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Title: Classic French Course in English

Author: William Cleaver Wilkinson

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLASSIC
FRENCH COURSE IN ENGLISH ***

THE AFTER-SCHOOL SERIES.

CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE
IN ENGLISH.
BY

WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON.

NEW YORK:
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS,
C. L. S. C. DEPARTMENT,
805 Broadway.
1886.
Copyright, 1886,
By PHILLIPS & HUNT.
Other Volumes in the After-School Series
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

* Preparatory Greek Course in English $1.00
** Preparatory Latin Course in English 1.00
*** College Greek Course in English 1.00
****College Latin Course in English 1.00

The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of
six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not involve

an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every principle or
doctrine contained in the book recommended.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY RAND, AVERY, & COMPANY.
BOSTON.

CONTENTS.
CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE IN ENGLISH.
INDEX.

PREFACE.
The preparation of the present volume proposed to the author a task more
difficult far than that undertaken in any one of the four preceding volumes
of the group, The After-School Series, to which it belongs. Those volumes
dealt with literatures limited and finished: this volume deals with a
literature indefinitely vast in extent, and still in vital process of growth. The
selection of material to be used was, in the case of the earlier volumes,
virtually made for the author beforehand, in a manner greatly to ease his
sense of responsibility for the exercise of individual judgment and taste.
Long prescription, joined to the winnowing effect of wear and waste
through time and chance, had left little doubt what works of what writers,
Greek and Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the general reader.
Besides this, the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning could
then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed,
whatever might be the path through which it should lead. There is here no
similar avoidance of responsibility possible; for the schools have not
established a custom, and French literature is a living body, from which no
important members have ever yet been rent by the ravages of time.
The greater difficulty seen thus to inhere already in the nature itself of the
task proposed for accomplishment, was gravely increased by the much
more severe compression deemed to be in the present instance desirable.
The room placed at the author's disposal for a display of French literature
was less than half the room allowed him for the display of either the Greek
or the Latin.
The plan, therefore, of this volume, imposed the necessity of establishing
from the outset certain limits, to be very strictly observed. First, it was
resolved to restrict the attention bestowed upon the national history, the
national geography, and the national language, of the French, to such brief
occasional notices as, in the course of the volume, it might seem necessary,
for illustration of the particular author, from time to time to make. The only

introductory general matter here to be found will accordingly consist of a
rapid and summary review of that literature, as a whole, which is the subject
of the book. It was next determined to limit the authors selected for
representation to those of the finished centuries. A third decision was to
make the number of authors small rather than large, choice rather than
inclusive. The principle at this point adopted, was to choose those authors
only whose merit, or whose fame, or whose influence, might be supposed
unquestionably such that their names and their works would certainly be
found surviving, though the language in which they wrote should, like its
parent Latin, have perished from the tongues of men. The proportion of
space severally allotted to the different authors was to be measured partly
according to their relative importance, and partly according to their
estimated relative capacity of interesting in translation the average
intelligent reader of to-day.
In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author has here been to furnish
enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the means of
acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some proportioned,
trustworthy, and effective knowledge and appreciation, in its chief classics,
of the great literature which has been written in French. This object has
been sought, not through narrative and description, making books and
authors the subject, but through the literature itself, in specimen extracts
illuminated by the necessary explanation and criticism.
It is proposed to follow the present volume with a volume similar in
general character, devoted to German literature.

CONTENTS.
I.
French Literature Page 1

II.
Froissart 18

III.
Rabelais 28

IV.
Montaigne 44

V.
La Rochefoucauld (La Bruyère; Vauvenargues) 66

VI.
La Fontaine 81

VII.
Molière 92

VIII.
Pascal 115

IX.
Madame de Sévigné 134

X.

Corneille 151

XI.
Racine 166

XII.
Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon 182

XIII.
Fénelon 205

XIV.
Montesquieu 225

XV.
Voltaire 238

XVI.
Rousseau 255

XVII.
The Encyclopædists 282

XVIII.
Epilogue 288
293
Index

CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE IN
ENGLISH.

I.
FRENCH LITERATURE.
Of French literature, taken as a whole, it may boldly be said that it is, not
the wisest, not the weightiest, not certainly the purest and loftiest, but by
odds the most brilliant and the most interesting, literature in the world.
Strong at many points, at some points triumphantly strong, it is
conspicuously weak at only one point,—the important point of poetry. In
eloquence, in philosophy, even in theology; in history, in fiction, in
criticism, in epistolary writing, in what may be called the pamphlet; in
another species of composition, characteristically, peculiarly, almost
uniquely, French,—the Thought and the Maxim; by eminence in comedy,
and in all those related modes of written expression for which there is
scarcely any name but a French name,—the jeu d'esprit, the bon mot,
persiflage, the phrase; in social and political speculation; last, but not least,
in scientific exposition elegant enough in form and in style to rise to the
rank of literature proper,—the French language has abundant achievement
to show, that puts it, upon the whole, hardly second in wealth of letters to
any other language whatever, either ancient or modern.
What constitutes the charm—partly a perilous charm—of French literature
is, before all else, its incomparable clearness, its precision, its neatness, its
point; then, added to this, its lightness of touch, its sureness of aim; its
vivacity, sparkle, life; its inexhaustible gayety; its impulsion toward wit,—
impulsion so strong as often to land it in mockery; the sense of release that
it breathes and inspires; its freedom from prick to the conscience; its
exquisite study and choice of effect; its deference paid to decorum,—
decorum, we mean, in taste, as distinguished from morals; its infinite
patience and labor of art, achieving the perfection of grace and of ease,—in
one word, its style.

