have told me," said La Fontaine, "that I
ought to fight you, because you go to my house to see my wife." "My dear
friend," replied the captain, who was past the age of gallantry, and, having
neither family nor occupations, sought, in his visits, only an escape from
ennui, "you have been abused, and I slandered: but, to set your mind quite
at ease, I will never again cross your threshold, grievous as the privation is
to me." "No, my friend," rejoined the poet, "I have satisfied them by
fighting you, as they advised me, and henceforth you shall come to my
house more frequently than ever." This anecdote is scarce reconcilable with
the maxims of one who reduced the question of conjugal fidelity to the
following dilemma:—"Quand on ne le scait pas, ce n'est rien—quand on le
scait c'est peu de choses." But it has passed without question in every
biographical notice of him.
La Fontaine, according to some accounts, was an unfaithful as well as
negligent husband. But his rural gallantries, besides the uncertain evidence
of them, are too frivolous to be noticed here.
Opinions and representations are divided as respects madame La Fontaine.
According to some, her talents and beauty were marred by an imperious
temper, and she was the very original of "Madame Honesta," in the tale of
Belphegor, who was

"D'une orgueil extreme;
A et d'autant plus, que de quelque vertu
Un tel orgueil paraissait revetu."

La Fontaine, they add, accordingly, like the husband in Belphegor, took
occasion to absent himself as often and as long as he could. Others, again,
assert that the lady was gentle as she was beautiful, and that her husband
bore testimony to her good qualities of temper expressly, as well as to her
taste, by submitting to her his poetical labours. It may be said, that the
neglect and absences of such a husband as La Fontaine form no

presumption against the conjugal temper of his wife. Some anecdotes
related of his negligence and distractions startle belief. Despatched by his
father to Paris, on business the most important and most urgent, he met a
friend, dined with him, went to the play with him, supped with him, took up
his lodging for the night in his house, and returned to Château Thierry next
day. "Well, you have arranged every thing satisfactorily?" said the father. La
Fontaine opened wide his eyes in astonishment. He had wholly forgotten
the matter till that moment! Going to Paris on another occasion, with
papers, upon which depended his private fortune and his public charge, he
was overtaken by the postman. "Monsieur," said the latter, "has dropped
some papers on the way." "No, no," replied the poet. But the other, knowing
with whom he had to do, or having discovered from the papers to whom
they belonged, requested him to examine his saddle-bags; upon which he
remembered, for the first time, that he even had papers to lose. In his
reveries and distractions, he was unconscious not only of the lapse of time
but of the inclemency of the weather. He loved reading and musing in the
open air. The duchess of Bouillon left him one morning, with a Livy in his
hand, pacing up and down between two rows of trees. On her return in the
evening she found him still pacing and reading in the same place. What
made this the more extraordinary was a heavy fall of rain in the interim, and
La Fontaine having all the time had his head uncovered.
He probably owed, and the world owes it, to his acquaintance with the
duchess of Bouillon, that he did not pass his life idly and obscurely at
Château Thierry. This lady was one of the celebrated Mancinis, nieces of
Cardinal Mazarin. She inherited her uncle's ambition, sagacity, and love of
intrigue: she shared with her sisters wit, gaiety, and the graces; and, with
her family, a taste for literature. Whilst living in court disgrace at Château
Thierry, some verses of La Fontaine happened to meet her eye. She
immediately had the poet introduced to her, and soon became his friend.
She had, it is said, the merit of discerning not only his genius but its
peculiar bent. La Fontaine had yet written neither tales nor fables. She
advised him to devote himself to simple and playful narrations in verse. His
first tales in point of time, and some of the first in point of merit, are said to
have been composed by him according to her suggestions, both of the
matter and the manner. He is supposed indebted to her for that grace and
delicacy of perception and expression which he combined with so much of
simplicity and nature. He lived in her intimate society, and that alone must

have been a great advantage to him. The conversation of a woman who
knew the world, loved poetry, and judged of both with discernment, must
have been the best school for one so simple and inexperienced, yet so
ingenious and inspired, as La Fontaine.
It may appear strange that La Fontaine, a simple bourgeois, and village
poet, was thus familiarly treated by a woman of the highest rank. His charge
even placed him in the relation of a servant to the duke of Bouillon, her
husband, who held some superior and sinecure charge of the royal domains.
But, strongly as the gradations of birth and title were marked in France, it
will be found that sense, wit, and genius conferred privilege, or, like love
and death, levelled all degrees. Voiture, the son of a vintner, was the
companion of princes, the lover of princesses, and would never have been
reminded of his birth, had he not had the weakness to be ashamed of it; and
even then only in pleasantries, which he well deserved for his weakness and
vanity. A court lady, provoked by his conceit, one evening, whilst "playing
at proverbs," as it was called, said to him, "Come, that won't do; give us a
fresh tap—(percez nous en d'un autre)."
The duchess of Bouillon, on the expiration or remission of her exile, took
La Fontaine with her to Paris. He now became known to the persons most
distinguished in the capital for rank and genius in the circles of his
patroness, and of her sister, the celebrated duchess of Mazarin, so well
known for her wit, graces, gallantries, and conjugal disputes. Both sisters
continued the friends of La Fontaine through life, and exercised great
influence over his writings. Their characters may be illustrated, in passing,
by a single anecdote. It is related in the memoirs of the duchess of Mazarin,
—written by herself, or under her immediate direction.
Their breaches of court discipline subjected them frequently to mitigated
imprisonments,—sometimes at their own seats, sometimes in a convent,
where the offence demanded a more serious lesson of penance and reform.
Having been on one occasion consigned to the same convent they amused
themselves by putting ink into the holy water. The nuns, who on their way
to matins and vespers dipped their fingers in the font, and crossed their
foreheads with the sacred lymph, on meeting in the chapel, beheld upon
each other's brows, with surprise and terror, the dark signs of reprobation.

La Fontaine doubtless owed that finesse of expression which sometimes
palliates, if it does not redeem, the freedom of his pleasantries, to his
intercourse with two persons so witty, accomplished, and unconstrained.
Soon after his arrival in Paris he formed that union of friendship between
him, Molière, Boileau, and Racine, which death only interrupted. These
celebrated men appreciated his genius, before it yet received the stamp of
public admiration, and always regarded him with affection. Boileau and
Racine, indeed, amused themselves with his simplicity, and treated him
sometimes with a certain air of protection. The conversation happening to
turn one evening, at a supper party where they were, upon the dramatic
probability of what are called stage whispers or "asides," La Fontaine said it
was absurd to suppose that what was heard by the whole audience could
escape a person on the stage. A discussion ensued, as it commonly
happened when any question of art or literature was started, even in the
highest circles,—so different from modern fashionable life. "Don't you
think La Fontaine a great rogue?" said Boileau, to his nearest neighbour,
aside, but loud enough to be heard, and laughed at by everybody except La
Fontaine, who was thinking of something else. The argument, as well as the
laugh, was immediately turned against him; but most illogically, for the fact
proved not the reasonableness of "asides;" it was evidence only of La
Fontaine's distractions. "Let them laugh," said Molière, "le bon homme will
take a flight beyond them—(le bon homme ira plus loin qu'eux)." This
prediction has been verified; La Fontaine's reputation has been uniformly
spreading and rising, in spite of the disposition, even in France, during and
since the latter half of the last century, to detract from the age of Louis XIV.
It is worth remarking, with reference to this anecdote, that, of all the poets
of that age, he and Molière alone have maintained their pre-eminence
undisputed through every change of taste and time.
La Fontaine now passed his life in the coteries of the duchesses of Bouillon
and Mazarin, Boileau and Racine, without giving a thought to his home or
family. Boileau and Racine, both strictly religious moralists, were
scandalised by his complete separation from his wife, and pointed out to
him its indecency. Simple and docile, as usual, he admitted the justice of
their remonstrance; said the impropriety of his conduct had never occurred
to him; and, to make amends, he said he should go and see his wife without
delay. He set out for Château Thierry the next morning, and came back the

succeeding day. His friends made their inquiries respecting madame La
Fontaine. "I did not see her," said he. "How," said they, "not see her? was
she from home?" "Yes; she was gone to prayers; and the servant, not
knowing me, would not let me stay in the house till she returned." In this
extremity the poor poet, shut out of his own house, went to that of a friend,
where he dined, supped, and slept; and from which he started for Paris next
morning, without seeing his wife, or making his house a second visit.
The most imperative of all motives, however, the want of money,
sometimes sent him to Château Thierry, for the purpose of selling part of his
estate, to provide for his expenses at Paris. His improvident practice, of
consuming the principal after the interest was gone, "mangant son fonds
aprez son revenu," as he himself expressed it, together with his wife's want
of economy—for in this at least they perfectly agreed,—would have soon
left him destitute, if he had not become known to the celebrated and
unfortunate Foucquet. That prodigal financier and magnificent patron, upon
being made acquainted with the genius, character, and wants of La
Fontaine, settled on him a liberal pension, to be paid quarterly, on the
condition of a quarterly quittance in verse; and this condition he religiously
fulfilled. His pension, or rather his gratitude, dictated to him some of the
most beautiful of his smaller pieces. He celebrated and ministered to the
fêtes and gallantries, and sang the groves, gardens, and fountains, of Vaux,
—that princely residence, which Foucquet adorned with all that wealth,
prodigality, and the arts could produce; and which, it has been supposed,
contributed not a little to his ruin, by provoking the jealous or envious pride
of Louis XIV.
Though La Fontaine's acknowledgments are grateful, they are not servile.
Whatever appears exaggerated at the present day fell far short of the tone of
his contemporaries, and is moreover nobly borne out by his fidelity in his
patron's memorable disgrace.
Foucquet provoked, not only the displeasure, but the personal jealousy and
vengeance of Louis XIV., by rivalling him in princely magnificence at
Vaux; and in gallantry, it has been said, by making pretensions to the royal
mistress La Vallière[48]; yet had La Fontaine not only the generosity to
adhere to him, but the courage, for such it was, to solicit his pardon of
Louis XIV., in an elegy full of touching pathos and philosophy. Alluding to
the fickleness of fortune and court favour, he says:—

"On n'y connait que trop les jeux de la fortune,
Ses trompeuses faveurs, ses appas inconstans,
Mais on ne les connait que quand il n'est plus temps."

To move Louis he brings before him the example of Henry IV.—

"Du magnanime Henri qu'il contemple la vie,
Des qu'il put se venger, il en perdit l'envie."

Louis, however, alike insensible to justice, mercy, and poetry, changed, by a
mockery of commutation, the minister's sentence of banishment into
solitary confinement for life. Colbert, the enemy and successor of Foucquet,
could not forgive the crime of fidelity to a fallen patron in a poet, and took
away La Fontaine's pension.
La Fontaine, it has been observed, was in his twenty-third year before he
gave the least indication of the poetic faculty. He had passed his fortieth
before his genius and reputation attained their full height and splendour. A
small volume, entitled "Contes et Merveilles en vers," published with his
name, in 1664, determined his place as a poet, established his supremacy
over all fabulists, modern and ancient, and formed an epoch in French
literature. His fortune did not improve with his fame. It is true that his
celebrity made him known to the prince of Condé and the duke and abbé de
Villars, by whom, as well as by the duchesses of Bouillon and Mazarin, he
was occasionally and liberally supplied; but his want of all order and
economy rendered their liberality unavailing, because it was irregular and
occasional.
He joined in the universal pæan of the day to Louis XIV. His tale of
"Psyche and Cupid" is disfigured by episodic descriptions of the
magnificence of Versailles, with a due seasoning of compliment to the great
king; but he continued unpatronised, even after the death of Colbert, whose
injustice to La Fontaine is a stain upon his otherwise illustrious memory.
The neglect, or, it may be termed, the exception of him by Louis, who was
so munificent to other men of genius, has been accounted for.[49] That
monarch admired and rewarded only those talents which ministered to his
pride or his pleasures—to the splendours of his court or government. He
had a taste only for the grand, the gorgeous, and the adulatory. Boileau

owed the royal favour to two indifferent odes much more than to his satires,
epistles, art of poetry, and Lutrin; and Molière, to those court ballets in
which Louis danced, rather than to his dramatic chefs d'œuvre. Louis XIV.
had the same distaste for La Fontaine as a poet and Teniers as a painter;
and, from the same principle,—he could not admire humble subjects,
treated in a true and simple, however charming, style. He would not
condescend to understand the language of "Jean Lapin" and "Maître
Corbeau." La Fontaine offered him incense in his way; but it was not of the
kind acceptable to the idol; and he continued neglected, even when, in an
evil hour, he sang the revocation of the edict of Nantes. La Fontaine was
also in bad odour with the intriguing devotees of the court; and Louis, a
weak bigot, with all his arrogance and pride, may have been indisposed
towards him on this account, from their suggestions or his own.
The loss of his pension thus remained unsupplied; and he continued once
more carelessly spending "son fonds aprez son revenu," when he came
under the notice of the most accomplished, enlightened, and amiable
princess of her time—Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., most
unworthily married to the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. She
attached him to her suite, as one of the gentlemen of her household, with a
salary to receive, and no service, beyond some volunteer verses, to perform.
But La Fontaine had not long enjoyed her patronage when the princess died,
under suspicion of poison, regretted by all France, her husband excepted;
and La Fontaine was once more in distress—if that to which he was wholly
insensible can be so termed. He seems to have derived from nature the
happy or unhappy insensibility to the accidents of life, which some ancient
philosophers attained only through the severest exercise of reason and
discipline.
It appears to have been his fortune to be indebted to the discernment and
kindness of women. Among the persons uniting high rank to a taste for
literature, with whom he became acquainted at Paris, was madame de la
Sablière. This accomplished and kind-hearted woman, perceiving La
Fontaine's utter inability to regulate the economy of the simplest household,
relieved him of all care at once by giving him an apartment in her house.
Here he passed twenty (the happiest) years of his life, relieved from all
anxiety,—his wants supplied, and his humour indulged, with the utmost
attention and kindness. Some of his pieces are dedicated to his benefactress,

and he has celebrated her name in verse, but with reserve and delicacy.
Madame de la Sablière had the good taste to control the poet's expression of
his feelings in their particular relation to each other.
He composed during this period the most popular of his tales, "Joconde,"
and dedicated it to madame de la Sablière. It is the most justly admired of
all his tales; and, being imitated from Ariosto, placed him in a state of
rivalry with the great Italian poet. An officer in the household of the duke of
Orleans, named Bouillon, gave at the same time a rival version, and persons
were found courtly or tasteless enough to prefer it to La Fontaine's. The
question was even made the subject of a wager; and the arbiter appealed to
declined giving an opinion. Boileau did indignant justice to genius and his
friend, and Bouillon's "Joconde" was no more heard of. "La Fontaine," says
Boileau, "imitated Ariosto as Virgil imitated Homer, and Tasso Virgil;
Bouillon like a trembling valet, who dared not put one foot before the other
without his master's leave." He even insinuates that La Fontaine had treated
the subject in a manner superior to Ariosto himself. There is, it is true, in La
Fontaine's manner, a simplicity, and ease, and graceful levity, somewhat
more suitable to the matter and to a mere fabulist. But those who are
acquainted with the Italian poet will consider any deficiency of these minor
graces in him much more than redeemed by his superior richness, and
variety of invention, and vigour of imagination.
The society of madame de la Sablière comprised princes, nobles, poets, and
philosophers. She cultivated science as well as literature,—but in secret.
Bernier, who also had an apartment in her house, gave La Fontaine some
notions in natural philosophy. It was under this influence, whilst his head
was filled with physical science, that he wrote his poem on Jesuits' bark (Le
Quinquina)—a dull production, on a barren subject; which, however, was
not then quite so uninviting as it may appear now. Bark had just performed
what were deemed marvellous cures on Louis XIV. and Colbert, and it was
sold by the Jesuits at its weight in gold. Colbert had the littleness to be
unjust to La Fontaine; but the poet had the magnanimity to be just to the
minister. He alludes to him in this poem in a tone of manly, independent,
and merited praise.
La Fontaine added considerably to the number of his fables and tales, and
wrote several dramatic pieces, whilst he lived under the roof of madame de
la Sablière. His dramas, chiefly operas and light comedies, with an attempt

or two at tragedy, are below mediocrity. He wanted the dramatic instinct.
There are scenes of easy graceful dialogue, but strung together without art
or interest. Some were written by him in partnership with the comedian
Champmélé, husband of the celebrated actress of that name, who played in
the tragedies and figures in the life of Racine, and in the letters of madame
de Sévigné. It is told of him that, whilst sitting in the pit, during the first
performance of one of his own operas, he fell asleep! But this is too much,
even for La Fontaine; and it should not be forgotten, that an opera was the
cause of the only satire he ever wrote, and of one of the only two quarrels
he ever had. The celebrated Lulli obtained his easy promise to write him an
opera on the story of Daphne, teased him until it was completed, and then
capriciously adopted the "Proserpine" of Quinault. La Fontaine, now an old
man, or, as he called himself, "un enfant à barbe grise," a child with a grey
beard, knew, for the first time, what it was to feel personal resentment, and
wrote the satire entitled "Le Florentin." It is merely a narrative of the affair
between him and Lulli, in the manner of his tales. But he was soon and
easily reconciled; and he complained afterwards that the little gall in him
was stirred by others on the occasion.
The only symptom of literary ambition ever shown by La Fontaine was his
desire to become a member of the French academy. A vacancy having
occurred in 1683, he became a candidate. The devotees at court opposed
and denounced him as a mere writer of frivolous and licentious tales, fit
only to rank with Clement Marot and Rabelais, and unworthy of a place in
that grave and learned body. Yet was he elected the successor of the great
Colbert, whose death had caused the vacancy, and in opposition to Boileau,
by a majority of sixteen to seven. Louis XIV. never interfered in the
elections; but his sanction was necessary before the elected candidate could
be received. He withheld his approbation for several months, from his
dislike of La Fontaine, and his pique at the rejection of Boileau, then his
chief eulogist and historiographer. So anxious was La Fontaine during the
interval, that he solicited the interest of the royal mistress, madame de
Montespan, through her sister, madame de Thiars, and addressed a
supplicatory ballad to Louis XIV. Another vacancy soon occurred; Boileau
was elected; and a deputation of the academy waited on Louis to acquaint
him. His reply was, "Your choice of M. Boileau will be universally
approved, and you may now receive La Fontaine. He has promised to be
good—(il a promise d'être sage").