We speak, of course, broadly and in the gross. There are plenty of French
authors to whom some of the traits just named could by no means be
attributed, and there is certainly not a single French author to whom one
could truthfully attribute them all. Voltaire insisted that what was not clear
was not French,—so much, to the conception of this typical Frenchman,
was clearness the genius of the national speech. Still, Montaigne, for
example, was sometimes obscure; and even the tragedist Corneille wrote
here and there what his commentator, Voltaire, declared to be hardly
intelligible. So, too, Rabelais, coarsest of humorists, offending decorum in
various ways, offended it most of all exactly in that article of taste, as
distinguished from morals, which, with first-rate French authors in general,
is so capital a point of regard. On the other hand, Pascal,—not to mention
the moralists by profession, such as Nicole, and the preachers Bourdaloue
and Massillon,—Pascal, quivering himself, like a soul unclad, with sense of
responsibility to God, constantly probes you, reading him, to the inmost
quick of your conscience. Rousseau, notably in the "Confessions," and in
the Reveries supplementary to the "Confessions;" Chateaubriand, echoing
Rousseau; and that wayward woman of genius, George Sand, disciple she to
both,—were so far from being always light-heartedly gay, that not seldom
they spread over their page a sombre atmosphere almost of gloom,—gloom
flushed pensively, as with a clouded "setting sun's pathetic light." In short,
when you speak of particular authors, and naturally still more when you
speak of particular works, there are many discriminations to be made. Such
exceptions, however, being duly allowed, the literary product of the French
mind, considered in the aggregate, will not be misconceived if regarded as
possessing the general characteristics in style that we have now sought
briefly to indicate.
French literature, we have hinted, is comparatively poor in poetry. This is
due in part, no doubt, to the genius of the people; but it is also due in part to
the structure of the language. The language, which is derived chiefly from
Latin, is thence in such a way derived as to have lost the regularity and
stateliness of its ancient original, without having compensated itself with
any richness and sweetness of sound peculiarly its own; like, for instance,
that canorous vowel quality of its sister derivative, the Italian. The French
language, in short, is far from being an ideal language for the poet.

In spite, however, of this fact, disputed by nobody, it is true of French
literature, as it is true of almost any national literature, that it took its rise in
verse instead of in prose. Anciently, there were two languages subsisting
together in France, which came to be distinguished from each other in name
by the word of affirmation—oc or oïl, yes—severally peculiar to them, and
thus to be known respectively as langue d'oc, and langue d'oïl. The future
belonged to the latter of the two forms of speech,—the one spoken in the
northern part of the country. This, the langue d'oïl, became at length the
French language. But the langue d'oc, a soft and musical tongue, survived
long enough to become the vehicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of
love and gallantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the
troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. Provençal is an alternative name of the language.
Side by side with the southern troubadours, or a little later than they, the
trouvères of the north sang, with more manly ambition, of national themes,
and, like Virgil, of arms and of heroes. Some productions of the trouvères
may fairly be allowed an elevation of aim and of treatment entitling them to
be called epic in character. Chansons de geste (songs of exploit), or romans,
is the native name by which those primitive French poems are known. They
exist in three principal cycles, or groups, of productions,—one cycle
composed of those pertaining to Charlemagne; one, of those pertaining to
British Arthur; and a third, of those pertaining to ancient Greece and Rome,
notably to Alexander the Great. The cycle revolving around the majestic
legend of Charlemagne for its centre was Teutonic, rather than Celtic, in
spirit as well as in theme. It tended to the religious in tone. The Arthurian
cycle was properly Celtic. It dealt more with adventures of love. The
Alexandrian cycle, so named from one principal theme celebrated,—
namely, the deeds of Alexander the Great,—mixed fantastically the
traditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing ideas of
chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed
in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant
in French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three
groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the allegory in
metre that followed. From this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer
drew to supply his muse with material. The fabliaux, so called,—fables, that

is, or stories,—were still another form of early French literature in verse. It
is only now, within the current decade of years, that a really ample
collection of fabliaux—hitherto, with the exception of a few printed
volumes of specimens, extant exclusively in manuscript—has been put into
course of publication. Rutebeuf, a trouvère of the reign of St. Louis (Louis
IX., thirteenth century), is perhaps as conspicuous a personal name as any
that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically anonymous early French
authorship. A frankly sordid and mercenary singer, Rutebeuf, always
tending to mockery, was not seldom licentious,—in both these respects
anticipating, as probably also to some extent by example conforming, the
subsequent literary spirit of his nation. The fabliaux generally mingled with
their narrative interest that spice of raillery and satire constantly so dear to
the French literary appetite. Thibaud was, in a double sense, a royal singer
of songs; for he reigned over Navarre, as well as chanted sweetly in verse
his love and longing, so the disputed legend asserts, for Queen Blanche of
Castile. Thibaud bears the historic title of The Song-maker. He has been
styled the Béranger of the thirteenth century. To Thibaud is said to be due
the introduction of the feminine rhyme into French poetry,—a metrical
variation of capital importance. The songs of Abélard, in the century
preceding Thibaud, won a wide popularity.
Prose, meantime, had been making noteworthy approaches to form.
Villehardouin must be named as first in time among French writers of
history. His work is entitled, "Conquest of Constantinople." It gives an
account of the Fourth Crusade. Joinville, a generation later, continues the
succession of chronicles with his admiring story of the life of Saint Louis,
whose personal friend he was. But Froissart of the fourteenth century, and
Comines of the fifteenth, are greater names. Froissart, by his simplicity and
his narrative art, was the Herodotus, as Philip de Comines, for his political
sagacity, has been styled the Tacitus, of French historical literature. Up to
the time of Froissart, the literature which we have been treating as French
was different enough in form from the French of to-day to require what
might be called translation in order to become generally intelligible to the
living generation of Frenchmen. The text of Froissart is pretty archaic, but it
definitely bears the aspect of French.

With the name of Comines, who wrote of Louis XI. (compare Walter
Scott's "Quentin Durward"). we reach the fifteenth century, and are close
upon the great revival of learning which accompanied the religious
reformation under Luther and his peers. Now come Rabelais, boldly
declared by Coleridge one of the great creative minds of literature; and
Montaigne, with those Essays of his, still living, and, indeed, certain always
to live. John Calvin, meantime, writes his "Institutes of the Christian
Religion" in French as well as in Latin, showing once and for all, that in the
right hands his vernacular tongue was as capable of gravity as many a
writer before him had superfluously shown that it was capable of levity.
Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is a French writer of power, without
whom the far greater Montaigne could hardly have been. The influence of
Amyot on French literary history is wider in reach and longer in duration
than we thus indicate; but Montaigne's indebtedness to him is alone enough
to prove that a mere translator had in this man made a very important
contribution to the forming prose literature of France.
"The Pleiades," so called, were a group of seven writers, who, about the
middle of the sixteenth century, banded themselves together in France, with
the express aim of supplying influential example to improve the French
language for literary purposes. Their peculiar appellation, "The Pleiades,"
was copied from that of a somewhat similar group of Greek writers, that
existed in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Of course, the implied allusion
in it is to the constellation of the Pleiades. The individual name by which
the Pleiades of the sixteenth century may best be remembered is that of
Ronsard the poet, associated with the romantic and pathetic memory of
Mary, Queen of Scots. Never, perhaps, in the history of letters was the fame
of a poet in the poet's own lifetime more universal and more splendid than
was the fame of Ronsard. A high court of literary judicature formally
decreed to Ronsard the title of The French Poet by eminence. This occurred
in the youth of the poet. The wine of success so brilliant turned the young
fellow's head. He soon began to play lord paramount of Parnassus, with
every air of one born to the purple. The kings of the earth vied with each
other to do him honor. Ronsard affected scholarship, and the foremost
scholars of his time were proud to place him with Homer and with Virgil on
the roll of the poets. Ronsard's peculiarity in style was the free use of words