He certainly wrote fewer tales henceforth; but it is doubtful whether this did
not proceed more from indolence than the promise of reformation. The
private sittings of the academy, also, "diverted" him, as he expressed it,
during those hours which he before consumed in diverting himself with
writing verse. His becoming a member of the academy led to his second
and last quarrel, and in a manner truly worthy of La Fontaine. This
authentic fact goes a great way in establishing the credit of other anecdotes
deemed untrue or exaggerated from their improbability. The French
academy was at this time engaged in its great undertaking of a dictionary
which should fix the French language. The abbé Furetière, then a popular
writer, and one of "the forty," announced a dictionary of the French
language in his own name. He was immediately charged with pirating the
common stock. A ferment was excited in the academy, and throughout the
republic of letters in France. Furetière, publicly arraigned, defended himself
with keen and virulent personalities, and, after several discussions, was
expelled. La Fontaine was one of the minority in his favour, and meant to
give him his vote; but unluckily, in one of his usual distractions, dropped
his ball, by mistake, in the rejecting compartment of the balloting-box.
Furetière would not pardon the blunder, and attacked him bitterly. After an
exchange of epigrams, which did credit to neither. La Fontaine thought of
the affair no more; but was never reconciled.
Furetière, in his vengeance, revealed the secrets of the learned assembly. If
his account maybe relied on, the process by which the academy proposed its
famous dictionary was truly laughable. "He only is right," says Furetière,
"who talks loudest: one makes a long speech upon some trifle; another
echoes the nonsense of his predecessor; sometimes three or four talk at the
same time. When five or six are in close committee, one reads, another
delivers his opinion, two are chatting together, a fifth looks over some
dictionary which may happen to be on the table, and the sixth is sleeping."
The treachery of the disclosure was condemned, but its truth generally
admitted; and the private sittings of the academy were the theme of public
ridicule and amusement, like the consultations of physicians, so pleasantly
treated by Molière.
Whatever excuse there may have been for Furetière's bitterness against his
adversaries and the academy, there was none for his attack on La Fontaine.
The blunder was provoking, but committed most innocently. La Fontaine's

character placed his good faith beyond all doubt. His singularities were so
well known that his mistakes and eccentricities were chartered in society,
and excused even by Louis XIV. Having been introduced to the royal
presence to present one of his works, he searched, and searched in vain, for
the votive volume, and then frankly told the king that he had forgotten it!
"Let it be another time, M. de la Fontaine," said the monarch, with a
graciousness and good humour which did him honour, and dismissing the
poet with a purse of gold. This misadventure did not quicken his attention
even for the moment: he left his purse of gold behind him in the carriage.
The stories of his careless apathy, and absences of mind, are numberless.
Meeting, at a large dinner party, a young man with whose conversation he
seemed pleased, somebody asked his opinion of him. "He is a young man of
sense and promise," said La Fontaine. "Why, it is your own son," said the
questioner. "Ah! I am very glad of it," rejoined the father, with the utmost
indifference. He had forgotten that he even had a son; who fortunately had
been taken charge of and educated by others. La Fontaine treated religion
with the same indifference as all other subjects, however serious. Racine
took him one day to an extraordinary service, on one of the festivals of the
Roman catholic church. Knowing that the service would be long, and
apprehending the effect upon La Fontaine, he gave him a small bible to
read, as a preventative against sleeping, or some other indecorum. The book
happening to open before him at the lesser prophets, his attention soon
became wholly absorbed by the prayer of the Jews in Baruch. It took the
same possession of his imagination in his advanced age as the ode of
Malherbe in his youth. His first question to everybody was, "Have you read
Baruch? Do you know he was a man of genius?" This was his common
expression for some time to all whom he met, without distinction of
persons, from a buffoon to a bishop.
It was one of his singularities, that, when anything took his fancy, he could
think of nothing else for the time; and he introduced his favourite topic, or
favourite author, in a manner at once unseasonable and comic. One day,
whilst in company with the abbé Boileau, his head full of Rabelais, whom
he had just been reading, he abruptly asked the grave ecclesiastic which he
thought had more wit, Rabelais or St. Austin. Some were shocked, others
laughed; and the abbé, when recovered from his surprise, replied, "M. de la
Fontaine, you have put on your stocking the wrong side out," which was

really the fact. Wishing to testify his respect for the celebrated Arnaud, he
proposed dedicating to him one of the least scrupulous of his tales, in which
a monk is made to cite scripture in a manner far from edifying. Boileau and
Racine had the utmost difficulty in making him comprehend that such an
offering would be an outrage to the respected and rigid Jansenist. He was
nearly as absent as the man who forgot in the evening that he had been
married in the morning. It occurred to him one day to go and dine with a
friend. On his knocking at the door, a servant in mourning informed him
that his friend had been buried ten days before, and reminded him that he
had himself assisted at the funeral.
The humour and fancy which abound in his tales, and his reputation among
the men of genius of his time, made him an object of curiosity. He was
sought and shown in company as "a lion," if one may use that ephemeral
term. A farmer-general invited a large party "to meet the celebrated La
Fontaine." They came prepared to hear him talk like "Joconde," or tell such
stories as "The Matron of Ephesus." Poor La Fontaine eat, drank, never
opened his mouth for any other purpose, and soon rose, to attend, he said, a
meeting of the academy. "The distance is short: you will be too early," said
the host. "I'll take the longest way," replied La Fontaine. Madame de la
Sablière at one time discharged her whole establishment whilst La Fontaine
was residing in her house. "What!" said somebody, "have you kept none?"
"None," replied the lady, "except mes trois bêtes[50],—my cat, my dog, and
La Fontaine." Such was her idea of his thoughtless and more than childish
simplicity. It will hardly cause surprise that such a man never had a study or
a library. He read and wrote when and where he felt disposed; and never
thought of being provided with any other books than those he was
immediately using.
After twenty years of unwearied kindness, he was deprived of the society
and care of his benefactress, and soon after of the home which he had
enjoyed in her house. The circumstances present one of the most curious
views of French manners and character at the time. Madame de la Sablière,
a married woman, with an independent fortune, lived on terms of civility
with her husband, who scarcely merited even this, and maintained with the
anacreontic poet. La Fare, that ambiguous but recognised relation of tender
friendship, into which no one looked beyond its decorous exterior, and
which created neither scandal nor surprise. La Fare, after an attachment of

some years, deserted his "friend" for the gaming table and the actress
Champmélé, who turned so many heads in her day. This desertion so preyed
upon the mind of madame de la Sablière that she sought refuge in devotion
and a convent. Her husband, a rhyming marquis, who passed his life in
writing madrigals upon his frivolous amours, was deserted about the same
time by a mistress, and took it so to heart that he poisoned himself—at the
romantic age of sixty-five! This event had such an effect upon madame de
la Sablière, joined with her own private sorrows, that she did not long
survive him, and La Fontaine was once more thrown helpless and homeless
upon the world.
The duchess of Bouillon was at this time in England with her sister, the
duchess of Mazarin, who had taken up her residence there to avoid
breathing the same air with her husband, when tormenting him had ceased
to be an amusement to her. The poet St. Evremond, her friend, had, also,
been long established in England. Learning the melancholy state in which
La Fontaine was left by the death of madame de la Sablière, the three
invited him over to England, with an assurance of being well provided for.
Some English persons of distinction, who had known La Fontaine at Paris,
and admired his genius, among them lords Godolphin and Danby, and lady
Hervey, joined in the invitation. La Fontaine, now infirm and old, and at all
times the most indolent of men, could not bring himself to make the effort.
He, however, rather hesitated than declined. An opportune present of fifty
louis from the duke of Burgundy, or rather in his name, for he was then but
a child, decided his refusal.
Notwithstanding this temporary supply, he would soon have been destitute,
if he had not become indebted once more for a home and its comforts to the
friendship of a woman. Madame d'Hervart, the wife of a rich financier, who
had known him at the house of madame de la Sablière, offered him a
similar asylum, in her own. Whilst on her way to make the proposal she met
him in the street, and said, without preface or form, "La Fontaine, come and
live in my house." "I was just going, madam," said the poet, with as much
indifference as if his doing so was the simplest thing in the world; and this
relation of kindness and confidence subsisted without change to his death.
The protection and proofs of friendship which La Fontaine received from
the sex reflect honour upon the memory of his benefactresses. But his is by
no means a single instance. An interesting volume might be written upon

the obligations which unprotected talents, literature, and the arts are under
to the discerning taste and generosity of Frenchwomen.
La Fontaine's health had been declining for some time; but whether from
his having no immediate apprehension of death, or from his habitual
indolence, he manifested no sense of the truths and duties of religion. The
idea of his dying impenitent agitated the court and the sorbonne. It was
arranged that father Poujet, a person of note as a controversialist and
director of consciences, should make him a visit, under pretence of mere
civility. The abbé Nicéron, in his memoirs of men of letters, describes this
interview. The wily confessor, after conversing some time on ordinary
topics, introduced that of religion with an adroitness wholly superfluous
with so simple a soul as La Fontaine. They spoke of the Bible. "La
Fontaine," says Nicéron, "who was never irreligious in principle, said to
him, with his usual naïveté, 'I have been lately reading the New Testament:
it is a good book—yes, upon my faith! a very good book; but there is one
article to which I cannot subscribe—the eternity of punishment. I do not
comprehend how this can be consistent with the goodness of God.' Father
Poujet," continues Nicéron, "discussed the subject with him fully; and, after
ten or twelve visits and discussions, succeeded in convincing La Fontaine
of all the truths of religion."
His state soon became so alarming that he was called upon to make a
general confession, preparatory to his receiving the sacrament. Certain
reparations and expiations were to be previously made; and father Poujet,
with all his logic and adroitness, had some difficulty in obtaining them. The
first sacrifice required of him was, that he should abandon the proceeds of
an edition of his tales, then publishing under his direction in Holland; the
publication of them in France having been prohibited since 1677. He
readily consented for himself; but wished to make over the profits to the
poor, as more consonant with humanity, and more grateful in the eyes of
God, than yielding them to a griping rogue of a Dutch publisher. The priest
convinced him that "the wages of sin" could not with propriety be applied
to the service of God and of charity. He gave up the point; and such was the
satisfaction caused by his conversion at court, that a sum, equal to what he
should have received for his tales, was sent to him in the name of the young
duke of Burgundy, "who thought it unreasonable that La Fontaine should be
the poorer for having done his duty." According to some accounts, this

would appear to be the same donation of fifty louis already mentioned; and
it is most probable. The devotees of the court were much more likely to
reward the conversion than relieve the distress of La Fontaine, at a time
when the tone was given by père la Chaise and madame de Maintenon.
He was next required to consign to the flames, with his own hands, a
manuscript opera, which he intended to have performed. The sacrifice was
not consented to without some qualms of authorship, even by La Fontaine.
The last condition was the hardest of all,—that he should ask pardon of God
and the church, publicly, for having scandalised both in the publication of
his tales. La Fontaine, with all his indolence and simplicity, and enfeebled
as he was by sickness and age, resisted the demand of a public reparation,
in spite of all the arguments and artifices of the confessor. It was agreed
between them to appeal to the sorbonne. A deputation of three doctors
accordingly waited on La Fontaine, and took part, as might be anticipated,
with the confessor. They argued and disputed, but the poet still held out
against making satisfaction publicly. An old nurse, who attended him,
seeing the pitiless zeal with which they fatigued and teased the poor poet,
said to them. "Don't torment him, my reverend fathers; it is not ill-will in
him, but stupidity, poor soul; and God Almighty will not have the heart to
damn him for it." They, however, did persevere, and gained their point. A
deputation from the academy was called in to witness La Fontaine's public
reparation, given as follows by Nicéron:—"It is but too public and
notorious that I have had the misfortune to compose a book of infamous
tales. In composing it I had no idea of the work being so pernicious as it
proves to be. My eyes have been opened, and I confess that it is an
abominable book: I am most sorry that I ever wrote and published it; and I
ask pardon of God and the church for having done so. I wish the work had
never proceeded from my pen, and it were in my power wholly to suppress
it. I promise solemnly, in the presence of my God, whom, though unworthy,
I am going to receive, that I will never contribute to the impression or
circulation of it: and I renounce, now and for ever, all profit from an edition
which I unfortunately consented should be given in Holland."
There appears no reasonable doubt of a public reparation of some sort
having been made by La Fontaine; but that above cited differs so entirely
from his turn of thought and style as to suggest a suspicion of its having
been fabricated or dictated to him. The report of his death was circulated

with that of his conversion; and Linière, a satirical poet of the day, wrote
the following epigram upon him and Pelisson, who had died shortly before:
—

"Je ne jugerai de ma vie
D'un homme avant qu'il soit éteint,—
Pelisson est mort en impie,
Et La Fontaine comme un saint."

There was, however, nothing very surprising either in Pelisson dying like a
sinner, or La Fontaine like a saint. The former, from being a huguenot,
became a convert, and a maker of converts, a pensioned abbe, a courtier, an
author of "Prayers at Mass," "Amatory Verses to Olympia," "a Treatise on
the Eucharist;" there was nothing extraordinary or inconsistent in such a
man dying, as he did, "unsacramented." It was equally within the range of
probability that La Fontaine, never an infidel, always tractable and simple,
and now beset on his bed of sickness by learned and skilful disputants,
should make so devout and edifying an end. It should not be omitted that
his conversion made the fortune of father Poujet: he immediately became a
fashionable confessor, or spiritual director, and obtained church preferment.
The epigrammatist was mistaken in La Fontaine's death. He lived about two
years more, in the house of madame d'Hervart; and, in spite of his vow, is
supposed to have written some more tales; among them the tale entitled "La
Clochette." This relapse is said to be alluded to in the prologue cited by
Moreri:—

"O combien l'homme est inconstant, divers,
Foible, leger, tenant mal sa parole:
J'aurais juré-même, en assez beaux vers,
De renoncer à tout conte frivole,
Et quand juré—c'est ce qui me confond—
Depuis deux jours j'ai fait cette promesse,—
Puis fiez vous à rimeur qui répond
D'un seul moment," &c.

His mind, however, seems to have been deeply tinged with devotion, from
his illness, in 1693, to his death, in 1695. He began to translate the church

hymns; and read, at the first meeting of the academy which he attended
after his illness, a translation of the "Dies Iræ," with more advantage to his
reputation as a catholic than as a poet. His talent seems now to have given
way to age, infirmity, and the penances which he appears to have imposed
upon himself.
Lulli, who died a few years before, did public penance, like La Fontaine,
but with an after-thought worthy of the cunning Florentine. He burned, at
the request of his confessor, the music of a new unperformed opera. A
prince having asked him, a few days after, how he could be so silly as to
destroy charming music at the desire of a drivelling jansenist, he replied,
"Hush, hush, monseigneur; I knew what I did; I have another copy." He,
however, had a relapse, did penance in sackcloth and ashes, and died, with a
halter round his neck, singing the hymn, "Sinner, thou must die," with tears
of remorse and agony.
La Fontaine died in 1695, and in the seventy-fourth year of his age. Upon
undressing his body, after death, it was found that he mortified himself in a
shirt of sackcloth. The apartment in which he lived and died, at the house of
madame d'Hervart, was visited as an interesting object for several years
after.
The chief fault of La Fontaine is that he had but one tone. Madame de
Sévigné, who judged men of genius with the presumption of a court lady
dictating to her coterie, pronounces him wretched when he is anything but a
fabulist. "I should like," said she, in one of her letters, "to attempt a fable,
for the express purpose of showing La Fontaine the misery of forcing one's
talent out of its sphere; and what bad music is produced by the foolish wish
to sing in every tone."
La Fontaine had one tone in which he was pre-eminent; but sang in more
than one without producing bad music. The poem of "Adonis" has great
beauty. It should be regarded, he says, only as an idyl; and it will,
undoubtedly, be found one of the most beautiful of that class. But it had the
further merit of being the first accomplished specimen of heroic verse in
France; for Boileau had not yet given his "Lutrin." The mythological tale of
"Psyche and Cupid," in which prose and verse alternate and relieve each
other, continues to be read, notwithstanding the modern unpopularity of the
divinities of the Pantheon. He is indebted to Apuleius, but only for the fable

and main incident: the episodes, description, and manner of narrating
("manière de conter," as he calls it), are his own. The celebrated and
forgotten romance of "Astrea" was one of the books which La Fontaine read
with pleasure; and he is said to have derived from it that tone of pastoral
sentiment and imagery which is one of the charms of "Psyche" and of some
of his other pieces. It is probable, however, that he is under lighter
obligations both to Apuleius and the "Astrea" than to the duchess of
Bouillon, to whom he dedicated his tale. Living at the time in her intimate
society, it was composed by him, under her inspiration, in that style of
gaiety, tenderness, gallantry, and refinement, which he has combined with
so much of simplicity and fancy. The faults of this mythological, or,
according to some, allegorical tale, as it is treated by La Fontaine, are its
description of Versailles, some fatiguing digressions, and a certain indolent
voluptuary languor. The result is, occasionally, that most fatal of all wants
—the want of interest.
La Fontaine's dramatic pieces have a manifest affinity to his genius, but
none whatever to the genius of the drama. Some of his elegies,
compliments, anacreontics, and other lesser pieces, are worthy of him;
others so indifferent as to render their genuineness doubtful. His poem on
St. Malch was approved by the lyric poet Rousseau; and this is its highest
distinction. His poem on Jesuit's Bark is universally condemned.
It is only in his fables and tales that one is to look for the supremacy of La
Fontaine. As a fabulist he has surpassed all who preceded him, and has
never been approached by his successors. It is charged upon him that he
invented nothing; that he but translated, imitated, or versified Æsop,
Phædrus, Petronius, Rabelais, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, the hundred
novels of Cinthio, the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre, &c.; but it is
justly replied, that this proceeded only from his humble estimate of himself,
joined with his indolence. "His considering himself," says Fontenelle,
"inferior to Æsop and Phædrus was only another instance of his anomalous
stupidity." "It is untrue," says La Harpe, "that La Fontaine invented nothing;
he invented his style." The question could not be placed in a happier and
truer light. La Fontaine, from humility and indolence, took the materials
which others had supplied to his hand; but by his manner of using them, by
the magic of his original and unrivalled style, made them his own. So
complete is his mastery over them, and so entirely is the merit his, that the

palpable difference, in the original, between the genuine tales of Æsop and
the forgeries of the Greek monk Planudes, vanish beneath his touch.
France has produced a host of writers of fables and apologues since his
time, but none worthy of being named with him. England has produced
much fewer fabulists, yet is justly proud of Gay. He had a striking
resemblance to La Fontaine in personal character. Pope's verse, in the
epitaph on him,

"In wit a man, simplicity a child,"

would seem to have been expressly written for La Fontaine. As poets or
fabulists they differ widely and essentially. Gay's fables are the nearest in
merit; but, instead of resemblance, they present the opposition of wit, satire,
and party spirit, in a neat and pointed style, to La Fontaine's universal and
ingenious moral, picturesque simplicity, and easy graceful negligence.
An anonymous volume of English fables, imitated from La Fontaine,
appeared in 1820. It is attributed to a practised and distinguished writer both
in prose and verse[51]; and might pass for a most successful version, if the
original were not directly and unluckily contrasted with it in the opposite
page. The reader will be more informed by comparing a short extract from
each than by pages of dissertation.

"He! bon jour, monsieur du Corbeau:
Que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage,
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le phœnix des hôtes de ces bois."

"When thus he began: 'Ah! sir Ralph, a good morning:
How charming you look! how tasteful your dress!
Those bright glossy plumes, your fine person adorning,
Produce an effect which I cannot express.
Colours glaring and gaudy were never my choice;
When I view them disgust is my only sensation;
If you join to that plumage a mellow-toned voice,
You're the phœnix, I vow, of the feathered creation.'"

This citation is made, not to censure the English version, but to prove the
unattainable charm of La Fontaine's manner,—that manner or style which
he invented; his close adherence to truth and nature; the art with which he
veils the wildest improbabilities under a probable, consistent, or humorous
air; his power of combining levity of tone with depth of observation, and
the utmost simplicity with the utmost finesse. It is known that La Fontaine
observed the characters, habits, attitudes, and expression of the brute
creation with a view to his fables. Whilst he endows his brute heroes with
speech and thought, one never loses the image of their kind;—whilst the
flatterer gulls his dupe, and even when he concludes with giving him the
moral by way of compensation, one never loses sight of the fox and raven:
but under the touch of the translator, and indeed of all other fabulists but La
Fontaine, they receive the human form with the human attributes.
La Fontaine's fables are reputed perfect in every sense, poetical and moral.
Two faults are imputed to his tales; the one venial and even questionable,
the other most serious, and past all doubt. His narration, it is said, is
sometimes careless and diffuse. This has offended the fastidious technical
taste of some of his countrymen; but to others his easy, indolent, copious,
rambling effusion is an additional charm. The second fault of his tales, their
licentiousness, is unpardonable. He imbibed it, most probably, from the
perusal and imitation of Rabelais, Clement Marot, Boccaccio, and Ariosto,
and confounded it with their gaiety. But, in adopting the freedom of their
pleasantries, he has discarded their grossness. His indecorous allusions are
conveyed with infinite finesse and ingenuity of expression, and he must be
acquitted of all intention to corrupt—of the consciousness even of a
corrupting tendency. No inference unfavourable to him is to be drawn from
their condemnation and prohibition at the request of the sorbonne. The sin
of his tales, and that which he was called on to expiate, was not their
immorality, but the liberties which, like his models, he took occasionally
with monks, nuns, and confessors. It is but justice to him to state his own
vindication. He urged the example of the ancients; and the necessity of a
certain tone of gaiety and freedom in familiar tales, without which they
would want their essential grace and charm. "He who would reduce," says
he, "Ariosto and Boccaccio to the modesty of Virgil would assuredly not be
thanked for his pains—(ne ferait assurément rien qui vaille)." An
enervating tender melancholy is, he says, much more injurious. His only
object, he protests, was to procure the reader a passing smile; and, for his

part, he could not comprehend how the reading of his tales should have a
bad effect upon others when the composition had none upon him."
But can it be true, or possible, that this enchanting fabulist was not merely
subject to absences and musings, but the dullest of mortals in conversation;
—his thoughts and expressions alike clumsy and confused? Two, the most
positive testimonies, will suffice, out of many. The daughter of Racine, who
had seen him frequently at her father's table, described him as "slovenly,
stupid, and talking of nothing but Plato." La Bruyère obviously meant the
following character for him:—"A man appears—clumsy, heavy, stupid. He
cannot talk, or even tell what he has just seen. If he sits down to write, he
produces the model of tales. He endows with speech brutes, trees, stones,—
all to which nature has denied speech; and all is levity, elegance, beauty,
nature, in his works."[52] These testimonies, though so positive, are far from
conclusive. The lady had no taste for Plato, and La Bruyère's style of
portraiture, always overcharged, seems particularly so in this instance,
where his object was contrast and effect. La Fontaine may have fallen into
reveries and solecisms in the company of his friends; he may have been
silent and dull at the table of a financier, where he was among strangers to
be stared at; but his society would not have been sought and prized, not
only by the Molières, Boileaus, and Racines, but by the Condés, Contis, and
Villars, and in the distinguished circles of mesdames de Bouillon, Mazarin,
and La Sablière were the charm of his writings wholly wanting in his
conversation. His writings would have been admired, and their author
neglected, as in the case of Corneille, were his conversation equally
common-place and uninteresting. La Fontaine probably was dull to those
who neither understood nor were understood by him. He was La Fontaine,
the charming fabulist, only when the subjects and the society interested
him; and those around him could, by mutual intelligence, bring his genius
into play. Goldsmith, in the same manner, was depreciated by persons who
did not understand him. Topham Beauclerk, a man of wit and fashion about
town, thought his conversation absurd and dull; but Edmund Burke found in
it the poet and observer of mankind. The admiration of Horace and Varus,
and the society of Mæcenas and Augustus, did not protect Virgil's simplicity
of character from being sneered at by the court satirists and petits-maîtres of
his time. The well-known description of him by Horace is not without
resemblance to La Fontaine's character.

La Fontaine was buried in the cemetery of St. Joseph, at Paris, by the side
of Molière, who had died many years before. Boileau and Racine survived
him. His best epitaph is the following, written by himself: it records his
character with equal fidelity and humour.

"Jean s'en alla comme il était venu,
Mangant son fonds aprez son revenu,
Croyant le bien chose peu nécessaire.
Quant à son temps bien le sçut dépenser,
Deux parts en fit dont il soluoit passer—
L'une à dormir, et l'autre à ne rien faire."

[47]Molière, says Cailhava, in his "Art de la Comédie," indignant at the false taste of the court and
the public, puts into the mouth of a courtier, in his "Misanthrope," a sonnet of Cotin, the most
fashionable poet of the day, and a member of the academy. Bad taste was so accredited with the
public, that the audience, on the first night of performance, applauded this nonsense to the echo, in
perfect good faith. Molière expected and only waited this effect to "pulverise" the sonnet and its
admirers by the relentless and excellent criticism which he puts into the mouth of his misanthrope,
Alceste.
[48]Vie de La Fontaine, par Walknaer.
[49]Champforf.—Éloge de La Fontaine.
[50]The term "bête" as used here, and familiarly in French conversation is untranslatable into
English.
[51]Mr. Croker.
[52]Un homme parait—grossier, lourd, stupide. Il ne sait pas parler, ni raconter ce qu'il vient de voir.
S'il se met à écrire, c'est le modèle des beaux contes. Il fait parler les animaux, les arbres, les pierres,
—tout ce qui ne parle pas. Ce n'est que légèreté, que élégance, que beau naturel, dans ses ouvrages.

PASCAL

1623-1662

Bayle commences his life of Pascal, by declaring him to be one of the
sublimest geniuses that the world ever produced; and every word we read
confirms this judgment. He was as singular as he was great. He is, perhaps,
the only instance of a man born with a natural genius for the exact sciences,
who applied the subtlety and acuteness of his understanding to religious
subjects, combining with close logical reasoning the utmost elegance and

purity of style, and crowning all with so severe an adherence to what he
considered the duties of a Christian as materially shortened his days. His
life reads as one miracle: our admiration is perpetually excited,—may we
own it?—our pity also. It is hard to say whether this be a just feeling. When
we read of the simplicity and singleness of his character, of his sublime
powers of self-denial, of his charity, his humility, and his patience, we feel
that he as nearly approached his divine Master, as any man on record has
ever done. But when we reflect on divine goodness, on the mission of the
Redeemer, on the blessings with which God has gifted us—we cannot
believe that we are sent here for the mere purpose of mortifying all our
natural inclinations, or of spending our whole thoughts in preparation for a
future life, except as virtue and piety are preparations. Man was born to be
happy through the affections—to enjoy the beauty and harmony of the
visible creation—to find delight in the exercise of his faculties, and the
fulfilment of his social duties; and when to this is added a spirit of pious
resignation, and a wish to be acceptable to God—we may rest satisfied: this
state of mind not being so easy to attain, and not exaggerate our duties, till
life becomes the prison and burden that Pascal represents it to be. Still it is
with reverence that we venture to criticise a virtue that transcends the
common nature of man. Pascal stands an example of the catholic principles
of morality, and shows the extent to which self-denial can be carried by an
upholder of that faith. Added to this, is the interest we take in the history of
one who, from his birth, gave token of talents of a very uncommon order.
The wonders recorded of his childhood are too well authenticated to admit
of a doubt, while certainly they are not exceeded by any other prodigy, the
achievements of whose premature genius have been handed down.
The family of Pascal was of Auvergne: it had been ennobled by Louis XI. in
1478, in the person of a maître des requêtes; and, since that epoch, various
members of it had filled distinguished situations in Auvergne, and were
respected for their virtues as much as for their birth. Étienne Pascal was
first president to the court of aids of Clermont-Ferrand. He married a lady
named Antoinette Bégon; of the four children born to him by her, three
survived—two were daughters: the son, Blaise, was born at Clermont on the
19th of June, 1623. Étienne was left a widower while his children were yet
1626 infants; and from that time devoted himself to their education. The
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extraordinary and premature talents of Blaise soon displayed
themselves. From the moment he could speak, his repartees excited

. admiration, and still more, his eager questionings on the causes of all
3.
things, which displayed acuteness as well as curiosity. His excellent
father, perceiving these early marks of talent, was eager to dedicate his
whole time to his education, so that he resolved to be his only master in the
1631 learned languages and the sciences. He accordingly gave up his
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public situation to his brother, and removed to Paris. His daughters
. shared his paternal cares; he taught them Latin, and caused them to
9. apply themselves to the acquirement of knowledge; believing that,
by inciting them to bestow their attention early on subjects worthy their
inquiry, he should develope their talents, and give them habits of
intellectual industry, which he considered equally desirable in woman as
man. With all this, he had no idea of making a prodigy of his son, or
developing his talents prematurely. On the contrary, it was his maxim to
keep the boy above his work; and he did not teach him Latin till he was
twelve years old. But, while he refrained from exercising his memory by
the routine of lessons, he enlarged his mind by conversation; and taught him
the meaning and aim of grammar before he placed a grammar in his hands.
This was a safe proceeding with a boy of Pascal's eminent capacity—it had
probably rendered one less gifted indolent and forgetful.
The world at this time, awakening from a long state of barbarism, was
seized by a sort of idolatry and hunger for knowledge, and learning was the
fashion of the day. Men of talent devoted their whole lives to science, with
an abnegation of every other pursuit unknown in the present age, and were
honoured by the great and followed by their disciples with a reverence
merited by their enthusiasm and diligence, as well as by the benefits they
conferred on their fellow creatures, in enlarging their sphere of knowledge,
and bringing from the chaos of ignorance, truth, or the image of truth, to the
light of day. Descartes was one of the most celebrated of the Frenchmen of
genius of that time. He was not content with being the most eminent
mathematician of his age, but he combined a system of philosophy, which,
though false, obtained vogue, and secured to him a greater temporary
reputation than if he had merely enounced truths, independent of the magic
of a theory. The war of his partisans and their antagonists spread his fame:
geometry and mathematics obtained more attention than they had ever
done; and discoveries were made that excited the ambition of every fresh
student to penetrate further than his predecessors into the secrets of the
system of the universe. Étienne Pascal found men in Paris, with whom he

allied himself in friendship, deeply versed in physics and mathematics, and
he also applied himself to these sciences. He associated with Roberval,
Carcavi, Le Pailleur, and other scientific men of high reputation—they met
at each other's house, and discussed the objects of their labours; they
detailed their new observations and discoveries; they read the letters
received from other learned men, either foreigners, or residing in the
provinces: the ambition of their lives was centred in the progress of science;
and the enthusiasm and eagerness with which they prosecuted their
researches gave an interest to their conversations that awoke to intensity the
curiosity of Pascal's almost infant son. Adding youthful fervour to abilities
already competent to the formation of scientific combinations and accuracy,
the young Blaise desired to make discoveries himself in causes and effects.
A common phenomenon in sound obtained his earliest attention. He
observed that a plate, if struck by a knife, gave forth a ringing sound, which
1635 he stilled by putting his hand on the plate. At the age of twelve he
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wrote a little treatise to account for this phenomenon, which was
. argued with acuteness and precision. His father wished, however, to
12. turn his mind from the pursuits of science, considering the study of
languages as better suited to his age; and he resolved that the boy should no
longer be present at the philosophical meetings. Blaise was in despair: to
console him, he was told that he should be taught geometry when he had
acquired Latin and Greek: he asked, eagerly, what geometry was? His father
informed him, generally, that it was the science which teaches the method
of making exact figures, and of finding out the proportions between them.
He commanded him at the same time neither to speak nor think on the
subject more. But Blaise was too inquiring and too earnest to submit to this
rule. He spent every moment of leisure in meditation upon the properties of
mathematical figures. He drew triangles and circles with charcoal on the
walls of his playroom, giving them such names as occurred to him as
proper, and thus began to teach himself geometry, seeking to discover,
without previous instruction, all the combinations of lines and curves,
making definitions and axioms for himself, and then proceeding to
demonstration: and thus, alone and untaught, he compared the properties of
figures and the relative position of lines with mathematical precision.
One day his father came by chance into the room, and found his son busy
drawing triangles, parallelograms, and circles: the boy was so intent on his
work that he did not hear his father enter; and the latter observed him for

some time in silence: when at last he spoke, Blaise felt a sort of terror at
being discovered at this forbidden occupation, which equalled his father's
wonder at perceiving the objects of his attention. But the surprise of the
latter increased, when, asking him what he was about, Blaise explained in
language invented by himself, but which showed that he was employed in
solving the thirty-second proposition of Euclid. His father asked him, how
he came to think of such a question: Blaise replied, that it arose from
another he had proposed to himself; and so going back step by step as to the
figures that had excited his inquiry, he showed that he had established a
chain of propositions deduced from axioms and definitions of his own
adoption, which conducted him to the proposition in question (that the three
angles of every possible triangle are equal to two right angles). The father
was struck almost with fear at this exhibition of inborn genius; and, without
speaking to the boy, hurried off to his intimate friend M. le Pailleur; but
when he reached his house he was unable to utter a single word, and he
stood with tears in his eyes, till his friend, fancying some misfortune had
occurred, questioned him anxiously, and at length the happy parent found
tongue to declare that he wept for joy, not sorrow. M. le Pailleur was not
less astonished when the circumstances narrated were explained to him, and
of course advised the father to give every facility for the acquirement of
knowledge to one so richly gifted by nature. Euclid, accordingly, was put
into the boy's hands as an amusement for his leisure hours. Blaise went
through it by himself, and understood it without any explanation from
others.[53] From this time he was allowed to be present at all the scientific
meetings, and was behind none of the learned men present in bringing new
discoveries and solutions, and in enouncing satisfactory explanations of any
doubtful and knotty point. Truth was the passion of his soul; and, added to
this, was a love of the positive, and a perception of it, which in the exact
sciences led to the most useful results. At the age of sixteen he wrote an
"Essay on Conic Sections," which was regarded as a work that would
bestow reputation on an accomplished mathematician; so that Descartes,
when he saw it, was inclined rather to believe that Pascal, the father, had
written it himself, and passed it off as his son's, than that a mere child
should have shown himself capable of such strength and accuracy of
reasoning. The happy father, however, was innocent of any such deceit; and
the boy, proceeding to investigate yet more deeply the science of numbers

and proportions, soon gave proof that he was fully capable of having
written the work in question.
Étienne Pascal was rewarded for all his self-devotion by the genius of his
son. His daughters also profited by his care, and became distinguished at
once by their mental accomplishments and their personal beauty. A disaster
that occurred, which at first disturbed the happiness of the family, tended in
the end to establish it, and to bring into greater notice the talents and virtues
of the individuals of which it was composed.
1638 The finances of the government being at a low ebb, through
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mismanagement and long wars, the minister, cardinal de Richelieu,
. sought to improve them by diminishing the rate of interest towards
15. the public creditor. Of course this act excited considerable discontent
among holders of public stock; riots ensued, and some men, in
consequence, were imprisoned in the Bastille. Among these was a friend of
Étienne Pascal, who openly and warmly defended him, while he cast
considerable blame on several government functionaries, and in particular
the chancellor Séguier. This imprudence endangered his own liberty; he
heard that he was threatened with arrest, and to avoid it left Paris, and for
several months hid himself in Auvergne. He had many friends however
among noble patrons of learning, and the duchess d'Aiguillon, in particular,
interested herself in his favour. Richelieu, as is well known, was very fond
of theatrical representations, and a tragi-comedy by Scuderi, was got up for
his amusement. Jaqueline Pascal, then only fourteen years old, was selected
to fill one of the parts: she at first refused, saying that the cardinal gave
them too little pleasure for her to try to contribute to his; but the duchess
saw hopes for the father's recall in the daughter's exertions, and persuaded
Jaqueline to undertake the part. She acted charmingly, and at the end of the
piece approached the cardinal, and recited some verses written for the
occasion, asserting the innocence of her father, and entreating the cessation
of his exile. The cardinal delighted, took her in his arms, and kissing her
again and again, said, "Yes, my child, I grant your request; write to your
father, that he may safely return." The duchess followed up the 1639
impression by an eulogium on Pascal, and by introducing Blaise; .Ætat
"He is but sixteen," she said, "but he is already a great .
mathematician." Jaqueline saw that the cardinal was favourably 16.
inclined; and with ready tact, added, that she had another request to prefer.