and constructions not properly French. Boileau indicated whence he
enriched his vocabulary and his syntax, by satirically saying that Ronsard
spoke Greek and Latin in French. At his death, Ronsard was almost literally
buried under praises. Sainte-Beuve strikingly says that he seemed to go
forward into posterity as into a temple.
Sharp posthumous reprisals awaited the extravagant fame of Ronsard.
Malherbe, coming in the next generation, legislator of Parnassus, laughed
the literary pretensions of Ronsard to scorn. This stern critic of form, such
is the story, marked up his copy of Ronsard with notes of censure so many,
that a friend of his, seeing the annotated volume, observed, "What here is
not marked, will be understood to have been approved by you." Whereupon
Malherbe, taking his pen, with one indiscriminate stroke drew it abruptly
through the whole volume. "There I Ronsardized," the contemptuous critic
would exclaim, when in reading his own verses to an acquaintance,—for
Malherbe was poet himself,—he happened to encounter a word that struck
him as harsh or improper. Malherbe, in short, sought to chasten and check
the luxuriant overgrowth to which the example and method of the Pleiades
were tending to push the language of poetry in French. The resultant effect
of the two contrary tendencies—that of literary wantonness on the one
hand, and that of literary prudery on the other—was at the same time to
enrich and to purify French poetical diction. Balzac (the elder), close to
Malherbe in time, performed a service for French prose similar to that
which the latter performed for French verse. These two critical and literary
powers brought in the reign of what is called classicism in France. French
classicism had its long culmination under Louis XIV.
But it was under Louis XIII., or rather under that monarch's great minister,
Cardinal Richelieu, that the rich and splendid Augustan age of French
literature was truly prepared. Two organized forces, one of them private and
social, the other official and public, worked together, though sometimes
perhaps not in harmony, to produce the magnificent literary result that
illustrated the time of Louis XIV. Of these two organized forces, the Hôtel
de Rambouillet was one, and the French Academy was the other. The Hôtel
de Rambouillet has become the adopted name of a literary society, presided
over by the fine inspiring genius of the beautiful and accomplished Italian

wife of the Marquis de Rambouillet, a lady who generously conceived the
idea of rallying the feminine wit and virtue of the kingdom to exert a potent
influence for regenerating the manners and morals, and indeed the
literature, of France. At the high court of blended rank and fashion and
beauty and polish and virtue and wit, thus established in the exquisitely
builded and decorated saloons of the Rambouillet mansion, the selectest
literary genius and fame of France were proud and glad to assemble for the
discussion and criticism of literature. Here came Balzac and Voiture; here
Corneille read aloud his masterpieces before they were represented on the
stage; here Descartes philosophized; here the large and splendid genius of
Bossuet first unfolded itself to the world; here Madame de Sévigné brought
her bright, incisive wit, trebly commended by stainless reputation,
unwithering beauty, and charming address, in the woman who wielded it.
The noblest blood of France added the decoration and inspiration of their
presence. It is not easy to overrate the diffusive beneficent influence that
hence went forth to change the fashion of literature, and to change the
fashion of society, for the better. The Hôtel de Rambouillet proper lasted
two generations only; but it had a virtual succession, which, though
sometimes interrupted, was scarcely extinct until the brilliant and beautiful
Madame Récamier ceased, about the middle of the present century, to hold
her famous salons in Paris. The continuous fame and influence of the
French Academy, founded by Richelieu, everybody knows. No other
European language has been elaborately and sedulously formed and
cultivated like the French.
But great authors are better improvers of a language than any societies,
however influential. Corneille, Descartes, Pascal, did more for French style
than either the Hôtel de Rambouillet or the Academy,—more than both
these two great literary societies together. In verse, Racine, following
Corneille, advanced in some important respects upon the example and lead
of that great original master; but in prose, when Pascal published his
"Provincial Letters," French style reached at once a point of perfection
beyond which it never since has gone. Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fénelon,
Massillon, Molière, La Fontaine, Boileau, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère,
—what a constellation of names are these, to glorify the age of Louis XIV.!
And Louis XIV. himself, royal embodiment of a literary good sense carried

to the pitch of something very like real genius in judgment and taste,—what
a sun was he (with that talent of his for kingship, probably never surpassed),
to balance and to sway, from his unshaken station, the august intellectual
system of which he alone constituted the despotic centre to attract and
repel! Seventy-two years long was this sole individual reign. Louis XIV.
still sat on the throne of France when the seventeenth century became the
eighteenth.
The eighteenth century was an age of universal reaction in France.
Religion, or rather ecclesiasticism,—for, in the France of those times,
religion was the Church, and the Church was the Roman Catholic hierarchy,
—had been the dominant fashion under Louis XIV. Infidelity was a broad
literary mark, written all over the face of the eighteenth century. It was the
hour and power of the Encyclopædists and the Philosophers,—of Voltaire,
of Diderot, of D'Alembert, of Rousseau. Montesquieu, though
contemporary, belongs apart from these writers. More really original, more
truly philosophical, he was far less revolutionary, far less destructive, than
they. Still, his influence was, on the whole, exerted in the direction, if not of
infidelity, at least of religious indifferentism. The French Revolution was
laid in train by the great popular writers whom we have now named, and by
their fellows. It needed only the spark, which the proper occasion would be
sure soon to strike out, and the awful, earth-shaking explosion would
follow. After the Revolution, during the First Empire, so called,—the
usurpation, that is, of Napoleon Bonaparte,—literature was well-nigh
extinguished in France. The names, however, then surpassingly brilliant, of
Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, belong to this period.
Three centuries have now elapsed since the date of "The Pleiades."
Throughout this long period, French literature has been chiefly under the
sway of that spirit of classicism in style which the reaction against
Ronsardism, led first by Malherbe and afterwards by Boileau, had
established as the national standard in literary taste and aspiration. But
Rousseau's genius acted as a powerful solvent of the classic tradition.
Chateaubriand's influence was felt on the same side, continuing Rousseau's.
George Sand, too, and Lamartine, were forces that strengthened this
component. Finally, the great personality of Victor Hugo proved potent