"Ask what you will, my child," said the minister, "I can refuse you
nothing." She begged that her father, on his return, might be permitted
personally to thank the cardinal. This also was granted; and the family
reaped the benefit. The cardinal received the exile graciously; and, two
years after, named him intendant of Normandy at Rouen. Étienne removed
with his family, in consequence, to that city. He filled the situation for seven
years, enjoying the highest reputation for integrity and ability. About the
same time, his daughter, Gilberte, formed an advantageous marriage with
M. Périer, who had distinguished himself in a commission entrusted to him
by the government in Normandy, and who afterwards bought the situation
of counsellor to the court of aids of Clermont-Ferrand.
1641 Blaise, meanwhile, was absorbed in scientific pursuits. To the
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acquisition of Latin and Greek was added the study of logic and
. physics; every moment of his time was occupied—and even during
18. meals the work of study went on. Charmed with the progress his son
made, and his apparent facility in learning, the father was blind to the ill-
effects that such constant application had on his health: at the age of
eighteen, Pascal began to droop; the indisposition he suffered was slight,
and he did not permit it to interfere with his studies; but neglected, and
indeed increased, it at last entirely disorganised his fragile being. From that
hour he never passed a single day free from pain. Repose, taken at intervals,
mitigated his sufferings; but when better he eagerly returned to study—and
with study illness recurred.
1642 His application was of the most arduous and intense description. At
.
Ætat
the age of nineteen he invented his arithmetical machine, considered
. one of the most wonderful discoveries yet put into practice. A
19. machine capable of automatic combinations of numbers has always
been a desideratum; and Pascal's was sufficiently well arranged to produce
exact results—but it was very complex, expensive, and easily put out of
order, and therefore of no general utility, though hailed by mathematicians
as a most ingenious and successful invention. It cost him intense
application, both for the mental combinations required, and the mechanical
part of the execution:—his earnest and persevering study, and the great
efforts of attention to which he put his brain, increased his ill health so
much that he was obliged for a time to suspend his labours.

Soon after this, a question, involving very important consequences in
physics, agitated the scientific world, and the position of the two Pascals
was such, that their attention could not fail to be drawn to the consideration
of it. The mechanical properties of the atmosphere had previously been
inquired into by Galileo, who recognised in it the quality of weight. This
philosopher, however, notwithstanding the wonderful sagacity which his
numerous physical discoveries evince, failed to perceive that the weight of
the atmosphere, combined with its fluidity and elasticity, opposed a definite
force to any agent by which the removal of the atmosphere from any space
was attempted. This resistance to the production of a vacuum had long been
recognised, and was in fact expressed, but not accounted for, by the phrase,
"nature's abhorrence of a vacuum." Whatever meaning he may have
attached to it, Galileo retained this phrase, but limited its application, in
order to embrace the phenomenon, then well known, that suction-pumps
would not raise water more than about thirty-five feet high; and although
"nature's abhorrence of a vacuum" raises the water thirty-five feet, to fill the
space deserted by the air, which had been drawn out by the piston, yet
above that height a vacuum still remained; which fact Galileo expressed by
saying, that "thirty-five feet was the limit of nature's abhorrence of a
vacuum."
That Galileo should have missed a discovery as important as it was obvious,
is the more remarkable from the circumstance of its having been actually
suggested to him by one of his own pupils. A letter from Baliani to Galileo
is extant, dated in 1630, in which the writer says that Galileo, in one of his
letters to him, having taught him that air has sensible weight, and shown
him how that weight might be measured, he argued from thence that the
force necessary to produce a vacuum, was nothing more than the force
necessary to remove the weight of the mass of atmosphere which presses
round every object, just as water would press on any thing at the bottom of
the sea.[54]
Torricelli, the pupil of Galileo, next took up the problem. He argued, that if
the weight of the atmosphere were the direct agent by which the column of
water is sustained in a pump, the same agent must needs exert the same
amount of force in sustaining a column of any other liquid; and, therefore,
that if a heavier liquid were used, the column sustained would be less in
height exactly in the same proportion as the weight of the liquid forming the

column was greater. Mercury, the heaviest known liquid, appeared the
fittest for this purpose. The experiment was eminently successful. The
weight, bulk for bulk, of mercury was fourteen times greater than that of
water; and it was found that, instead of a column of thirty-five feet being
supported, the column was only thirty inches, the latter being exactly the
fourteenth part of thirty-five feet.
Various ways of further testing the evident inferences to be drawn from this
beautiful experiment, were so obvious, that it is impossible to suppose the
illustrious philosopher to whom we are indebted for it, would not have
pursued the inquiry further, had not death, almost immediately after this,
prematurely removed him. The experiment became known, and excited
much interest in every part of Europe; and Mersenne, who had an extensive
scientific correspondence, having received an account of Torricelli's
investigation, communicated the particulars to Pascal. Always reluctant to
surrender long established maxims, the philosophers of that day rejected the
solution of the problem given by Torricelli, and still clung to the maxim that
"nature abhors a vacuum." The sagacity of Pascal, however, could not be so
enslaved by received notions; and he accordingly, assisted by M. Petit,
applied himself to the discovery of some experimental test, of a nature so
unanswerable as to set the question at rest. The result was the celebrated
experiment on the Puy de Dôme, the first and most beautiful example of an
"experimentum crucis" recorded in the history of physics.
Pascal argued, that if the weight of the incumbent atmosphere were the real
agent which sustained the mercury in Torricelli's tube, as it was inferred to
be by that philosopher, any thing which would diminish that weight, ought
to diminish in the same proportion the height of the mercurial column. To
test this, he first conceived the idea of producing over the surface of the
mercury in the cistern in which the end of the tube was immersed, a partial
vacuum, so as to diminish the pressure of the air upon it. But, apprehending
that this experiment would hardly he sufficiently glaring to overcome the
prejudices of the scientific world, he proposed to carry the tube containing
the mercurial column upwards in the atmosphere, so as gradually to leave
more and more of the incumbent weight below it, and to ascertain whether
the diminution of the column would be equal to the weight of the air which
it had surmounted. No sufficient height being attainable in Paris, the
experiment was conducted, under Pascal's direction, by his brother-in-law,

M. Périer, at Clermont, on the Puy de Dôme, a hill of considerable height,
near that place. The experiment was completely successful. The mercurial
column gradually fell until the tube arrived at the summit, and as gradually
rose again in descending. Bigotry and prejudice could not withstand the
force of this, and immediately gave way. The maxim of nature's abhorrence
of a vacuum was henceforth expunged from the code of natural science;
and, what was still more conducive to the advancement of all true science,
philosophers were taught how much more potent agents of discovery,
observation and experiment, guided by reason, are, than the vain
speculations in which the ancients had indulged, and from the baneful
influence of which scientific inquirers had not yet been emancipated.
1647 Pascal had hardly escaped from boyhood at this time; his invention,
.
Ætat
his patience, the admirable system he pursued of causing all his
. opinions to be supported by facts and actual experiment, deserved
24. the highest praise and honour. It is mortifying to have to record that
his discovery was disputed. The jesuits accused him of plagiarism from the
Italians; and Descartes declared, that he had first discovered the effects
produced by the weight of the atmosphere, and suggested to Pascal the
1651 experiment made on the Puy de Dôme. Pascal treated these attacks
.
Ætat
the contempt which his innocence taught him that they deserved; and
. published an account of his experiments without making the slightest
28. allusion to them. Descartes was a man of eminent genius—his
industry and penetration often led him to make the happiest conjectures;
but, more intent on employing his bold and often fortunate imagination in
the fabrication of ingenious theories than on applying himself with patience
and perseverance to the discovering the secrets of nature, he sometimes
threw out a happy idea, which he did not take the pains to establish as a
truth and a law. The honour of invention is due to those who seize the
scattered threads of knowledge which former discoverers have left, and
1653 weave it into a continuous and irrefragable web. Pascal followed up
.
Ætat
his experiments with the utmost hesitation and care, only deciding
. when decision became self-evident. Two Treatises, one "On the
30. Equilibrium of Liquids," another "On the Weight of the
Atmosphere," which he subsequently wrote, though they were not
published till after his death, display his admirable powers of observation,
and the patient zeal with which he followed up his discoveries. At the time
that he wrote these treatises he was engaged on others, on geometrical

subjects: he did not publish them; and some have been irrecoverably lost.
Every subject then interesting to men of science employed his active mind.
His name had become well known: he was consulted by all the philosophers
and mathematicians of the day, who proposed questions to him; and his
thoughts were sedulously dedicated to the solution of the most difficult
problems. But a change meanwhile had come over his mind, and he began
to turn his thoughts to other subjects, and to resolve to quit his
mathematical pursuits, and to dedicate himself wholly to the practice and
study of religion.
This was no sudden resolve on his part—piety had always deep root in his
heart. He had never, in the most inquisitive days of his youth, applied his
eager questionings and doubts to matters of faith. His father had carefully
instilled principles of belief; and gave him for a maxim, that the objects of
faith are not the objects of reason, much less the subject of it. This principle
became deeply engraven in his heart. Logical and penetrating as his mind
was, with an understanding open to conjecture with regard to natural
causes, he never applied the arts of reasoning to the principles of
Christianity, but was as submissive as a child to all the dicta of the church.
But though the so to call it metaphysical part of religion was admitted
without a doubt or a question, its moral truths met with an attention—
always lively, and at last wholly absorbing; so that he spent the latter
portion of his life in meditating, day and night, the law of God.
This change began first to operate at the age of four-and-twenty. His zeal
overflowed to, and was imbibed by, all near him. His father was not
ashamed to listen to his son's exhortations, and to regulate his life hereafter
by severer rules. His unmarried sister, Jaqueline—the heroine of the tale
previously narrated, who possessed singular talents—listened to her brother
with still greater docility and effect: an effect rather to be deplored than
rejoiced in, since it caused her to renounce the cultivation of her talents, and
the exercise of active duties, and to dedicate herself to the ascetic practices
of Catholicism.
Meanwhile the health of Pascal suffered severer attacks, and his frail body
wasted away; so that before he attained the prime of life he fell into the
physical debility of age. He resided at this time in Paris, with his father and
his sister Jaqueline. To benefit his health, he was recommended to suspend
his labours, to enjoy the recreations of society, and to take more exercise:

1651 accordingly, he made several tours in Auvergne and other provinces.
.
Ætat
The death of his father broke up the little family circle. Jaqueline
. Pascal had long entertained the desire of becoming a nun: on the
28. death of her father she put her resolve in execution, and took the
1653 vows in the abbey of Port Royal aux Champs. The other sister
.
Ætat
resided with her husband at Clermont. Pascal, left to himself,
. devoted his time more earnestly than ever to studious pursuits, till
30. the powers of nature failed; and he was forced, through utter
inability, to abandon his studies. He took gentle exercise, and frequented
society. Though serious even to melancholy, his conversation pleased by the
depth of understanding and great knowledge that it displayed. Pascal
himself felt the softening influence of sympathy: he began to take pleasure
in society—he even contemplated marrying. Happy had it been for him if
this healthy and sound view of human duties had continued: but an accident
happened which confirmed him as a visionary—if we may apply that term
to a man who in the very excess of religious zeal preserved the entire use of
his profound arts of reasoning, and an absolute command over his will: yet
when the circumstances of his exclusive dedication of himself to pious
exercises are known, and we find that a vision forms one of them, that word
cannot be considered unjust—nor is it possible to help lamenting that his
admirable understanding had not carried him one step further, and taught
him that asceticism has no real foundation in the beneficent plan of the
Creator.
1654 One day, in the month of October, he was taking an airing in a
.
Ætat
carriage-and-four towards the Pont de Neuilli, when the leaders took
. the bit in their teeth, at a spot where there is no parapet, and
31. precipitated themselves into the Seine: fortunately the shock broke
the traces, and the carriage remained on the brink of the precipice. Pascal, a
feeble, half-paralytic, trembling being, was overwhelmed by the shock. He
fell into a succession of fainting fits, followed by a nervous agitation that
prevented sleep, and brought on a state resembling delirium. In this he
experienced a sort of vision, or extatic trance; in commemoration of which
he wrote a singular sort of memorandum, which, though incoherent to us,
doubtless brought to his memory the circumstances of his vision. This paper
he always kept sewn up in his dress. The effect of the circumstance was to
make him look on his accident as a call from Heaven to give in all worldly
thoughts, and to devote himself to God. The pious exhortations of his sister,

the nun, had before given him some notion of such a course; and he
determined to renounce the world, and to dedicate himself exclusively to
religious practices.
The account that his sister, madame Périer, gives of the rules of life to
which he adhered is most deeply interesting, as appertaining to a man of
such transcendent genius; and yet deeply painful, since we cannot see that
God could be pleased or served by his cutting himself off from the
enjoyment of all the natural and innocent affections, or by a system of self-
denial, that undermined his health and shortened his life. To follow up the
new rules he had laid down for his conduct, he removed to another part of
Paris; and showed so determined a resolve to renounce the world that, at
last, the world renounced him. In this retreat he disciplined his life by
certain principles, the chief of which was to abstain from all pleasures or
superfluity; in accordance with this system, he allowed himself nothing but
what was absolutely necessary; he unfurnished his apartment of all carpets
and hangings, reserving only a table and chairs, of the coarsest
manufacture: he also, as much as possible, denied himself the service of
domestics: he made his bed himself; and went to the kitchen to fetch his
dinner, and carried it into his own room, and took back the remains when he
had finished: in short, his servant merely cooked and went to market for
him. His time was otherwise spent in acts of charity, in prayer, and in
reading the scriptures. At first the regularity and quiet of a life of retreat
recruited somewhat his shattered frame: but this did not last. His mind
could not be idle, nor his reasoning powers remain inactive; and he soon
found cause to study as deeply matters connected with religion as before he
had applied himself to the investigation of mathematical truths.
The abbey of Port Royal had not many years before been reformed, and
acquired a high reputation. M. Arnaud (a noble of Auvergne, and a
celebrated advocate,) was the father of a numerous family of children, and
among them a daughter, who, at eleven years of age, was named abbess of
Port Royal. Instead of following the old track of indulgence and indolence,
her young heart became inflamed with pious zeal; and, at the age of
seventeen, she undertook the arduous task of reforming the habits and lives
of the nuns under her jurisdiction. By degrees she imparted a large portion
of her piety to them, and succeeded in her undertaking: watching, fasting,
humility, and labour, became the inmates of her convent; and its reputation

for sanctity and purity increased daily. The abbey of Port Royal aux
Champs was situated at the distance of only six leagues from Paris; the
situation in itself was desolate, but some private houses appertained to it.
Several men of eminent learning and piety were attracted, by the high
reputation that the abbey enjoyed, to take up their abode in one of these
dwellings. They fled the world to enjoy Christian peace in solitude: but
indolence was not a part of their practice. Besides the works of piety of
which they were the authors, they received pupils, they compiled books of
instruction; and their system of education became celebrated, both for the
classical knowledge they imparted, and the sentiments of religion they
inspired. Among these reverend and illustrious recluses were numbered two
brothers of mother Angelica, the abbess, Arnaud d'Andilli, and Antoine
Arnaud, and two of her nephews; in addition may be named Saci, Nicole,
and others, well known as French theologians, and controversialists.
Pascal's attention being drawn to this retreat by the circumstance of his
sister's having taken her vows in the abbey, he was desirous to become
acquainted with men so illustrious: without taking up his abode absolutely
among them, he cultivated their society, often paid visits of several weeks'
duration to their retreat, and was admitted to their intimacy. They soon
discovered and appreciated his transcendent genius, while he was led by
them to apply his talents to religious subjects. The vigour and justness of his
thoughts inspired them with admiration. Saci was, in particular, his friend;
and the famous Arnaud regarded him with wonder for his youth, and esteem
for his learning and penetration. These became in the end most useful to the
recluses; and from the pen of their young friend they derived, not only their
best defence against their enemies, but a glory for their cause, founded on
the admirable "Lettres Provinciales," which have survived, for the purity of
their style, vigour of expression, and closeness of argument; for their wit,
and their sublime eloquence, long after the object for which they were
written, is remembered only as casting at once ridicule and disgrace upon
the cause of religion in France.
It is indeed a melancholy and degrading picture of human nature, to find
men of exalted piety and profound learning, waste their powers on
controversies, which can now only be regarded with contempt, though the
same sentiment cannot follow the virtues which these men displayed—their
constancy, their courage, and noble contempt of all selfish considerations.

The foundation of the dispute, which called forth at once these virtues and
this vain exertion of intellect, still subsists between different sects of
Christianity. The Christian religion is founded on the idea of the free will of
man, and the belief that he can forsake sin; and that, according as he does
forsake or cling to it, he deserves happiness or reprobation in the other
world. But to this is added, with some, the belief that sanctification springs
from the especial interference of God; that man cannot even seek salvation
without a call; that faith and grace is an immediate and gratuitous gift of
God to each individual whom the Holy Ghost inspires with a vocation. How
far man was born with the innate power of belief and faith, or how far he
needed a particular and immediate gift of grace to seek these from God,
divided the Christian world into sects at various times, and was the
foundation of the dispute between the molinists and jansenists. The first
name was derived from Molina, a jesuit, who endeavoured to establish a
sort of accord between the Almighty's prescience and man's free will, which
gave the latter power to choose, and sufficing grace to choose well. The
jesuits were zealous in supporting the doctrine of one of their order. They
discussed the points in question with so much acrimony that they laid
themselves open to as violent attacks; they were opposed in particular by
the dominicans; the dispute was carried on in Rome, before assemblies
instituted to decide upon it, but which took care to decide nothing; and the
pope ended, by ordering the two parties to live in peace. Meanwhile
Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, wrote a book on saint Augustin, which
was not published till after his death: this book, which supported the notion
of election by God, was taken up by the adversaries of the jesuits (hereafter
called jansenists, the name of the bishop being latinised into Jansenius), and
they called attention to it. The jesuits selected five propositions, which they
said they found in it, on the subject of grace and election; and these were
condemned as heretical. Antoine Arnaud rose as their advocate. The jesuits
detested him for his father's sake, who had pleaded the cause of the
university of Paris against them, and gained it. Arnaud declared that he had
read the work of Jansenius, and could not find the five condemned
propositions in it, but acknowledged that, if they were there, they deserved
condemnation. The Sorbonne exclaimed against this declaration as "rash;"
for, as the pope had condemned these propositions as being enounced by
Jansenius, of course they were contained in his book.[55] It was considered
necessary that Arnaud should reply to this attack; but, though a learned

man, an eloquent writer, and a great theologian, his defence was addressed
to the studious rather than the public, and it gained no partisans. It 1656
was far otherwise when Pascal took up his pen, and, under the name .Ætat
of Louis de Montalte, published his first letter à un Provincial; it was .
written in a popular, yet clear and conclusive manner, and in a style 33.
at once so elegant, perspicuous, and pure, that a child might read and
understand, while a scholar would study the pages as a model for imitation.
The success of this letter was prodigious: it did not however change the
proceedings of the Sorbonne; it assembled—its sittings were crowded with
monks and mendicant friars, ignorant men whose opinions were despicable,
but whose votes counted. Arnaud's work was condemned, and he himself
expelled the Sorbonne. This sentence roused Pascal to continue his labours.
He wrote another letter, which met with equal approbation; but the success
only served to irritate Arnaud's enemies; they obtained another censure of
the five propositions from the pope, and insisted on all suspected persons
signing a formula in which they were renounced. The nuns of Port Royal
were called on to put their names, and, on their resistance, they were
threatened with the destruction of their house, and dispersion.
At this moment, a singular circumstance occurred, which to this day is, by
many, considered a miracle. A sacred relic, one of the thorns of our
Saviour's crown of thorns, had been lately brought to Paris. To a protestant
the pretence of the existence of such a relic is ridiculous, but the catholic
church has always upheld a belief in the miraculous preservation of these
instruments of our Saviour's passion and death. The holy thorn was carried
to many convents, and among others to Port Royal, and all the inhabitants
went in procession, and kissed it. Among them was a niece of Pascal,
daughter of madame Périer. She had been long ill of a fistula in an eye: she
touched the wound with the relic, and it healed at once.[56] The news of this
miracle was spread abroad; it was believed, and all Paris flocked to the
convent. A religious house, the scene of an actual miracle, was considered
too highly favoured by God to be persecuted; the nuns and the jansenists
triumphed; the jesuits were, for the time, silent and abashed. To add to their
defeat, Pascal continued to write his Letters to a Provincial, attacking the
society with the arms of wit and eloquence. The Jesuitical system of
morality, full of mental reservation and ambiguity—its truckling to vice,
and contradiction to the simple but sublime principles of the gospel,
afforded him a wide field for censure. He wrote not a mere controversial

work, interesting to theologians only, but a book addressed to all classes. It
gained immediate attention; and its eloquence and beauty have secured its
immortality.[57]
The success of this book, the activity of his mind, and his sedulous study of
theology, naturally led Pascal to conceive the project of other works. The
scope of that which principally engaged his attention was, a refutation of
atheists. He meditated continually on this subject, and put down all the
thoughts that occurred to his mind. Illness prevented him from giving them
subsequently a more connected form, but they exist as his "Pensées," and
many of them deserve attention and veneration; while others, founded on
exaggerated and false views of human duties, are interesting as displaying
the nature of his mind. The acuteness and severity of thought which in early
life led him to mathematical discoveries, he now applied to the truths of
Christianity; and he followed out all the consequences of the doctrine of the
church of Rome with an uncompromising and severe spirit. Want of
imagination, perhaps, caused his mistakes; for mistakes he certainly made.
He is sublime in his charity, in his love and care for the poor, in his
gentleness and humility; but when we learn that he, a suffering, dying man,
wore a girdle armed with sharp points as a punishment for transient and
involuntary emotions of vanity—when we find him reprehending his sister
for caressing her children, and denouncing as sinful the most justifiable, and
indeed virtuous departure from ascetic discipline, we feel that the
mathematical precision with which he treated subjects of morals is totally at
war with the system of the Creator, madame Périer relates, that she was
often mortified and hurt by his cold manner, and the apparent distaste with
which he repulsed her sisterly attentions. She complained to their sister, the
nun; but she understood better his motives, and explained how he
considered it a virtue to love without attaching himself, and also deemed it
sin to excite attachment; and proved that notwithstanding his apparent
coldness his heart was warm, by mentioning the earnestness with which he
served her on any occasion when she needed his assistance. His most active
feeling was charity to the poor; he never refused alms, and would borrow
money on interest for the sake of bestowing them; and when cautioned that
he might ruin himself, replied, that he never found that any one who had
property ever died so poor but he had something to leave. It was a hard life
to which he condemned himself; a careful avoidance of all attachment—a
continual mortification of his senses, and the labour and sadness of

perpetual association with the suffering; added to this, he aimed at such a
state of abstraction as not to receive pleasure from food; and aware of an
emotion of satisfied vanity when consulted by the learned men of the day,
he, as has been said, wore a girdle armed with sharp points, which he struck
into himself, so to recall his wandering thoughts. A sense of duty—love of
God,—perhaps something of pride, kept him up long; but he sunk under it
at last. He spent five years in a rigid adherence to all his rules and duties;
then his fragile body gave way, and he fell into a series of sufferings so
great, that, though existence was prolonged for four years, they were years
of perpetual pain.
1658 His illness began by violent toothache; he was kept awake night after
.
Ætat
night: during these painful vigils, his thoughts recurred to the studies
. of his youth. He revolved in his head problems proposed by the
35. scientific men of the day.

His attention was now chiefly engaged with the solution of various
questions in the higher departments of geometry, especially those connected
with the properties of cycloids. He succeeded in solving many problems of
great difficulty relating to the quadrature and rectification of segments and
arcs of cycloids, and the volumes of solids formed by their revolutions
round their axes and ordinates. Except so far as they form part of the history
of mathematical science, and illustrate the powers of great minds, such as
that of the subject of this memoir, these problems have now lost all their
interest. The powerful instruments of investigation supplied by the
differential and integral calculus, have reduced their solution to the mere
elements of transcendental mathematics. At the epoch when they engaged
the attention of Pascal, before the invention of the modern methods, they
were questions presenting the most formidable difficulties. To Pascal,
however, they were mere matters of mental relaxation, resorted to with a
view to divert his attention from his acute bodily sufferings. He entertained,
himself, no intention of making them public. It was, however, the wish of
several of his companions in religious retirement that they should be made
public, were it only to afford a proof that the highest mathematical genius is
not incompatible with the deepest and most sincere Christian faith. 1658
Pascal yielded, and, according to a custom which was then usual, .Ætat
however puerile it may now appear, he, in the first instance, .
proposed the several questions which he solved as subjects for a 35.

prize to the scientific world. Many competitors presented themselves; and
others, who, though not competing for the prize, offered partial solutions.
Among these were several who have since attained great celebrity, such as
Wallis, Huygens, Fermat, and sir Christopher Wren.
The prize, however, was not gained, nor the problems solved. In the
beginning of the year 1659, Pascal published his complete solutions of the
problems of the cycloid, with some other mathematical tracts. These
admirable investigations cannot fail to excite in every mind a deep regret,
that a morbid state of moral and religious feeling should ever have diverted
Pascal from mathematical and physical research.
Meanwhile his debility and sufferings increased; but he did not, on that
account, yield, but held fast by his system of self-denial, practising himself
in turning his thoughts resolutely to another subject when any agreeable
sensation was produced, so that he might be true to his resolve to renounce
pleasure, while he bore his pains with inconceivable fortitude and patience;
yet they were sufficient to interrupt his studies. As the only duty he was
capable of performing, he spent his time in visiting churches where any
relics were exposed or some solemnity observed; and for this end he had a
spiritual almanack, which informed him of the places where there were
particular devotions. "And this he did," says his sister, "with so much
devotion and simplicity, that those who saw him were surprised at it; which
caused men of great virtue and ability to remark, that the grace of God
shows itself in great minds by little things, and in common ones by large."
Nor did his sufferings interrupt his works of charity, and the services he
rendered to the poor. This last duty grew into the passion of his heart. He
counselled his sister to consecrate all her time, and that of her children, to
the assistance of those in want; he declared this to be the true vocation of
Christians, and that without an adherence to it there was no salvation. Nor
did he consider that the rich performed their duty by contributing only to
public charities, but that each person was held to bestow particular and
unremitted attention to individual cases. "I love poverty," he wrote down,
"because Christ loved it. I love property, because it affords the means of
aiding the needy. I keep faith with every one, and wish no ill to those who
do ill to me. I endeavour to be true, sincere, and faithful to all men. I have a
tenderness of heart for those with whom God has most bound me; and,
whether I am alone or in the view of men, I have the thought of God as the

aim of all my actions, who will judge them, and to whom they are
consecrated." Such were the sentiments of Pascal; and no man ever carried
them out with equal humility, patience, zeal, and fortitude. His simplicity
and singleness of heart were admirable; all who conversed with him were
astounded by his childlike innocence and purity; he used no tergiversation,
no deceit with himself; all was open, submissive, and humble: if he felt
himself guilty of a fault, he was eager to repair it: he attached himself to the
very letter and inner spirit of the gospel, and obeyed it with all the powers
of his nature. His memory was prodigious, yet he never appeared to
recollect any offence done to himself; he declared, indeed, that he practised
no virtue in this, since he really forgot injuries; yet he allowed that he had
so perfect a memory that he never forgot any thing that he wished to
remember.
Meanwhile his peace of mind was disturbed by a fresh persecution of 1661
the jansenists, which caused the dispersion of the nuns of Port Royal, .Ætat
and proved fatal to his beloved sister. The jesuits rose from the .
overthrow, caused by the miracle, with redoubled force, and, if 38.
possible, redoubled malice; they got the parliament of Provence to condemn
the "Lettres Provinciales" to be burned by the common hangman: they
insisted that the nuns of Port Royal should sign the formula, and on their
refusal they were taken violently from the abbey, and dispersed in various
convents. Jaqueline Pascal was at this time sub-prioress; her piety was
extreme, her conscience tender. She could not persuade herself of the
propriety of signing the formula; but the anticipation of the misery that the
unfortunate nuns would endure through their refusal broke her heart: she
fell ill, and died, as she called herself, "the first victim of the formula," at
the age of thirty-six. Before her profession as a nun, she had displayed great
talents; and had even gained the prize for poetry at Rouen, when only
fourteen: her sensibility was great; her piety extreme. Pascal loved her more
than any other creature in the world; but he betrayed no grief when he heard
of her death. "God grant us grace to die like her," he exclaimed; and
reproved his sister for the affliction she displayed. It was this question of
the signature of the formula that caused his temporary dissension with the
recluses of Port Royal. They wished the nuns to temporise, and to sign the
formula, with a reservation; but Pascal saw that the jesuits would not submit
to be thus balked, and that they were bent on the destruction of their
enemies. Instead therefore of approving the moderation of the jansenists, he

said, "You wish to save Port Royal—you may betray the truth, but you
cannot save it." He himself became more jansenist than the jansenists
themselves; instead of arguing, as M. Arnaud had done, that the five
propositions were not to be found in Jansenius's work, he declared that they
were in accordance with St. Paul and the fathers; and inferred that the popes
were deceived when they condemned them. He accused the recluses of Port
Royal of weakness: they defended themselves; and, the dispute becoming
known, it was reported that Pascal was converted; for no one could believe,
as was the fact, that he was more tenacious of their doctrines than they were
themselves. His confessor aided, at first, this mistake, by misconceiving the
tendency of some of his expressions on his death bed; and it was not till
three years after Pascal's death that the truth became known.
At the time we now mention, the period of his sister's death, his own end
was near: decrepid and feeble, his life had become one course of pain, and
each day increased his physical sufferings. He became at last so ill as to
need the constant attentions of madame Périer. He had given shelter in his
house to a poor family, and at this juncture one of the sons had fallen ill of
the small-pox. Fearful that, if his sister visited him, she might carry this
illness to her children, he consented to remove to her house. But her cares
availed nothing; he was attacked by colics, which continued till his death,
but which the physicians did not believe to be attended with danger. He
bore his sufferings with patience; and, true to his principles, received no
attendance with which he could at all dispense; and, unsoftened by pain, he
continued to admit the sedulous attentions of his sister with such apparent
repulsion and indifference, that she often feared that they were displeasing
to him. Strange that he should see virtue in checking both his own and her
sympathy—that diviner portion of our nature which takes us out of
ourselves, and turns our most painful and arduous duties into pleasures.[58]
In the same spirit, when his sister lamented his sufferings, he observed, that,
on the contrary, he rejoiced in them: he bade her not pity him, for that
sickness was the natural state of a Christian; as thus they are, as they always
ought to be, suffering sorrow, and the privation of all the blessings of life—
exempt from passion, from ambition, and avarice—ever in expectation of
death. "Is it not thus," he said, "that a Christian should pass his life?—and is
it not a happiness to find one's self in the state in which one ought to place
one's self, so that all one need do is to submit humbly and serenely?" Self-

denial thus became a passion with this wonderful man; and no doubt he
derived pleasure from the excess to which he carried it.
There was one other passion in which he indulged, that was far more
laudable. We compassionate his mistake when he looks on the uselessness
and helplessness of sickness as a good, but we admire him when we
contemplate his sublime charity. In his last hours he lamented that he had
not done more for the poor; more wholly devoted time and means to their
relief. He made his will, in which he bestowed all that he could, with any
justice, leave away from his family; and as he was forced, through the
excess of his sufferings, to accept more of comfort and attention than he
thought consonant with virtue, he desired either to be removed to an
hospital, where he might die among the poor, or that a sick mendicant
should be brought to his house, and receive the same attention as himself.
He was with difficulty diverted from these designs, and only gave in
submission to the dictates of his confessor.
He felt himself dying—his pains a little decreased, when a weakness and
giddiness of the head succeeded, precursors of death: his physicians did not
perceive his imminent danger, and his last days were troubled by their
opposition to his wish to take the sacrament. His sister, however, perceived
that his illness was greater than was supposed, and prepared for the last
1662 hour, which came more suddenly even than she expected. He was
.
Ætat
one night seized with convulsions, which intermitted only while he
. roused himself to communicate, and, then recurring, they ended only
39. with his life. He died on the 19th August, 1662, at the age of thirty-
nine.
We contemplate the career of this extraordinary man with sentiments of
mingled pity and admiration. He certainly wanted a lively imagination, or
he would not have seen the necessity of so much mortification and suffering
in following the dictates of the gospel. His charity, his fortitude, his
resignation, demand our reverence; but the view he took of human duties
was distorted and exaggerated: friendship he regarded as unlawful—love as
the wages of damnation—marriage as a sin disguised; he saw impurity in
maternal caresses, and impiety in every sensation of pleasure which God
has scattered as flowers over our thorny path.

A modern writer[59] has said, that he pities any one who pronounces on the
structure and complexion of a great mind, from the comparatively narrow
and scanty materials which can, by possibility, have been placed before
him; and observes, that modest understandings will rest convinced there
remains a world of deeper mysteries, to which the dignity of genius refuses
to give utterance. And thus, in all humility, we despair of penetrating the
recesses of Pascal's mind, while solving mathematical problems that baffled
all Europe; writing works replete with wit and wisdom, close reasoning and
sublime eloquence; and the while believing that he pleased the Creator by
renouncing all the blessings of life; by spending his time in the adoration of
relics, and shortening his life by self-inflicted privation and torture. His
works, replete with energy and eloquence as they are, present many of the
same difficulties. We have already spoken at large of his "Lettres
Provinciales." His "Pensées," or Thoughts, which he wrote on loose scraps
of paper, meaning hereafter to collect them in the form of a work, for the
conversion of atheists, contain much that is admirable and true, though we
may be allowed to object to some of his reflections. He has been praised for
the mode in which he enounces the idea, that an atheist plays a losing
game[60]; he had far better believe, since thus he gains the chance of eternal
happiness, while by disbelief he insures eternal damnation. This thought,
however, is founded on misapprehension, and a want of knowledge of the
human mind. Belief is not a voluntary act—it is the result of conviction;
and we have it not in our choice to be convinced. Besides, love of truth is a
passion of the human soul; and there are men who, perceiving truth in
disbelief, cling to it as tenaciously as a religionist to his creed. The method
of convincing infidels by commenting on the beauty of the morality of the
gospel, and its necessity for the happiness of man, is far more conclusive.
On the excellence of Christianity, and the benefits mankind has derived
from its propagation, is founded the noblest argument for its truth; and he
has urged these eloquently and forcibly in other portions of his work.
Pascal, indeed, must always rank among the worthiest upholders of the
Christian faith; one who taught its lessons in their purity, and only erred by
being good overmuch. The same precision and clearness of mind that made
him a good mathematician led him to excellence in the practice of Christian
virtues; but it also led an adherence to the letter rather than the spirit, and to
the taking up its asceticism in preference to the holier duties which are an

integral part of the plan of the creation, and form the most important portion
of human life.

[53]La Vie de M. Pascal, écrite par Madame Périer, sa sœur.
[54]Life of Galileo, by Drinkwater, p. 90, 91.
[55]Innocent X., in condemning propositions, did not cite the passages in which they were to be
found; and, in fact, they are not quoted with verbal correctness. Voltaire asserts that they are to be
found there in spirit; and he cites passages which establish his assertion. Siècle de Louis XIV., chap.
XXXVII.
[56]Madame Périer, in the life she has written of her brother, mentions the miraculous cure of her
daughter: "This fistula," she says, "was of so bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris
considered it incurable. Nevertheless she was cured in a moment by the touch of the holy thorn; and
this miracle was so authentic, that it is acknowledged by every body." Racine, in his fragment of a
History of the Abbey of Port Royal, details the whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most
miraculous version of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that though the cure took
place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle for several days, and some time elapsed before
it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Périer told him that
her cure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appear short, or so universal a
belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to confound the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad;
nor would her uncle, Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the support of
his testimony.
[57]Boileau's admiration for Pascal was unbounded. He declared the "Lettres Provinciales" to be the
best work in the French language. Madame de Sévigné, in her letters, narrates a whimsical scene that
took place between him and some jesuits. Their conversation turning on literary subjects, Boileau
declared that there was only one modern book to be compared to the works of the ancients.
Bourdaloue begged him to name it. Boileau evaded the request. "You have read it more than once, I
am sure," he said, "but do not ask me its name." The jesuit insisted; and Boileau, at last, taking him
by the arm, exclaimed, "You are determined to have it, father; well, it is Pascal." "Morbleu! Pascal!"
cried Bourdaloue, astonished. "Yes, certainly Pascal is as well written as any thing false can be."
"False!" exclaimed Boileau, "False! Know that he is as true as he is inimitable." On another occasion,
a jesuit, father Boubours, consulted Boileau as to what books he ought to consult as models for style.
"There is but one," said Boileau, "read the 'Lettres Provinciales,' and believe me that will suffice."
Voltaire pronounces the same opinion: he calls Pascal the greatest satirist of France; and says that
Molière's best comedies have not the wit of the first of these Letters, nor had Bossuet written any
thing so sublime as the latter ones.
[58]He thus expresses his sentiments on individual attachments: "It is unjust to attach one's self, even
though one should do it voluntarily and with pleasure: I should deceive those in whom I call forth
affection—for I cannot be the end of any one, and possess not that by which they can be satisfied. As
I should be culpable if I caused a falsehood to be believed, although I should persuade gently and
was believed with pleasure, arid hence derive pleasure myself—so am I culpable if I caused myself
to be loved, and attracted persons to attach themselves to me. I ought to undeceive those who are
ready to give faith to a falsehood in which they ought not to believe, and in the same way teach them
that they should not attach themselves to me; for their lives ought to be spent in pleasing God, and
seeking him." As if the beneficent Creator would not be pleased in seeing his creatures linked by the
bonds of those very affections which he himself has made the law of our lives. One wonders where
and how Pascal lived, that he did not discover that the worst crimes and vices of mankind arose from