enough definitively to break the spell that had been so long and so heavily
laid on the literary development of France. The bloodless warfare was fierce
between the revolutionary Romanticists and the conservative Classicists in
literary style, but the victory seemed at last to remain with the advocates of
the new romantic revival. It looked, on the face of the matter, like a signal
triumph of originality over prescription, of genius over criticism, of power
over rule. We still live in the midst of the dying echoes of this resonant
strife. Perhaps it is too early, as yet, to determine on which side, by the
merit of the cause, the advantage truly belongs. But, by the merit of the
respective champions, the result was, for a time at least, triumphantly
decided in favor of the Romanticists, against the Classicists. The weighty
authority, however, of Sainte-Beuve, at first thrown into the scale that at
length would sink, was thence withdrawn, and at last, if not resolutely cast
upon the opposite side of the balance, was left wavering in a kind of
equipoise between the one and the other. But our preliminary sketch has
already passed the limit within which our choice of authors for
representation is necessarily confined.
With first a few remarks, naturally suggested, that may be useful, on the
general subject thus rather touched merely than handled, the present writer
gives way to let now the representative authors themselves, selected for the
purpose, supply to the reader a just and lively idea of French literature.
The first thing, perhaps, to strike the thoughtful mind in a comprehensive
view of the subject, is not so much the length—though this is remarkable—
as the long continuity of French literary history. From its beginning down to
the actual moment, French literature has suffered no serious break in the
course of its development. There have been periods of greater, and periods
of less, prosperity and fruit; but wastes of marked suspension and
barrenness, there have been none.
The second thing noticeable is, that French literature has, to a singular
degree, lived an independent life of its own. It has found copious springs of
health and growth within its own bosom.
But then, a third thing to be also observed, is that, on the other hand, the
touch of foreign influence, felt and acknowledged by this most proudly and

self-sufficiently national of literatures, has proved to it, at various epochs, a
sovereign force of revival and elastic expansion. Thus, the great renascence
in the sixteenth century of ancient Greek and Latin letters was new life to
French literature. So, again, Spanish literature, brought into contact with
French through Corneille and Molière with others, gave to the national
mind of France a new literary launch. But the most recent and perhaps the
most remarkable example of foreign influence quickening French literature
to make it freshly fruitful, is supplied in the great romanticizing movement
under the lead of Victor Hugo. English literature—especially Shakspeare—
was largely the pregnant cause of this attempted emancipation of the French
literary mind from the burden of classicism.
A fourth very salient trait in French literary history consists in the self-
conscious, elaborate, persistent efforts put forth from time to time by
individuals, and by organizations, both public and private, in France, to
improve the language, and to elevate the literature, of the nation. We know
of nothing altogether comparable to this anywhere else in the literature of
the world.
A fifth striking thing about French literature is, that it has to a degree, as
we believe beyond parallel, exercised a real and vital influence on the
character and the fortune of the nation. The social, the political, the moral,
the religious, history of France is from age to age a faithful reflex of the
changing phases of its literature. Of course, a reciprocal influence has been
constantly reflected back and forth from the nation upon its literature, as
well as from its literature upon the nation. But where else in the world has it
ever been so extraordinarily, we may say so appallingly, true as in France,
that the nation was such because such was its literature?
French literature, it will at once be seen, is a study possessing, beyond the
literary, a social, a political, and even a religious, interest.
Readers desiring to push their conversance with the literary history of
France farther than the present volume will enable them to do, will consult
with profit either the Primer, or the Short History, of French Literature, by
Mr. George Saintsbury. Mr. Saintsbury is a well-informed writer, who, if the
truth must be told, diffuses himself too widely to do his best possible work.

He has, however, made French literature a specialty, and he is in general a
trustworthy authority on the subject.
Another writer on the subject is Mr. H. Van Laun. Him, although a
predecessor of his own in the field, Mr. Saintsbury severely ignores, by
claiming that he is himself the first to write in English a history of French
literature based on original and independent reading of the authors. We are
bound to say that Mr. Van Laun's work is of very poor quality. It offers,
indeed, to the reader one advantage not afforded by either of Mr.
Saintsbury's works, the advantage, namely, of illustrative extracts from the
authors treated,—extracts, however, not unfrequently marred by wretched
translation. The cyclopædias are, some of them, both in articles on
particular authors and in their sketches of French literary history as a whole,
good sources of general information on the subject. Readers who command
the means of comparing several different cyclopædias, or several successive
editions of some one cyclopædia, as, for example, the "Encyclopædia
Britannica," will find enlightening and stimulating the not always
harmonious views presented on the same topics. Hallam's "History of
Literature in Europe" is an additional authority by no means to be
overlooked.

II.
FROISSART.
1337-1410.
French literature, for the purposes of the present volume, may be said to
commence with Froissart. Froissart is a kind of mediæval Herodotus. His
time is, indeed, almost this side the middle ages; but he belongs by
character and by sympathy rather to the mediæval than to the modern
world. He is delightfully like Herodotus in the style and the spirit of his
narrative. Like Herodotus, he became a traveller in order to become an
historian. Like Herodotus, he was cosmopolite enough not to be narrowly
patriotic. Frenchman though he was, he took as much pleasure in recounting
English victories as he did in recounting French. His countrymen have even
accused him of unpatriotic partiality for the English. His Chronicles have
been, perhaps, more popular in their English form than in their original
French. Two prominent English translations have been made, of which the
later, that by Thomas Johnes, is now most read. Sir Walter Scott thought the
earlier excelled in charm of style.
Jehan or Jean Froissart was a native of Valenciennes. His father meant to
make a priest of him, but the boy had other tastes of his own. Before he was
well out of his teens, he began writing history. This was under the patronage
of a great noble. Froissart was all his life a natural courtier. He throve on the
patronage of the great. It was probably not a fawning spirit in him that made
him this kind of man; it was rather an innate love of splendor and high
exploit. He admired chivalry, then in its last days, and he painted it with the
passion of an idealizer. His father had been an heraldic painter, so it was
perhaps an hereditary strain in the son that naturally attached him to rank
and royalty. The people—that is, the promiscuous mass of mankind—