want of attachment: and that hardness of heart, pride, and selfishness, would, in the common run of
men, be the consequences of an adherence to his creed.
[59]Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VII.
[60]The following is Pascal's address to Atheists:—
"I will not certainly make use, to convince you, of the faith by which we ascertain the existence of
God, nor of all the other proofs which we possess, since you will not receive them. I will act by your
own principles, and I undertake to show you, by the manner in which you daily reason on matters of
less consequence, the way in which you ought to reason on this, and the part you ought to take in
deciding the important question of the existence of God. You say we are incapable of knowing
whether there be a God. Yet either God is, or God is not—there is no medium: towards which side,
then, shall we lean? Reason, you say, cannot decide. An infinite gulph separates us. Stake, toss up at
this distance; heads or tails—on which will you bet? Your reason does not affirm, nor can your
reason deny one or the other.
"Do not blame the falsehood of those who have chosen—you cannot tell whether they are mistaken:
No, you say I do not blame the choice they have made, but that they choose at all; he who chooses
heads and he who chooses tails are both in the wrong—the right thing is not to make the wager.
"Yes; but the wager must be made. You have no choice—you are embarked; and not to bet that God
does exist, is the same as betting that he does not. Which side will you be on? Weigh the gain and
loss of taking that, that there is a God. If you win, you win all: if you lose, you lose nothing. Bet then
that he doe's, without hesitation. Yes, you must wager. But perhaps I wager too much. Let us see.
Since there is equal risk of gain or loss, even if it were only that you gain two lives for one, it were
worth betting; and if you had ten to win, you would be imprudent not to risk your life to gain ten, at a
game in which there is so much to be lost or won. But here there is an infinite number of lives to
gain, with equal risk of losing or winning, and what you stake is so little and of so short duration that
it is folly to fear hazarding it on this occasion."
Pascal reasons better in the following article:—
"We must not deceive ourselves, we are as much body as soul, and thus it is that persuasion does not
use demonstration only as its instrument. How few things are proved? Proofs only convince the
understanding. Habit renders our proofs strong; that persuades the senses, and gains the
understanding without an exertion of its own. Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow,
or that we shall die? and yet what is more universally believed. Habit, then, persuades us. Habit
makes so many Turks and Pagans: it makes trades, soldiers, &c. We ought not, indeed, to begin
finding the truth through habit—but we ought to have recourse to it, when once the understanding
has discerned the truth, so to imbibe it, and imbue ourselves with a belief which perpetually escapes
from us—for to be for ever calling the proofs to mind would be too burdensome. We must acquire an
easy belief—which is that of habit; which, without violence, art, or argument, causes us to believe,
and inclines all our faculties to faith, so that our soul naturally falls into it. It is not sufficient to
believe by force of conviction, if our senses incline us to believe the contrary. We must cause both
parts to agree: the understanding through the reason that it has once acknowledged: and the senses,
through habit, by not allowing them to incline the other way.
"Those to whom God has given religion as a feeling of the heart are happy and entirely convinced.
We can only desire it for those, who have not this by reason, until God impresses it on the heart."

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

1626-1696

It appears ridiculous to include a woman's name in the list of "Literary and
Scientific Men." This blunder must be excused; we could not omit a name
so highly honourable to her country as that of madame de Sévigné, in a
series of biography whose intent is to give an account of the persons whose
genius has adorned the world.
The subject of this memoir herself would have been very much surprised to
find her name included in the list of French writers. She had no pretensions
to authorship; and the delightful letters which have immortalised her wit,
her sense, and the warm affections of her heart, were written without the
slightest idea intruding that they would ever be read, except by her to whom
they were addressed.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was born on the 5th February, 1626. The family
of Rabutin was a distinguished one of Burgundy, and Chantal was its elder
branch. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanne-Françoise Fremiot, now
canonized, was a foundress of a religious institution, called the Sisters of
Visitation; which was the cause of a sort of hereditary alliance between her
grand-daughter and the sisters of St. Mary, whose houses she was in the
habit of visiting in Paris, and during her various journeys. Mademoiselle de
Rabutin lost her father in her early infancy. When she was only a year and a
half old, the English made a descent upon the isle of Rhé, for the purpose of
succouring Rochelle. M. de Chantal put himself at the head of a troop of
gentlemen volunteers, and went out to oppose them. The artillery of the
enemy's fleet was turned upon them, and M. de Chantal, together with the
greater part of his followers, were left dead on the field. It has been 1597.
said that he fell by the hand of Cromwell himself. The baron de 1697
Chantal was a French noble of the old feudal times; when a cavalier .July
regarded his arms and military services as his greatest glory, and as 22.
the origin of his rank and privileges. His daughter has preserved a
curious specimen of his independence in his mode of treating great men,
and of the impressive concision of his letter writing. When Schomberg was
made marshal of France, he wrote to him—

"Monseigneur,
"Rank—black beard—intimacy.

"Chantal."
By which few words he conveys his opinion that Schomberg owed his
advancement, not to his valour nor military exploits, but to his rank, his
having a black beard, like Louis XIII., and his intimacy with that monarch.
The mother of mademoiselle de Rabutin was Marie de Coulanges, who was
of the class of nobility distinguished in France as of the robe; that is, as
being ennobled through their having filled high civil situations of
chancellor, judge, &c. She died in 1636, when her daughter was only ten
years of age, and the orphan fell under the care of her maternal grandfather,
M. de Coulanges (her grandmother, the saint, being too much occupied by
her religious duties to attend to her grandchild's welfare and education): he,
also, dying the same year, her guardianship devolved on her uncle,
Christophe de Coulanges, abbé de Livry. Henceforth he was a father to her.
We know nothing, except by conjecture, of Marie de Rabutin's education
and early years. She says that she was educated with her cousin Coulanges,
who was several years younger than herself. He is known to us as a gay,
witty, convivial man, whose reputation arose from his talent for composing
songs and madrigals on the events of the day, written with that airiness and
point peculiar to French productions of this sort. He was quick and clever,
and the young lady must have enjoyed in him a merry, agreeable
companion. She tells us, also, that she was brought up at court; a court ruled
over by cardinal de Richelieu, who, though a tyrant, studied and loved
letters, was desirous of advancing civilization, and took pleasure in the
society of persons of talent, even if they were women. She was always fond
of reading. The endless romances of Scuderi were her earliest occupation;
but she aspired to knowledge from more serious studies. Under the care of
Ménage and Chapelle, who both admired her, she learnt Latin and Italian.
She must always have possessed the delicacy and finesse of understanding
that distinguish her letters: vivacity that was almost wit; common sense,
that regulated and harmonized all, and never left her. She was not, perhaps,
what is called beautiful, even on her first entrance into the world, but she
was exceedingly pretty; a quantity of light hair, a fair blooming complexion,
eyes full of fire, and a person elegant, light, and airy, rendered her very

1644 attractive. She married, at the age of eighteen, Henry, marquis de
.
Ætat
Sévigné, of an ancient family in Britany.
. The Bretons even now scarcely consider themselves French. They
18.
are a race remarkable for dauntless courage and inviolable fidelity;
for rectitude and independence of feeling, joined to a romantic loyalty,
which, in latter years, has caused them to have a distinguished place in the
internal history of France. M. de Sévigné was not quite a man fitted to
secure the felicity of a young girl, full of ability, warmth of heart, and
excellent sense. He was fond of pleasure, extravagant in his expenses,
heedless, and gay. In the first instance, however, the marriage was a happy
one. The bon temps de la régence were, probably, the bon temps of madame
1647 de Sévigné's life. She bore two children, a son and a daughter. Her
.
Ætat
letters at this period are full of gaiety: there is no trace of any
. misfortune, nor any sorrow.
21.
M. de Sévigné was related to the celebrated cardinal de Retz, in
those days coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris. When France became
distracted by civil broils, this connection caused him to adhere to the party
of the Fronde. His wife partook in his politics, and was a zealous
Frondeuse. We have traces in all her after life of the intimacies formed
during the vicissitudes of these troubles. She continued warmly attached to
the ambitious turbulent coadjutor, whose last years were spent so differently
from his early ones, and on whom she lavishes many encomiums: she was
intimate with mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, duke of
Orleans; but her chief friend was the duchess de Chatillon, whom she called
her sister. Several letters that passed between her and her cousin 1649
Bussy-Rabutin, during the blockade of Paris by the prince de Condé, .Ætat
are preserved. He sided with the court, and wrote to ask his cousin to .
interfere to obtain for him his carriage and horses, left behind in 23.
Paris when the court escaped to St. Germain:—"Pray exert yourself," he
writes: "it is as much your affair as mine; as we shall judge, by your success
in this enterprise, in what consideration you are held by your party; that is
to say, we shall have a good opinion of your generals, if they pay the
attention they ought to your recommendation." She failed; and Bussy-
Rabutin writes, "So much the worse for those who refused you, my fair
cousin. I do not know if it will profit them anything, but I am sure it does
them no honour."

We have mentioned, in the memoir of the duke de la Rochefoucauld, the
depraved state of French society during the wars of the Fronde. Madame de
Sévigné kept herself far aloof from even the suspicion of misconduct, but
her husband imbibed the contagion. The name of his mistress, Ninon de
l'Enclos, gave a celebrity 1650. to his infidelity infinitely painful to his
wife. Madame de Sévigné felt her misfortune, but bore it with 1650
dignity and patience. Not long after she had cause to congratulate .Ætat
herself on her forbearance, when her husband was killed in a duel by .
the chevalier d'Albret. The occasion of the combat is not known, but 24.
such were too frequent in the days of the Fronde. The inconstancy of her
husband did not diminish the widow's grief: she had lived six happy years
of a brilliant youth with him; his gay, social disposition was exactly such as
to win affection; and, when he was lost to her for ever, she probably looked
on her jealousy in another light, and felt how trivial such is when compared
with the irreparable stroke of death. Her sorrow was profound. Her uncle,
the abbé de Coulanges, was her best friend and consoler. He drew her
attention to her duties, and assisted her in the arduous task of managing her
affairs, embarrassed by her husband's extravagance. She had two young
children, and their education was her chief and dearest care, and she was
thus speedily recalled to active life.
Her widowhood was exemplary. Left at four-and-twenty without her
husband's protection, in the midst of a society loosened from all moral
restrictions, in which the highest were the most libertine, no evil breath ever
tainted her fair fame. Her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin[61], who has distilled, from
a venomous pen, poison over the reputation of almost every Frenchwoman
of that period, says not a word against her, except that she encouraged
sometimes the friendship of those who loved her. No blame can arise from
this. It was necessary for the advancement of her children that she should
secure the support and friendship of people in power. She lived in a court
surrounded by a throng of society: she felt safe, since she could rely on
herself; and prudery would only have made her enemies, without any good
accruing. The only friend she had who did not deserve the distinction was
Bussy-Rabutin; but he being a near relation, and she the head of their house,
she showed her kindness and her prudence by continuing to admit him to
the honour of her intimacy. In his letters he alludes to the admiration that
Fouquet felt for her; and we find that her friendship for him continued
unalterable to the last. Bussy rallies her, also, on the admiration of the

prince de Conti: "Take care of yourself, my fair cousin," he writes: "a
disinterested lady may, nevertheless, be ambitious; and she who refused the
financier of the king may not always resist his majesty's cousin. You are a
little ingrate, and will have to pay one day or another. You pursue virtue as
if it were a reality, and you despise wealth as if you could never feel the
want of it: we shall see you some day regret all this." Again he writes, "One
must regulate oneself by you; one is too happy in being allowed to be your
friend. There is hardly a woman in the kingdom, except yourself, who can
induce your lovers to be satisfied with friendship: we scarcely see any who,
rejecting love, are not in a state of enmity. I am certain that it requires a
woman of extraordinary merit to turn a lover into a friend." And again, "I do
not know any one so generally esteemed as yourself: you are the delight of
the human race; antiquity would have raised altars to you; and you would
assuredly have been the goddess of something. In our own times, not being
so prodigal of incense, we content ourselves with saying that there does not
exist a woman of your age more virtuous and more charming. I know
princes of the blood, foreign princes, nobles of high rank, great captains,
ministers of state, magistrates, and philosophers, all ready to be in love with
you. What can you desire more?" This language deserves quoting only as
evidence of the sort of ordeal Madame de Sévigné passed through. While
receiving all this flattery, she was never turned aside from her course. To
educate her children, take care of their property, secure such a place in
society as would be advantageous to them, and to render her uncle's life
happy, were the objects of her life. She was very fortunate in her uncle,
whose kindness and care were the supports of her life. Her obligations to
him are apparent from the letter she wrote many years after, on his death:
—"I am plunged in sorrow: ten days ago I saw my dear uncle die, and you
know what he was to his dear niece. He has conferred on me every benefit
in the world, either by giving me property of his own, or preserving and
augmenting that of my children. He drew me from the abyss into which M.
de Sévigné's death plunged me: he gained lawsuits; he put my affairs into
good order; he paid our debts; he has made the estate on which my son lives
the prettiest and most agreeable in the world." She was fortunate, also, in
her children, whom she passionately loved. But it must be remembered that
children do not entirely occupy a parent's time. She afterwards regretted
that her daughter had been brought up in a convent; but, in sending her
there, she acted in accordance with the manners of the times.[62] While her

children were away, and when she came up to Paris from her country house,
she diversified her life by innocent pleasures. She enjoyed good society, and
adorned it. She was one of the favourites of the Hôtel de Rambouillet,
where met a knot of people, who, however they might err in affectation and
over refinement, were celebrated for talent and virtue. She was a friend of
Julie d'Angennes, afterwards madame de Montauzier; and the Alcovistes of
the set were her principal friends. Ménage mentions her with admiration,
and was accustomed to relate several anecdotes concerning her. He went to
visit her in Britany, a great undertaking for a Parisian. The chevalier de
Méré, one of the most affected and exaggerated of the Précieuses, and also
the count de Lude, whom Ménage mentions as one of the four distinguished
sayers of bon mots of the time, were chief among her friends and admirers.
Her cousin Bussy-Rabutin quarrelled with her. The occasion is not known;
but it is suspected that she refused to exert herself to re-establish him in the
favour of Fouquet, who was displeased with him. The infamy of his
proceeding is almost unexampled. He included mention of her in the
portion of his scandalous publication of the "Amours des Gaules" published
1659. In this he does not accuse her of misconduct, but he represents her
economy as avarice, her friendship as coquetry; and added to this the
outrage of raking up and publishing the misfortunes of her married life,
which, though they redounded to her credit, must have deeply hurt a woman
of feeling and delicacy. She never forgave her cousin; and, though
afterwards reconciled to him, it is evident that she never regarded him with
esteem. In addition to this annoyance, her career was not entirely sunny.
Her warm heart felt bitterly the misfortunes that befel her friends. Her first
sorrow of this kind was the imprisonment, banishment, and adversity of
cardinal de Retz. He deserved his downfall,—but not in her eyes. She only
saw his talents and amiable qualities; and viewed in him a powerful friend,
now overthrown. His imprisonment embittered two years of her life. Her
husband's uncle, the chevalier de Sévigné, took an active part in his escape
from the citadel of Nantes; but this did not restore him to his friends. He
was obliged to take refuge in Spain; and did not return to France for many
years, when he came back an altered man.
Her next misfortune was the fall and banishment of Fouquet. It speaks
highly for madame de Sévigné's good sense and superior qualities that,
while refusing a man who, in other instances, showed himself presuming

from success with other women, she should secure him as a friend. The
secret lay in her own feelings of friendship, which being sincere, and yet
strictly limited, she acquired his esteem as well as affection. Fouquet was a
munificent and generous man, of a superior understanding and unbounded
ambition. He dissipated the finances of the state as he spent his own; but he
could bestow as well as take, as he proved when, on getting his place of
procureur-general to the parliament, he sent in the price (14,000 francs) to
the public treasury. The entertainment he gave Louis XIV. at Vaux, which
cost 18,000,000 of francs, was the seal of his ruin, already suggested to the
king by Colbert. He had made the monarch, already all powerful, fear his
victim. Louis fancied that Fouquet had fortified Belle Isle, and that he had a
strong party within and without the kingdom. This was a mere mistake,
inspired by the superintendent's enemies, to ensure his fall. Madame de
Sévigné, Pelisson, Gourville, and mademoiselle Scuderi were his chief
friends: joined to these was Pelisson, his confidential clerk. He shared the
fall of his master, and was imprisoned in the Bastille; but, undeterred by
fear from this, defended him with great eloquence. The simple-minded,
true-hearted La Fontaine was another of his firm friends in adversity. The
suit against him was carried on for three years. He was pursued with the
utmost acrimony and violence by Colbert, Le Tellier, secretary of state, and
his rival in credit, and Séguier, the chancellor. During his trial, madame de
Sévigné wrote daily to M. de Pomponne, afterwards minister, relating its
progress. These letters are very interesting, both from the anecdotes they
contain, and the warmth of feeling the writer displays. Fouquet was treated
with the utmost harshness by the chancellor Séguier, whom he answered
with spirit, preserving through all a presence of mind, a composure, a
dignity, and resolution, which is the more admirable, since, in those days,
there was no humiliation of language to which the subjects of Louis XIV.
did not descend, and think becoming, as addressed to the absolute arbiter of
their destiny.
The sort of interest and terror excited about him is manifest, by the fact, that
madame de Sévigné masked herself when she went to see him return from
the court, where he was tried, to the Bastille, his prison.[63] His trial lasted
for more than a month. The proceedings against him were carried on with
the utmost irregularity; and this and other circumstances—the length of
time that had elapsed, which turned the excitement against him into
compassion; the earnestness of the solicitations in his favour, together with

the virulence with which he was persecuted,—all these things saved his life.
Madame de Sévigné announces this news with delight:—"Praise God, and
thank him! Our poor friend is saved! Thirteen sided with M. d'Ormesson
(who voted for banishment), nine with Sainte Helene, (whose voice was for
death). I am beside myself with joy. How delightful and consolatory must
this news be to you; and what inconceivable pleasure do those moments
impart which deliver the heart and the thoughts from such terrible anxiety.
It will belong before I recover from the joy I felt yesterday: it is really too
complete; I could scarcely bear it. The poor man learnt the news by air (by
means of signals) a few moments after; and I have no doubt he felt it in all
its extent." The king, however, abated this joy. He had been taught to
believe that Fouquet was dangerous: fancying this, he of course felt, that, as
an exile, he would enjoy every facility for carrying on his schemes. He
changed the sentence of banishment into perpetual imprisonment in
Pignerol. Fouquet was separated from his wife and family, and from his
most faithful servants. At first his friends hoped that his hard fate would be
softened. "We hope," writes madame de Sévigné, "for some mitigation:
hope has used me too well for me to abandon it. We must follow the
example of the poor prisoner: he is gay and tranquil; let us be the same."
The king, however, continued inexorable. He remained long in prison: a
doubt hangs over the conclusion of his life; and it is not known whether he
remained a prisoner to the end. He died in 1680.[64]
When Fouquet's papers were seized, there were among them a multitude of
letters which compromised the reputations of several women of quality.
Madame de Sévigné had been in the habit of corresponding with him. The
secretary of state, Tellier, declared that her letters were les plus honnêtes du
monde; but they were written unguardedly, in all the thoughtlessness of
youth. She apprehended some annoyance from their having fallen into the
hands of the enemy, and thought it right to retire into the country. Bussy-
Rabutin put himself forward at this moment to support her: a reconciliation
ensued between them,—not very cordial, but which, for some time,
continued uninterrupted.
Madame de Sévigné's retreat was not of long continuance. It took place
when Fouquet was first arrested, and she returned to court long before his
trial. Her daughter was presented in 1663. The following year was 1664
rendered remarkable by the brilliancy of the fêtes given at Versailles. .Ætat

[65]
The carousals or tournaments were splendid, from the number of .38.
combatants and the magnificence of the dresses and accoutrements.
The personages that composed the tournament passed in review before the
assembled court. The king represented Roger. All the diamonds of 1665
the crown were lavished on his dress and the harness of his horse: his .Ætat
page bore his shield, whose device was composed by Benserade, .
who had a happy talent for composing these slight commemorations 39.
of the feelings and situation of the real person, mingled with an apt allusion
to the person represented. The queen, attended by three hundred ladies,
witnessed the review from under triumphal arches. Amidst this crowd of
ladies, lost in it to all but the heart of Louis, and shrinking from
observation, was mademoiselle de la Vallière, the real object of the
monarch's magnificent display. The cavalcade was followed by an immense
gilt car, representing the chariot of the sun. It was surrounded by the four
Ages, the Seasons, and the Hours. Shepherds arranged the lists, and other
characters recited verses written for the occasion. The tournament over, the
feast succeeded, and, darkness being come, the place was illuminated by
4000 flambeaux. Two hundred persons, dressed as fauns, sylvans, and
dryads, together with shepherds, reapers, and vine-dressers, served at the
numerous tables; a theatre arose, as if by magic, behind the tables; the
arcades that surrounded the whole circuit were ornamented with 500
girandoles of green and silver, and a gilt balustrade shut in the whole.
Molière's play of the "Princesse d'Elide," agreeable at the time from the
allusions it contained, his comedy of the "Marriage Forcée," and three acts
of the "Tartuffe," added the enduring stamp of genius to mere outward show
and splendour. Mademoiselle de Sévigné appeared in these fêtes. In 1663
she represented a shepherdess in a ballet; and the verses which Benserade
wrote for her to repeat show that she was held in consideration as one of the
most charming beauties of the court, and as the daughter of one of its
loveliest and most respected ornaments. In 1664 she appeared as Cupid
disguised, as a Nereid[66]; and as Omphale in 1665. We must not forget that
at this very time, while enjoying her daughter's success, madame de
Sévigné was interesting herself warmly for Fouquet. The favour of a court
could not make her forget her friends. Her chief object of interest, as
personally regarded herself at this time, was the marriage of her daughter.
Her son was in the army. When only nineteen he joined the expedition
undertaken by the dukes of Noailles and Beaufort for the succour of Candia.

On this, madame de Sévigné writes to the comte de Bussy,—"I suppose you
know that my son is gone to Candia with M. de Roannes and the comte de
Saint Paul. He mentioned it to M. de Turenne, to cardinal de Retz, and to
M. de la Rochefoucauld. These gentlemen so approved his design that it
was resolved on and made public before I knew any thing of it. He is gone.
I wept his departure bitterly, and am deeply afflicted. I shall not have a
moment's repose during this expedition. I see all the dangers, and they
destroy me; but I am not the mistress. On such occasions mothers have no
voice." She had foundation for anxiety, for few among the officers that
accompanied this expedition ever returned. The baron de Sévigné was,
however, among these: he had distinguished himself; and, as the foundation
for his military career, his mother bought for him, at a large pecuniary
sacrifice, the commission of guidon, or ensign, in the regiment of the
dauphin. The marriage of her daughter was a still more important object. La
plus jolie fille de France she delights in naming her; yet it was long before
she was satisfied with any of those who pretended to her hand. At length the
count de Grignan offered himself. He was a widower of two 1669
marriages: he was not young, yet his offer pleased the young lady, .Ætat
and possessed many advantages in the eyes of the mother, on .
account of the excellent character which he bore, his rank, and his 43.
wealth. "I must tell you a piece of news," madame de Sévigné writes to the
count de Bussy, "which will doubtless delight you. At length, the prettiest
woman in Fiance is about to marry, not the handsomest youth, but the most
excellent man in the kingdom. You have long known M. de Grignan. All his
wives are dead to make room for your cousin, as well as, through wonderful
luck, his father and his son; so that, being richer than he ever was, and
being, through his birth, his position, and his good qualities, such as we
desire, we conclude at once. The public appears satisfied, and that is much,
for one is silly enough to be greatly influenced by it."
Soon after this period the correspondence began which contains the history
of the life of madame de Sévigné,—a life whose migrations were not much
more important than those of the Vicar of Wakefield, "from the blue bed to
the brown;" her residence in Paris being varied only by journeys to her
estate in Britany, or by visits to her daughter in Provence. But such was the
vivacity of her mind, and the sensibility of her heart, that these changes,
including separations from and meetings with her daughter, assume the

guise of important events, bringing in their train heart-breaking grief, or
abundant felicity.
When she accepted M. de Grignan as her son-in-law, she fancied that, by
marrying her daughter to a courtier, they would pass their lives together.
But, soon after, M. de Grignan, who was lieutenant-general to the duke de
Vendôme, governor of Provence, received an order to repair to the
government, where he commanded during the almost uninterrupted absence
of the duke. This was a severe blow. Her child torn from her, she was as
widowed a second time: her only consolation was in the hope of reunion,
and in a constant and voluminous correspondence. Mother and daughter
interchanged letters twice a week. As their lives are undiversified by events,
we wonder what interest can be thrown over so long a series, which is often
a mere reiteration of the same feelings and the same thoughts. Here lie the
charm and talent of madame de Sévigné. Her warm heart and vivacious
intellect exalted every emotion, vivified every slight event, and gave the
interest of talent and affection to every thought and every act. Her letters are
the very reverse of prosy; and though she writes of persons known to her
daughter and unknown to us, and in such hints as often leave much
unexplained, yet her pen is so graphic, her style so easy and clear, pointed
and finished, even in its sketchiness, that we become acquainted with her
friends, and take interest in the monotonous course of her life. To give an
idea of her existence, as well as of her correspondence, we will touch on the
principal topics.
In the first place, we must give some account of the person to whom they
were addressed. Madame la comtesse de Grignan was a very different
person from her mother. From some devotional scruples she destroyed all
her own letters, so that we cannot judge of their excellence; but there can be
no doubt that she was a very clever woman. She studied and loved the
philosophy of Descartes; and it is even suspected that she was, in her youth,
something of an esprit fort in her opinions. She conducted herself admirably
as a wife; she was an anxious but not a tender mother. Here was the grand
difference between her and her mother. The heart of madame de Sévigné
overflowed with sympathy and tenderness; her daughter, endowed with
extreme good sense, wit, and a heart bent on the fulfilment of her duties,
had no tenderness of disposition. She left her eldest child, a little girl,
behind her, in Paris, almost from the date of its birth. Apparently this poor

child had some defect which determined her destiny in a convent from her
birth; for her mother seems afraid of showing kindness, and shut her up at
the age of nine in the religious house where afterwards she assumed the
veil; her vocation to the state being very problematical. It was through the
continual remonstrances and representations of madame de Sévigné that she
kept her youngest daughter at home. She was more alive to maternal
affection towards her son; but this was mixed with the common feeling of
interest in the heir of her house. There was something hard in her character
that sometimes made her mother's intense affection a burden. Madame de
Sévigné's distinctive quality was amiability: we should say that her
daughter was decidedly unamiable. These were, to a great degree, the faults
of a young person, probably of temper: they disappeared afterwards, when
experience taught her feeling, and time softened the impatience of youth.
We find a perfect harmony between mother and daughter subsist during the
latter years of the life of the former, and repose succeed to the more stormy
early intercourse. Madame de Grignan, prudent and anxious by nature,
spent a life of considerable care. The expenses of her husband's high
situation, and his own extravagant tastes, caused him to spend largely. Her
son entered life early, and his career was the object of great solicitude. Her
health was precarious. All this was excitement for her mother's sympathy;
and her letters are full of earnest discussion, intense anxiety, or lively
congratulation on the objects of her daughter's interest, and her well-being.
The next object of her affection, and subject of her pen, was her son. He
was a man of wit and talent; but the thoughtlessness, the what the French
call légèreté of his character, caused his mother much anxiety, at the same
time that his good spirits, his confidence in her, and his amiable temper,
contributed to her happiness. She often calls him the best company in the
world; and laments, at the same time, his pursuits and ill luck. He was a
favourite of the best society in Paris, and, among others, of the famous
Ninon de l'Enclos. Ninon had many great and good qualities; but madame
de Sévigné's dislike to her dated far back, and was justifiably founded on
the conduct of her husband. At the age of thirty-five Ninon had been the
successful rival of a young and blooming wife; at that of fifty-five the son
wore her chains.[67] Madame de Sévigné could never reconcile herself to
this intimacy. "She spoiled your father," she writes to madame de Grignan,
while she relates the methods used to attach her son. Sometimes this son,
who was brave, and eager to distinguish himself, was exposed to the

dangers of war; sometimes he spent his time at court, where he waited on
the dauphin, squandering time and money among the courtiers, charming
the circle by his vanity and wit, but gaining no advancement; sometimes he
accompanied his mother to Britany; and we find him enlivening her
solitude, and bestowing on her the tenderest filial attentions. He was an
unlucky man. He got no promotion in the army, and, being too impatient for
a courtier, soon got wearied of waiting for advancement. He perplexed his
mother by his earnest wish to sell his commission; and the failure in her
projects of marriage for him annoyed her still more. At length he chose for
himself: renouncing his military employments, retiring from the court, and
even from Paris, he married a lady of his own province, and fixed himself
entirely in Britany. His wife was an amiable, quiet, unambitious person,
with a turn for devotion, which increased through the circumstance of their
having no children. Madame de Sévigné was too pious to lament this, now
that the destiny of her son was decided as obscure, and that she saw him
happy: on the contrary, she rejoiced in finding him adopt religious
principles, which rendered his life peaceful, and his character virtuous.
The principal friends of madame de Sévigné were united in what she
termed the Fauxbourg, where the house of madame de la Fayette, then the
resort of the persons most distinguished in Paris for talent, wit, refinement,
and good moral conduct, was situated. Madame de la Fayette, and her
friend the duke de la Rochefoucauld, have already been introduced to the
reader in the memoir of the latter. It would seem that the lady was not a
favourite with madame de Grignan, and that, with all her talents, she was
not popular; but she had admirable qualities; the use of the French term
vraie was invented as applicable to her; for Rochefoucauld abridged into
this single word Segrais' description, that "she loved the true in all things."
This excess of frankness gave her, with some, an air of dryness; and
madame de Sévigné's children did not share her affection, which even did
not blind her to her friend's defects. Speaking of the Fauxbourg, she says, "I
am loved as much as she can love." In an age when there was so much
disquisition on character and motive, and in a mind like madame de
Sévigné's, so open to impression, and so penetrating, it is no wonder that
slight defects were readily discerned, nor that they should be mentioned in
so open-hearted an intercourse as that between mother and daughter. All
human beings have blots and slurs in their character, or they would not be
human. We judge by the better part—by that which raises a circle or an

individual superior to the common run, not by those failings which stamp
all our fellow-creatures as sons of Adam. Thus, we may pronounce on
madame de la Fayette as being one of the most remarkable women of the
age, for talent, for wit, and for the sincerity, strength, and uprightness of her
character. She suffered much from ill health. Her society was confined to
that which she assembled at her own house; but that circumstance only
rendered it the more chosen and agreeable.
M. and madame de Coulanges formed its ornaments. He was madame de
Sévigné's cousin, and brought up with her, though several years younger.
His lively thoughtless disposition made him the charm of society. He was
educated for the bar, but was far too vivacious to make his way. He was
pleading a suit concerning a marsh disputed by two peasants, one of whom
was called Grappin:—perceiving that he was getting confused in the details,
and in the points of law, he suddenly broke off his speech, exclaiming,
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but I am drowning myself in Grappin's marsh: I am
your most obedient;" and so threw up his brief, and, it is said, never took
another.[68] He was, in youth, and continued to the end of his life, a man of
pleasure, singing with spirit songs which he made impromptu, and which,
afterwards, every one learnt as à propos of the events of the day; a teller of
good stories, a lover of good dinners, an enjoyer of good wine; charming
every one by the exuberance of his spirits; amusing others, because he
himself was amused. He loved books, he cultivated his taste, and collected
pictures, joining the refinements and tastes of a gentleman to the hilarity
and recklessness of a boy.
His wife, a relation of le Tellier and Louvois, enjoyed the reputation of a
wit, as well as of being the most charming woman in Paris. She had good
sense, and was often annoyed by her husband's thoughtlessness, which
caused him to degenerate at times into buffoonery; while her repartees and
letters caused her to be universally cited and esteemed[69]; and her easy
agreeable conversation made her the delight of every one who knew her.
The airiness of her mind is well expressed in the names madame de Sévigné
gives her in her correspondence: la Mouche, la Feuille, la Sylphide all
denote a mixture of lightness, gaiety, and grace, with a touch of coquetry,
and the piquancé of wit, whose point was sharp, but free from venom.
When madame de Maintenon became the chief lady in the kingdom, she
was charmed to have near her this early friend and amusing companion.

Madame de Coulanges frequented court assiduously, but she enjoyed no
place. Her species of intellect was characteristic of the times. The conceits,
mystifications, and metaphysical flights of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had
given place to wit, and to sententious and pointed, yet perspicuous and
natural, turns of expression. Truth and clearness, and a certain sort of art,
that shrouded itself in an appearance of simplicity, was the tone aimed at by
those who wished to shine. Equivokes, sous-entendres, metaphors, and
antithesis, all kinds of trifles, sarcastic or laudatory, were lightly touched
on, coloured for a moment with rainbow-hues, and vanished as fast: these
were the fashion; and no conversation was more replete with these, and yet
freer from obvious pretension, than that of madame de Coulanges. It is true
that there must always be a sort of pedantry in an adherence to a fashion;
but, when the manner is graceful, smiling, unaffected, and original, the
pretension is lost in the pleasure derived. All this was natural to madame de
Coulanges. Her confessor said of her. "Each of this lady's sins is an
epigram." When recovering from a severe illness, madame de Sévigné
announced, as the sign of her convalescence, "Epigrams are beginning to be
pointed;" not that by epigrams sarcasms were meant, but merely novel turns
of expression, words wittily applied, ideas full of finesse, that pleased by
their originality. She and her husband were, perhaps, too much alike to
accord well: she was annoyed at his want of dignity, and the heedlessness
that, joined to her extravagance, left them poor and himself unconsidered.
He liked to be where he was more at his ease than in his wife's company.
Her faults, however, diminished as she grew old. She learnt to appreciate
the court at its true value. She ceased her attendance on madame de
Maintenon; but her intimacy with Ninon de l'Enclos continued to the end of
her life. The ingratitude of her court friends, the smallness of her fortune,
her advancing age, and consequent loss of beauty, and her weak health,
rendered her neither crabbed nor sad: on the contrary, she became
indulgent, gentle, and contented.
Her husband preserved his characteristics to the end. When exhorted by a
preacher to more serious habits, he replied by an impromptu:—

"Je voudrois, à mon âge,
Il en seroit le temps,
Etre moins volage
Que les jeunes gens,

Et mettre en usage
D'un vieillard bien sage
Tous les sentimens.