hardly exist to Froissart. His pages, spacious as they are, have scarcely
room for more than kings and nobles, and knights and squires. He is a
picturesque and romantic historian, in whose chronicles the glories of the
world of chivalry—a world, as we have said, already dying, and so soon to
disappear—are fixed forever on an ample canvas, in moving form and
shifting color, to delight the backward-looking imagination of mankind.
Froissart, besides being chronicler, was something of a poet. It would still
be possible to confront one who should call this in question, with thirty
thousand surviving verses from the chronicler's pen. Quantity, indeed,
rather than quality, is the strong point of Froissart as poet.
He had no sooner finished the first part of his Chronicles, a compilation
from the work of an earlier hand, than he posted to England for the purpose
of formally presenting his work to the Queen, a princess of Hainault. She
rewarded him handsomely. Woman enough, too, she was, woman under the
queen, duly to despatch him back again to his native land, where the young
fellow's heart, she saw, was lost to a noble lady, whom, from his inferior
station, he could woo only as a moth might woo the moon. He subsequently
returned to Great Britain, and rode about on horseback gathering materials
of history. He visited Italy under excellent auspices, and, together with
Chaucer and with Petrarch, witnessed a magnificent marriage ceremonial in
Milan. Froissart continued to travel far and wide, always a favorite with
princes, but always intent on achieving his projected work. He finally died
at Chimay, where he had spent his closing years in rounding out to their
completeness his "Chronicles of England, France, and the Adjoining
Countries."
Froissart is the most leisurely of historians, or, rather, he is a writer who
presupposes the largest allowance of leisure at the command of his readers.
He does not seek proportion and perspective. He simply tells us all he had
been able to find out respecting each transaction in its turn as it successively
comes up in the progress of his narrative. If he goes wrong to-day, he will
perhaps correct himself to-morrow, or day after to-morrow,—this not by
changing the first record where it stands, to make it right, but by inserting a
note of his mistake at the point, whatever it may be, which he shall chance
to have reached in the work of composition when the new and better light

breaks in on his eyes. The student is thus never quite certain but that what
he is at one moment reading in his author, may be an error of which at some
subsequent moment he will be faithfully advised. A little discomposing,
this, but such is Froissart; and it is the philosophical way to take your author
as he is, and make the best of him.
Of such an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it
would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should
seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to Froissart's
account of the celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This was fought in
1356, between Edward the Black Prince on the English side, and King John
on the side of the French.
King John of the French was, of course, a great prize to be secured by the
victorious English. There was eager individual rivalry as to what particular
warrior should be adjudged his true captor. Froissart thus describes the
strife and the issue:—
There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness to
take the king; and those who were nearest to him, and knew
him, cried out, "Surrender yourself, surrender yourself, or you
are a dead man!" In that part of the field was a young knight
from St. Omer, who was engaged by a salary in the service of
the King of England; his name was Denys de Morbeque; who
for five years had attached himself to the English, on account of
having been banished in his younger days from France, for a
murder committed in an affray at St. Omer. It fortunately
happened for this knight, that he was at the time near to the King
of France, when he was so much pulled about. He, by dint of
force, for he was very strong and robust, pushed through the
crowd, and said to the king, in good French, "Sire, sire,
surrender yourself!" The king, who found himself very
disagreeably situated, turning to him, asked, "To whom shall I
surrender myself? to whom? Where is my cousin, the Prince of
Wales? If I could see him, I would speak to him."—"Sire,"
replied Sir Denys, "he is not here; but surrender yourself to me,
and I will lead you to him."—"Who are you?" said the king.

"Sire, I am Denys de Morbeque, a knight from Artois; but I
serve the King of England because I cannot belong to France,
having forfeited all I possessed there." The king then gave him
his right-hand glove, and said, "I surrender myself to you."
There was much crowding and pushing about; for every one was
eager to cry out, "I have taken him!" Neither the king nor his
youngest son Philip were able to get forward, and free
themselves from the throng....
The Prince [of Wales] asked them [his marshals] if they knew
any thing of the King of France: they replied, "No, sir, not for a
certainty; but we believe he must be either killed or made
prisoner, since he has never quitted his battalion." The prince
then, addressing the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, said, "I
beg of you to mount your horses, and ride over the field, so that
on your return you may bring me some certain intelligence of
him." The two barons, immediately mounting their horses, left
the prince, and made for a small hillock, that they might look
about them. From their stand they perceived a crowd of men-at-
arms on foot, who were advancing very slowly. The King of
France was in the midst of them, and in great danger; for the
English and Gascons had taken him from Sir Denys de
Morbeque, and were disputing who should have him, the
stoutest bawling out, "It is I that have got him."—"No, no,"
replied the others: "we have him." The king, to escape from this
peril, said, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, I pray you conduct me and
my son in a courteous manner to my cousin the prince; and do
not make such a riot about my capture, for I am so great a lord
that I can make all sufficiently rich." These words, and others
which fell from the king, appeased them a little; but the disputes
were always beginning again, and they did not move a step
without rioting. When the two barons saw this troop of people,
they descended from the hillock, and, sticking spurs into their
horses, made up to them. On their arrival, they asked what was
the matter. They were answered, that it was the King of France,
who had been made prisoner, and that upward of ten knights and

squires challenged him at the same time, as belonging to each of
them. The two barons then pushed through the crowd by main
force, and ordered all to draw aside. They commanded, in the
name of the prince, and under pain of instant death, that every
one should keep his distance, and not approach unless ordered
or desired so to do. They all retreated behind the king; and the
two barons, dismounting, advanced to the king with profound
reverences, and conducted him in a peaceable manner to the
Prince of Wales.
We continue our citation from Froissart with the brief chapter in which the
admiring chronicler tells the gallant story of the Black Prince's behavior as
host toward his royal captive, King John of France (it was the evening after
the battle):—
When evening was come, the Prince of Wales gave a supper in
his pavilion to the King of France, and to the greater part of the
princes and barons who were prisoners. The prince seated the
King of France, and his son the Lord Philip, at an elevated and
well-covered table: with them were Sir James de Bourbon, the
Lord John d'Artois, the earls of Tancarville, of Estampes, of
Dammartin, of Graville, and the Lord of Partenay. The other
knights and squires were placed at different tables. The prince
himself served the king's table, as well as the others, with every
mark of humility, and would not sit down at it, in spite of all his
entreaties for him so to do, saying that "he was not worthy of
such an honor, nor did it appertain to him to seat himself at the
table of so great a king, or of so valiant a man as he had shown
himself by his actions that day." He added, also, with a noble air,
"Dear sir, do not make a poor meal, because the Almighty God
has not gratified your wishes in the event of this day; for be
assured that my lord and father will show you every honor and
friendship in his power, and will arrange your ransom so
reasonably, that you will henceforward always remain friends.
In my opinion, you have cause to be glad that the success of this
battle did not turn out as you desired; for you have this day

acquired such high renown for prowess, that you have surpassed
all the best knights on your side. I do not, dear sir, say this to
flatter you; for all those of our side who have seen and observed
the actions of each party, have unanimously allowed this to be
your due, and decree you the prize and garland for it." At the
end of this speech, there were murmurs of praise heard from
every one; and the French said the prince had spoken nobly and
truly, and that he would be one of the most gallant princes in
Christendom if God should grant him life to pursue his career of
glory.
A splendid and a gracious figure the Black Prince makes in the pages of
Froissart. It was great good fortune for the posthumous fame of chivalry,
that the institution should have come by an artist so gifted and so loyal as
this Frenchman, to deliver its features in portrait to after-times, before the
living original vanished forever from the view of history. How much the
fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart, and to Philip de Comines after
Froissart, those only can understand who have read both the old chronicles
and the modern romances.
It was one of the congenial labors of Sidney Lanier—pure flame of genius
that late burned itself out so swiftly among us!—to edit a reduction or
abridgment of Froissart's Chronicles dedicated especially to the use of the
young. "The Boy's Froissart," he called it. This book is enriched with a wise
and genial appreciation of Froissart's quality by his American editor.
Whoever reads Froissart needs to remember that the old chronicler is too
much enamoured of chivalry, and is too easily dazzled by splendor of rank,
to be a rigidly just censor of faults committed by knights and nobles and
kings. Froissart, in truth, seems to have been nearly destitute of the
sentiment of humanity. War to him was chiefly a game and a spectacle.
Our presentation of Froissart must close with a single passage additional,
a picturesque one, in which the chronicler describes the style of living
witnessed by him at the court—we may not unfitly so apply a royal word—
of the Count de Foix. The reader must understand, while he reads what we
here show, that Froissart himself, in close connection, relates at full, in the

language of an informant of his, how this magnificent Count de Foix had
previously killed, with a knife at his throat, his own and his only son. "I was
truly sorry," so, at the conclusion of the story, Froissart, with characteristic
direction of his sympathy, says, "for the count his father, whom I found a
magnificent, generous, and courteous lord, and also for the country that was
discontented for want of an heir." Here is the promised passage; it occurs in
the ninth chapter of the third volume:—
Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now speaking,
was at that time fifty-nine years old; and I must say, that
although I have seen very many knights, kings, princes, and
others, I have never seen any so handsome, either in the form of
his limbs and shape, or in countenance, which was fair and
ruddy, with gray and amorous eyes, that gave delight whenever
he chose to express affection. He was so perfectly formed, one
could not praise him too much. He loved earnestly the things he
ought to love, and hated those which it was becoming him so to
hate. He was a prudent knight, full of enterprise and wisdom. He
had never any men of abandoned character with him, reigned
prudently, and was constant in his devotions. There were regular
nocturnals from the Psalter, prayers from the rituals to the
Virgin, to the Holy Ghost, and from the burial service. He had
every day distributed as alms, at his gate, five florins in small
coin, to all comers. He was liberal and courteous in his gifts, and
well knew how to take when it was proper, and to give back
where he had confidence. He mightily loved dogs above all
other animals, and during the summer and winter amused
himself much with hunting....
When he quitted his chamber at midnight for supper, twelve
servants bore each a lighted torch before him, which were
placed near his table, and gave a brilliant light to the apartment.
The hall was full of knights and squires, and there were plenty
of tables laid out for any person who chose to sup. No one spoke
to him at his table, unless he first began a conversation. He
commonly ate heartily of poultry, but only the wings and thighs;

for in the daytime, he neither ate nor drank much. He had great
pleasure in hearing minstrels; as he himself was a proficient in
the science, and made his secretaries sing songs, ballads, and
roundelays. He remained at table about two hours, and was
pleased when fanciful dishes were served up to him, which
having seen, he immediately sent them to the tables of his
knights and squires.
In short, every thing considered, though I had before been in
several courts of kings, dukes, princes, counts, and noble ladies,
I was never at one that pleased me more, nor was I ever more
delighted with feats of arms, than at this of the Count de Foix.
There were knights and squires to be seen in every chamber,
hall, and court, going backwards and forwards, and conversing
on arms and amours. Every thing honorable was there to be
found. All intelligence from distant countries was there to be
learnt, for the gallantry of the count had brought visitors from all
parts of the world. It was there I was informed of the greater part
of those events which had happened in Spain, Portugal, Arragon,
Navarre, England, Scotland, and on the borders of Languedoc;
for I saw, during my residence, knights and squires arrive from
every nation. I therefore made inquiries from them, or from the
count himself, who cheerfully conversed with me.
The foregoing is one of the most celebrated passages of description in
Froissart. At the same time that it discloses the form and spirit of those
vanished days, which will never come again to the world, it discloses
likewise the character of the man, who must indeed have loved it all well, to
have been able so well to describe it.
We take now a somewhat long forward step, in going, as we do, at once
from Froissart to Rabelais. Comines, lying between, we must reluctantly
pass, with thus barely mentioning his name.

III.
RABELAIS.
1495-1553.
Rabelais is one of the most famous of writers. But he is at the same time
incomparably the coarsest.
The real quality of such a writer, it is evidently out of the question to
exhibit at all adequately here. But equally out of the question it is to omit
Rabelais altogether from an account of French literature.
Of the life of François Rabelais the man, these few facts will be sufficient
to know. In early youth he joined the monastic order of the Franciscans.
That order hated letters; but Rabelais loved them. He, in fact, conceived a
voracious ambition of knowledge. He became immensely learned. This fact,
with what it implies of long labor patiently achieved, is enough to show that
Rabelais was not without seriousness of character. But he was much more a
merry-andrew than a pattern monk. He made interest enough with
influential friends to get himself transferred from the Franciscans to the
Benedictines, an order more favorable to studious pursuits. But neither
among the Benedictines was this roistering spirit at ease. He left them
irregularly, but managed to escape punishment for his irregularity. At last,
after various vicissitudes of occupation, he settled down as curate of
Meudon, where (the place, however, is doubtful, as also the date) in 1553 he
died. He was past fifty years of age before he finished the work which has
made him famous.
This work is "The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel," a grotesque and
nondescript production, founded, probably, on some prior romance or