"Je voudrois du viel homme
Etre séparé;
Le morceau de pomme
N'est pas digéré."[70]
He died at the advanced age of eighty.
During the earlier portion of the correspondence, madame Scarron figures
as one of the favourite guests of the Fauxbourg. Her husband was dead, and
she was living at the Hôtel d'Albret, among her earliest friends. The latter
correspondence is full of anecdotes about her, as madame de Maintenon,
and indicate her gradual advancement; but those which speak of her early
days, when she was the char&i and ornament of her circle, merely through
her talents, and agreeable and excellent qualities, are the most interesting.
Corbinelli was another chief friend of madame de Sévigné. He was
descended from an Italian, who came into France on the marriage of
Catherine de Medici and Henry II. His father was attached to marshal
d'Ancre, and was enveloped in his ruin. We have no details of his actual
circumstances, except that, although he was poor, his position in society
was brilliant. A stranger, without employment, without fortune or rank, he
was sought, esteemed, and loved by the first society; while his character
presents many contradictions. Studious and accomplished, a man of
learning and science, he only wrote compilations. Something of a sceptic,
he studied religion, and became a quietist. Pitied by his friends, as neither
rich nor great, he passed a happy life; and, though always in ill health, his
life was prolonged to more than a century. He was one of madame de
Sévigné's most familiar friends. In early life he had had employments under
cardinal Mazarin. He was a friend of the marquis de Vardes, and shared the
disgrace he incurred, together with Bussy-Rabutin and others, on account of
certain letters fabricated, pretending to be written by the king of Spain, for
the purpose of informing his sister, the queen of France, of Louis XIV.'s
attachment for mademoiselle de la Vallière. This event was fatal to his
fortunes; but it developed his talents, since he made use of the leisure
afforded by his retreat for the purpose of study. He applied himself to the

theories of Descartes, and became deeply versed in classic literature. At one
time he turned his attention to the study of law, but soon threw it aside with
disgust: his clear and comprehensive understanding was utterly alien to the
contradictions, subterfuges, and confusion of old French law. In religion, he
sided with the mystics and quietists; but was more of a philosopher than a
religionist; and chose his party for its being more allied to protestant tenets,
and because, M. de Sévigné says, his mysticism freed him from the
necessity of going to mass. He was a mixture of Stoic and Epicurean. He
would not go half a league on horseback, he said, to seek a throne. And thus
he harmonised his temper with his fortunes, for he was an unlucky man.
"His merit brings him ill luck," madame de la Fayette said. It may be added
that it brought also a contented mind, a friendly disposition, and calm
studious habits. An amusing anecdote is told of his presence of mind in
extricating himself from a dilemma in which he was placed.
Louis XIV. learnt that the prince of Conti, and other young and heedless
nobles of high rank, had, at a certain supper, uttered various sarcasms
against, and told stories to the discredit of, himself and madame de
Maintenon. The king wished to learn the details, and sent D'Argenson to
inquire of Corbinelli, who was supposed to have been at the supper.
Corbinelli was by this time grown old and deaf. "Where did you sup on
such an evening?" asked D'Argenson. "I do not remember," the other
replied. "Are you acquainted with such and such princes?" "I forget." "Did
you not sup with them?" "I do not in the least remember?" "It seems to me
that a man like you ought to recollect these things." "True, sir, but before a
man like you, I am not a man like myself." Madame de Sévigné's
correspondence with this accomplished and valued friend is lost, but her
letters to her daughter are full of expressions of esteem and friendship
towards him.
Thus, in her letters, we find all the events of the day alluded to in the tone
used by this distinguished society. Some of the observations are witty and
amusing; others remarkable for their truth, founded on a just and delicate
knowledge of the human heart.[71] These are mingled with details of the
events of the day. We may mention, among others, the letters that regard the
death of Turenne. The glory that lighted up that name shines with peculiar
brilliancy in her pages. His heroism, gentleness, and generosity are all
recorded with enthusiasm.[72]] Sometimes her letters record the gossip,

sometimes the bon mots, of the day; and each finds its place, and is told
with grace, simplicity, and ease.
From this scene, full of life and interest, at the call of duty, she visited
Britany; and, when her uncle desired, or motives of economy urged, buried
herself in the solitude of her country seat of Les Rochers, a château
belonging to the family of Sévigné, one league from Vitré, and still further
from Rennes. As far as the character and person of the writer are concerned,
we prefer the letters written from this retirement to those that record the
changes and chances of her Parisian life. They breathe affection and peace,
the natural sentiments of a kind heart, an enlightened taste, and an active
mind. "At length, my child," she writes, on her first visit to her solitude
after her daughter's marriage (May 31. 1671), "here I am at these poor
Rochers. Can I see these avenues, these devices, my cabinet and books, and
this room, without dying of sorrow? There are many agreeable memories,
but so many that are tender and lively, that I can scarcely support them:
those that are associated with you are of this number. Can you not
understand their effect on my heart? My young trees are surprisingly
beautiful. Pilois (her gardener) raises them to the sky with an admirable
straightness. Really, nothing can be more beautiful than the avenues you
saw planted. You remember that I gave you an appropriate device: here is
one I carved on a tree for my son, who has returned from Candia: Vago di
fama. Is it not pretty to say so much in a single word? Yesterday I had
carved, in honour of the indolent, Bella cosa far niente. Alas, dear child,
how rustic my letters are! Where is the time when I could speak, as others
do, of Paris? You will receive only news of myself; and such is my
confidence, that I am persuaded that you will like these letters as well as my
others. The society I have here pleases me much. Our abbé (the abbé de
Coulanges, her uncle, who resided constantly with her) is always delightful.
My son and La Mousse (a relation of M. de Coulanges) suit me extremely,
and I suit them. We are always together; and, when business takes me from
them, they are in despair, and think me very silly to prefer a farmer's
account to a tale of La Fontaine."—"Your brother is a treasure of folly, and
is delightful here. We have sometimes serious conversations, by which he
may profit; but there is something of whipped cream in his character: with
all that, he is amiable."—"We are reading Tasso with pleasure. I find myself
an adept, through the good masters I had. My son reads "Cleopatra" (a
romance of Calprenède) to La Mousse; and, in spite of myself, I listen, and

find amusement. My son is setting off for Lorraine: his absence will give
me much ennui. You know how sorry I am to see agreeable company
depart; and you have been witness, also, to my transports of joy when I see
a carriage drive away with that which restrained and annoyed me; and how
this caused us to decide that bad company was better than good. I remember
all the follies we committed here, and every thing you did or said: the
recollection never quits me. All the young plantations you saw are
delicious. I delight in raising this young generation; and often, without
thinking of the injury to my profit, I cut down great trees, because they
overshadow and inconvenience my young children. My son looks on; but I
do not suffer him to make the application my conduct might inspire." It was
not, however, always solitude at the Rochers. The duke of Chaulnes was
lieutenant-governor of Britany; and he and the duchess were too happy to
visit madame de Sévigné, and to persuade her to join them when they
visited the province, to hold the assembly of the states. From such a busy
scene she gladly plunges again into her avenues and old halls, her
moonlight walks, and darling reveries. She returned to Paris in 1672
December; and, in July of the following year, visited her daughter in .Ætat
Provence, where she spent fifteen months. These periods, so full of .
happiness to her, are blanks to us; and when, with tears and sighs, 46.
she tears herself away from Grignan, and the letters begin again, our
amusement and delight recommences. In 1674, madame de Grignan 1674
visited Paris, and remained fourteen months. Parisian society was .Ætat
invested for the tender mother with a charm and an interest, which .
became mingled with sadness on her daughter's departure. 48.

The letters on this separation are rendered interesting by the 1675
circumstance of her intimacy with cardinal de Retz, who was then .Ætat
projecting abdicating his cardinal's hat, which the pope forbade, and .
his retreat, for the sake of paying his debts. This last was a measure 49.
founded on motives of honour and integrity, whatever his adversary, M. de
la Rochefoucauld, may say to the contrary. The esteem, amounting to
respect, which madame de Sévigné expresses for him, raises them both. The
death of Turenne happened also during this spring, and the letters are
redeemed from the only fault which a certain sort of minds might find with
them, that of frivolity. If they are frivolous, what are our own lives? Let us
turn our eyes towards ourselves, and ask, if we daily put down our
occupations, the subjects of our conversation, our pleasures and our serious

thoughts, would they not be more empty of solid information than madame
de Sévigné's letters; or, if more learned, will they not be less wise, and,
above all, deficient in the warmth of heart that burns in hers? In the summer
of this year, she would fain have visited her daughter; but her uncle insisted
that a journey to Britany was necessary for the final settlement of their
mutual affairs, as he was grown old, and might die any day. She arrived at
the Rochers at the end of September. Her life was more lonely than during
the previous visit, for her only companion was her uncle. She had felt
deeply disappointed at giving up her journey to Provence, and the
additional distance between her and her daughter, when in Britany, was hard
to bear. "We were far enough off," she writes; "another hundred leagues
added pains my heart; and I cannot dwell upon the thought without having
great need of your sermons. What you say of the little profit you often
derive from them yourself displays a tenderness that greatly pleases me.
You wish me, then, to speak of my woods. The sterility of my letters does
not disgust you. Well, dear child! I may tell you, that I do honour to the
moon, which I love, as you know. The good abbé fears the dew: I never
suffer from it, and I remain, with Beaulieu (her dog) and my servants in
attendance, till eight o'clock. Indeed, these avenues are of a beauty, and
breathe a tranquillity, a peace, and a silence, of which I can never have too
much. When I think of you, it is with tenderness; and I must leave it to you
to imagine whether I feel this deeply—I cannot express it. I am glad to feel
alone, and fear the arrival of some ladies, that is, of constraint." Her
residence in the province was painfully disturbed, on account of the riots
which had taken place at Rennes, on account of the taxes; and the governor
had brought down 4000 soldiers to punish the inhabitants. Ever fearful that
her letters might be read at the post, madame de Sévigné never directly
blames any act of government, but her disapprobation and regret are plainly
expressed. "I went to see the duchess de Chaulnes, at Vitré, yesterday," she
writes, "and dined there: she received me with joy, and conversed with me
for two hours, with affection and eagerness; relating their conduct for the
last six months, and all she suffered, and the dangers she ran. I thanked her
for her confidence. In a word, this province has been much to blame; but it
is cruelly punished, so that it will never recover. There are 5000 soldiers at
Rennes, of which one half will pass the winter. They have taken, at hazard,
five-and-twenty or thirty men, whom they are about to hang. Parliament is
transferred—this is the great blow—for, without that, Rennes is not a better

town than Vitré. The misfortunes of the province delay all business, and
complete our ruin."—"They have laid tax of 100,000 crowns on the
citizens; and, if this sum be not forthcoming in twenty-four hours, it will be
doubled, and exacted by the soldiers. They have driven away and banished
the inhabitants of one whole street, and forbidden any one to give them
refuge, on pain of death; so that you see these poor wretches—women
lately brought to bed, old men and children—wander weeping from the
town, not knowing whither to go, without food or shelter. Sixty citizens are
arrested: to-morrow they begin to hang. This province is an example to
others, teaching them, above all, to respect their governors and their wives;
not to call them names, nor to throw stones in their garden." Coming back
from these scenes, which filled her with grief and indignation, she returns to
her woods. "I have business with the abbé: I am with my dear workmen;
and life passes so quickly, and, consequently, we approach our end so fast,
that I wonder how one can feel worldly affairs so deeply. My woods inspire
me with these reflections. My people have such ridiculous care of me, that
they guard me in the evening, completely armed, while the only enemy they
1676 find is a squirrel." These twilight walks had a sorrowful conclusion.
.
Ætat
In January she was suddenly laid prostrate by rheumatism: it was the
. first illness she ever had—the first intimation she had received, she
50. says, that she was not immortal. Her son was with her: they were
better friends than ever. "There is no air of maternity," she writes, "in our
intercourse: he is excellent company, and he finds me the same." On this
disaster, his tenderness and attentions were warm and sedulous. "Your
brother," she writes, "has been an inexpressible consolation to me." She at
first made light of her attack, in her letters, though she was obliged to
acknowledge that she could not move her right side, and was forced to write
the few lines she was able to trace with her left hand; and soon she lost even
the power of using this. In the then state of medicine, her cure, of course,
was long and painful.
This illness deranged many of madame de Sévigné's plans. On her return to
Paris, she was ordered to take medicinal baths, to complete her cure. She
went to Vichi, where her health mended, and then returned to Paris, where
she expected a speedy visit from her daughter. Her letters during this period
are very diverting. She throws an interest over every detail. The one that
describes her visit at Versailles, on her return, gives us a lively and
picturesque account of the etiquette and amusements of the court.[73]

The visit that madame de Grignan paid her mother, soon after, was an
unlucky one. She fell into a bad state of health. The anxiety her mother
evinced augmented her illness. It was deemed necessary to separate mother
and daughter. Corbinelli writes, "It was a cascade of terror; the 1677
reverberation was fatal to all three; the circle was mortal." Madame .Ætat
de Grignan returned to Provence. This was a severe blow to madame .
de Sévigné. Her daughter wrote to her, "I was the disorder of your 51.
mind, your health, your house. I am good for nothing to you." To this, and
to the reproaches she heard that her solicitude had augmented madame de
Grignan's illness, madame de Sévigné replies, "To behold you, then, perish
before my eyes was a trifle unworthy of my attention? When you were in
good health, did I disquiet myself about the future? did I think of it? But I
saw you ill, and of an illness perilous to the young; and, instead of trying to
console me by a conduct that would have restored you to your usual health,
absence was suggested. I kill you! I am the cause of all your sufferings!
When I think of how I concealed my fears, and that the little that escaped
me produced such frightful effects, I conclude that I am not allowed to love
you; and, since such monstrous and impossible things are asked of me, my
only resource is in your recovery." For some years after this madame de
Grignan was in a delicate state of health. "Ah!" writes her mother, "how
happy I was when I had no fears for your health! Of what had I then to
complain, compared to my present inquietude?" However, though still
delicate, she revisited Paris in the following month of November—it being
considered advantageous for her family affairs,—and remained nearly two
years. Her mother had taken a large mansion, the Hôtel de Carnavalet, and
they resided under the same roof. There was a numerous family, and chief
among them was a brother of M. de Grignan. The chevalier de Grignan
enjoyed a great reputation for bravery and military conduct. He was a
martyr to rheumatic gout, which often stood in the way of his active
service; but he was always favoured by the king, and regarded by every
one, as a man of superior abilities, and of a resolute and fearless mind.
When six men of quality were selected to attend on the dauphin, under the
name of Menins, he was named one of them. Two of M. de Grignan's
daughters also accompanied them. They were the children of his former
marriage with Angélique d'Angennes, sister of the celebrated madame de
Montauzier. Cardinal de Retz died in the August of this year. "Pity 1679
me, my cousin," madame de Sévigné writes to the count de Bussy, .Ætat

"for having lost cardinal de Retz. You know how amiable he was, .
53.
and worthy the esteem of all who knew him! I was a friend of thirty
years' standing, and ever received the tenderest marks of his friendship,
which was equally honourable and delightful to me. Eight days'
uninterrupted fever carried him off. I am grieved to the bottom of my
heart."
At length, in the month of September, madame de Grignan returned to
Provence. Her mother writes. "Do not tell me that I have no cause to regret
you: I have, indeed, every cause. I know not what you have taken into your
head. For myself, I remember only your friendship, your care, your
kindness, your caresses. I have lost all these: I regret them; and nothing in
the world can efface the recollection, nor console me for my loss." M. de
Sévigné was at this time in Britany, and was elected deputy, by the nobles,
to attend on the governor. "The title of new comer," writes his mother,
"renders him important, and causes him to be mixed up in every thing. I
hope he will marry: he will never again be so considerable. He has spent ten
years at court and in the camp. The first year of peace he gives to his
country. He can never be looked on so favourably as this year."
Unfortunately, he deranged all these schemes by falling in love
inopportunely; and he lingered in Britany, grasping all the money he could,
felling trees, and squandering the proceeds without use or pleasure, while
his mother awaited his return anxiously, and bore the blame of his absence,
as it was supposed that he was detained by business of hers. The time when
he could settle was not come. He was of that disposition which is not
unfrequent among men. Gifted with vivacity, wit, and good humour,
agreeable and gay, it appeared, as madame de Sévigné said, that he was
exactly fitted for the situation at court, which, as lieutenant of the dauphin's
company of gendarmes, he naturally filled. But he was discontented: the
restraint annoyed him; pleasure palled on him; he was eager to sell out, to
bury himself in his province. One reason was that he was not regarded with
an eye of favour by the king. Madame de Sévigné herself felt this disfavour,
arising from her having been of the party of the fronde, a friend of Fouquet,
and, lastly, a jansenist.
1680 During this year madame de Sévigné again, as she said, for the last
.
Ætat
time, to wind up all accounts, visited Britany. Her letters become
more agreeable than ever; her affection for her daughter even

.
54.
increasing: her advice about her grandchildren[74]; her annoyance
with regard to her son; is the interior portion of the story to which we
are admitted. The news of the court is mentioned, and the progress of
madame de Maintenon's favour, so puzzling to the courtiers; and, lastly, the
picture of the provincial court of the duke and duchess de Chaulnes, who
had the government of Britany. She describes their guards, their suite of
provincial nobles, with their wives and daughters; and a little discontent
creeps out, as it sometimes does, with regard to the court, that she had never
risen above a private station. "I have seen you in Provence," she writes to
her daughter, "surrounded by as many ladies, and M. de Grignan followed
by as many men, of quality, and receive, at Lambesc, with as much dignity,
as M. de Chaulnes can here. I reflected that you held your court there; I
come to pay mine here: thus has Providence ordered." She enjoyed,
however, the dinners, suppers, and festivals of the duke, who made much of
her; and her anecdotes are full of vivacity. Her eyes never rest: they see all:
sometimes a grace, sometimes a folly; now a bon mot, now a stupidity,
salutes her eyes or ears: it is all transmitted to her daughter; and we, at this
distance of time and place, enjoy the accounts, which, being true to human
nature, often seem as fresh and à propos as if they had occurred yesterday.
And then she quits all, and writes, "I am at length in the quiet of my woods,
and in that state of abstinence and silence for which I longed." And she
plunges into the depths of jansenism, and discusses the knotty subject of the
grace of God.[75]
On her return to the capital, she was made perfectly happy by the arrival of
her daughter, in better health than she had been for a long time, and who
remained in Paris for several years. Her son, also, whose youthful follies
had cost her many a pang, made an advantageous marriage. She 1684
writes to the count de Bussy, "After much trouble, I at last marry my .Ætat
poor boy. One must never despair of good luck. I feared that my son .
could no longer hope for a good match, after so many storms and 58.
wrecks, without employment or opening for fortune; and, while I was
engaged in these sorrowful thoughts, Providence brought about a marriage,
so advantageous that I could not have desired a better when my son's hopes
were highest. It is thus that we walk blindly, taking for bad that which is
good, and for good that which is bad, and always in utter ignorance." M. de
Sévigné married Jeanne-Marguerite de Brehaut de Mauron, an amiable and

virtuous woman, whose gentleness, and common sense, and turn for piety,
joined to a caressing and playful disposition, suited admirably both mother
and son. In the autumn of this year she visited the new married pair at the
Rochers. It was a sad blow to her to quit Paris, where her daughter was
residing. Motives of economy, or, rather, the juster motive of paying her
debts, enforced this exile, which was hard to bear. We read her letters for
the variety of amusement and instruction we find in them; and, as we read,
we are struck by the change of tone that creeps over them. From the period
of this long visit of eight years, which madame de Grignan paid to Paris, we
find the most perfect and unreserved friendship subsisting between mother
and daughter. Their ages agree better: the one, now forty, understands the
other, who is sixty, better than the young woman of twenty did her of forty.
Other interests, also, had risen for madame de Grignan in her children. Her
anxiety for her son's advancement was fully shared by madame de Sévigné.
A more sober, perhaps a less amusing, but certainly a far more interesting
(if we may make this distinction), tone pervades the later letters. Her
daughter, before, was the affection that weaned her from the world; now it
mingled with higher and better thoughts. The Rochers were more peaceful
than ever. Her son had not good health: his wife was cheerful only at
intervals: she was delicate; she never went out: by nine in the evening her
strength was exhausted, and she retired, leaving madame de Sévigné to her
letters. She was gentle and kind withal; attentive, without putting herself
forward; so that her mother-in-law never felt that there was another mistress
in the house, though all her comforts were attended to sedulously.
We pause too long over these minutia. We turn over madame de Sévigné's
pages: an expression, a detail strikes us; we are impelled to put it down; but
the memoir grows too long, and we must curtail. She returned to Paris in
August, 1685, and enjoyed for three years more the society of her daughter.
During this period she lost her uncle, the abbé de Coulanges. "You 1687
know that I was under infinite obligations to him," she, writes to .Ætat
count de Bussy: "I owed him the agreeableness and repose of my .
life; and you owed to him the gladness that I brought to your society: 61.
without him we had never laughed together. You owe to him my gaiety, my
good humour, my vivacity; the gift I had of understanding you; the ability
of comprehending what you had said, and of guessing what you were going
to say. In a word, the good abbé, by drawing me from the gulf in which M.
de Sévigné had left me, rendered me what I was, what you knew me, and