traditionary tale of giants. The narrative of Rabelais is a tissue of adventures
shocking every idea of verisimilitude, and serving only as a vehicle for the
strange humor of the writer. The work is replete with evidences of
Rabelais's learning. It would be useless to attempt giving any abstract or
analysis of a book which is simply a wild chaos of material jumbled
together with little regard to logic, order, or method of whatever sort. We
shall better represent its character by giving a few specimen extracts.
Rabelais begins his romance characteristically. According as you
understand him here, you judge the spirit of the whole work. Either he now
gives you a clew by which, amid the mazes of apparent sheer frivolity on
his part, you may follow till you win your way to some veiled serious
meaning that he had all the time, but never dared frankly to avow; or else he
is playfully misleading you on a false scent, which, however long held to,
will bring you out nowhere—in short, is quizzing you. Let the reader judge
for himself. Here is the opening passage,—the "Author's Prologue," it is
called in the English translation executed by Sir Thomas Urquhart and
Motteux; a version, by the way, which, with whatever faults of too much
freedom, is the work of minds and consciences singularly sympathetic with
the genius of the original; the English student is perhaps hardly at all at
disadvantage, in comparison with the French, for the full appreciation of
Rabelais:—
Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious
pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my
writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's which is
entitled, "The Banquet," whilst he was setting forth the praises
of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of
philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose said that
he resembled the Sileni. Sileni of old were little boxes, like
those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on
the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled
geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts,
and other such counterfeited pictures, at pleasure, to excite
people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-
father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those

capricious caskets called Sileni, were carefully preserved and
kept many rich and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergreese,
amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and
other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates;
for to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior
appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for
him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his
gesture.... Opening this box, you would have found within it a
heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human
understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning,
invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of
mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that
for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight,
travel, toil, and turmoil themselves.
Whereunto (in your opinion) doth this little flourish of a
preamble tend? For so much as you, my good disciples, and
some other jolly fools of ease and leisure,... are too ready to
judge, that there is nothing in them but jests, mockeries,
lascivious discourse, and recreative lies;... therefore is it, that
you must open the book, and seriously consider of the matter
treated in it. Then shall you find that it containeth things of far
higher value than the box did promise; that is to say, that the
subject thereof is not so foolish, as by the title at the first sight it
would appear to be.
...Did you ever see a dog with a marrow-bone in his mouth?...
Like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture [reading], and
frequent meditation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow;
that is, my allegorical sense, or the things I to myself propose to
be signified by these Pythagorical symbols;... the most glorious
doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our
religion, as matters of the public state and life economical.
Up to this point, the candid reader has probably been conscious of a
growing persuasion that this author must be at bottom a serious if also a
humorous man,—a man, therefore, excusably intent not to be

misunderstood as a mere buffoon. But now let the candid reader proceed
with the following, and confess, upon his honor, if he is not scandalized and
perplexed. What shall be said of a writer who thus plays with his reader?
Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he
was couching his Iliad and Odyssey, had any thought upon those
allegories which Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius,
Phornutus, squeezed out of him, and which Politian filched
again from them? If you trust it, with neither hand nor foot do
you come near to my opinion, which judgeth them to have been
as little dreamed of by Homer, as the gospel sacraments were by
Ovid, in his Metamorphoses; though a certain gulligut friar, and
true bacon-picker, would have undertaken to prove it, if,
perhaps, he had met with as very fools as himself, and, as the
proverb says, "a lid worthy of such a kettle."
If you give any credit thereto, why do not you the same to
these jovial new Chronicles of mine? Albeit, when I did dictate
them, I thought thereof no more than you, who possibly were
drinking the whilst, as I was. For, in the composing of this lordly
book, I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time,
than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily
refection; that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And, indeed,
that is the fittest and most proper hour, wherein to write these
high matters and deep sentences; as Homer knew very well, the
paragon of all philologues, and Ennius, the father of the Latin
poets, as Horace calls him, although a certain sneaking
jobbernol alleged that his verses smelled more of the wine than
oil.
Does this writer quiz his reader, or, in good faith, give him a needed hint?
Who shall decide?
We have let our first extract thus run on to some length, both for the
reason that the passage is as representative as any we could properly offer
of the quality of Rabelais, and also for the reason that the key of
interpretation is here placed in the hand of the reader, for unlocking the

enigma of this remarkable book. The extraordinary horse-play of pleasantry,
which makes Rabelais unreadable for the general public of to-day, begins so
promptly, affecting the very prologue, that we could not present even that
piece of writing entire in our extract. We are informed that the circulation in
England of the works of Rabelais, in translation, has been interfered with by
the English government, on the ground of their indecency. We are bound to
admit, that, if any writings whatever were to be suppressed on that ground,
the writings of Rabelais are certainly entitled to be of the number. It is safe
to say that never, no, not even in the boundless license of the comedy of
Aristophanes, was more flagrant indecency, and indecency proportionately
more redundant in volume, perpetrated in literature, than was done by
Rabelais. Indecency, however, it is, rather than strict lasciviousness.
Rabelais sinned against manners, more than he sinned against morals. But
his obscenity is an ocean, without bottom or shore. Literally, he sticks at
nothing that is coarse. Nay, this is absurdly short of expressing the fact. The
genius of Rabelais teems with invention of coarseness, beyond what any
one could conceive as possible, who had not taken his measure of
possibility from Rabelais himself. And his diction was as opulent as his
invention.
Such is the character of Rabelais the author. What, then, was it, if not
fondness for paradox, that could prompt Coleridge to say, "I could write a
treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabelais' works, which would
make the church stare and the conventicle groan, and yet would be truth,
and nothing but the truth"? If any thing besides fondness for paradox
inspired Coleridge in saying this, it must, one would guess, have been belief
on his part in the allegorical sense hidden deep underneath the monstrous
mass of the Rabelaisian buffoonery. A more judicial sentence is that of
Hallam, the historian of the literature of Europe: "He [Rabelais] is never
serious in a single page, and seems to have had little other aim, in his first
two volumes, than to pour out the exuberance of his animal gayety."
The supply of animal gayety in this man was something portentous. One
cannot, however, but feel that he forces it sometimes, as sometimes did
Dickens those exhaustless animal spirits of his. A very common trick of the
Rabelaisian humor is to multiply specifications, or alternative expressions,

one after another, almost without end. From the second book of his
romance,—an afterthought, probably, of continuation to his unexpectedly
successful first book,—we take the last paragraph of the prologue, which
shows this. The veracious historian makes obtestation of the strict truth of
his narrative, and imprecates all sorts of evil upon such as do not believe it
absolutely. We cleanse our extract a little:—
And, therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give
myself to an hundred thousand panniers-full of fair devils, body
and soul,... in case that I lie so much as one single word in this
whole history; after the like manner, St. Anthony's fire burn you,
Mahoom's disease whirl you, the squinance with a stitch in your
side, and the wolf in your stomach truss you, the bloody flux
seize upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of wild fire, as
slender and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver,
enter into you,... and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, may
you fall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do
not firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present
Chronicle.
So much for Rabelais's prologues. Our readers must now see something of
what, under pains and penalties denounced so dire, they are bound to
believe. We condense and defecate for this purpose the thirty-eighth chapter
of the first book, which is staggeringly entitled, "How Gargantua did eat up
Six Pilgrims in a Sallad":—
The story requireth that we relate that which happened unto six
pilgrims, who came from Sebastian near to Nantes; and who, for
shelter that night, being afraid of the enemy, had hid themselves
in the garden upon the chickling peas, among the cabbages and
lettuces. Gargantua, finding himself somewhat dry, asked
whether they could get any lettuce to make him a salad; and,
hearing that there were the greatest and fairest in the country,—
for they were as great as plum trees, or as walnut trees,—he
would go thither himself, and brought thence in his hand what
he thought good, and withal carried away the six pilgrims, who
were in so great fear that they did not dare to speak nor cough.

Washing them, therefore, first at the fountain, the pilgrims said
one to another, softly, "What shall we do? We are almost
drowned here amongst these lettuce: shall we speak? But, if we
speak, he will kill us for spies." And, as they were thus
deliberating what to do, Gargantua put them, with the lettuce,
into a platter of the house, as large as the huge tun of the White
Friars of the Cistertian order; which done, with oil, vinegar, and
salt, he ate them up, to refresh himself a little before supper, and
had already swallowed up five of the pilgrims, the sixth being in
the platter, totally hid under a lettuce, except his bourbon, or
staff, that appeared, and nothing else. Which Grangousier
[Gargantua's father] seeing, said to Gargantua, "I think that is
the horn of a shell snail: do not eat it."—"Why not?" said
Gargantua; "they are good all this month:" which he no sooner
said, but, drawing up the staff, and therewith taking up the
pilgrim, he ate him very well, then drank a terrible draught of
excellent white wine. The pilgrims, thus devoured, made shift to
save themselves, as well as they could, by drawing their bodies
out of the reach of the grinders of his teeth, but could not escape
from thinking they had been put in the lowest dungeon of a
prison. And, when Gargantua whiffed the great draught, they
thought to have drowned in his mouth, and the flood of wine
had almost carried them away into the gulf of his stomach.
Nevertheless, skipping with their bourbons, as St. Michael's
palmers used to do, they sheltered themselves from the danger
of that inundation under the banks of his teeth. But one of them,
by chance, groping, or sounding the country with his staff, to try
whether they were in safety or no, struck hard against the cleft
of a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary sinew or nerve of the
jaw, which put Gargantua to very great pain, so that he began to
cry for the rage that he felt. To ease himself, therefore, of his
smarting ache, he called for his tooth-picker, and, rubbing
towards a young walnut-tree, where they lay skulking, unnestled
you my gentlemen pilgrims. For he caught one by the legs,
another by the scrip, another by the pocket, another by the scarf,
another by the band of the breeches; and the poor fellow that

had hurt him with the bourbon, him he hooked to him by
[another part of his clothes].... The pilgrims, thus dislodged, ran
away.
Rabelais closes his story with jocose irreverent application of Scripture,—
a manner of his which gives some color to the tradition of a biblical pun
made by him on his death-bed.
The closest English analogue to Rabelais is undoubtedly Dean Swift. We
probably never should have had "Gulliver's Travels" from Swift, if we had
not first had Gargantua and Pantagruel from Rabelais. Swift, however,
differs from Rabelais as well as resembles him. Whereas Rabelais is simply
monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits himself loyally to law.
Give Swift his world of Liliput and Brobdingnag respectively, and all, after
that, is quite natural and probable. The reduction or the exaggeration is
made upon a mathematically calculated scale. For such verisimilitude
Rabelais cares not a straw. His various inventions are recklessly
independent one of another. A characteristic of Swift thus is scrupulous
conformity to whimsical law. Rabelais is remarkable for whimsical
disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire put the matter with his usual
felicity,—Swift is Rabelais in his senses.
One of the most celebrated—justly celebrated—of Rabelais's imaginations
is that of the Abbey of Thélème [Thelema]. This constitutes a kind of
Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give his Utopian
dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the opposite should
obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own monastic experience. A
humorously impossible place and state was the Abbey of Thélème,—a kind
of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a world unrealized. How those
Thelemites enjoyed life, to be sure! It was like endless plum pudding—for
everybody to eat, and nobody to prepare:—
All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of
their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor,
sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it.
None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat,

drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua
established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order,
there was but this one clause to be observed,—
DO WHAT THOU WILT.
...By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to
do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the
gallants or ladies should say, Let us drink, they would all drink.
If any one of them said, Let us play, they all played. If one said,
Let us go a walking into the fields, they went all.... There was
neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing,
play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six several
languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse
and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and
worthy, so dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback,
more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling
all manner of weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies
so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or
more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every
honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there.
For this reason, when the time came, that any man of the said
abbey, either at the request of his parents, or for some other
cause, had a mind to go out of it, he carried along with him one
of the ladies, namely her who had before that accepted him as
her lover, and they were married together.
The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet imaginative passages in
Rabelais's works. The representation, as a whole, sheathes, of course, a
keen satire on the religious houses. Real religion, Rabelais nowhere attacks.
The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating adventure with the six
pilgrims, is made, in Rabelais's second book, to write his youthful son
Pantagruel—also a giant, but destined to be, when mature, a model of all
princely virtues—a letter on education, in which the most pious paternal
exhortation occurs. The whole letter reads like some learned Puritan
divine's composition. Here are a few specimen sentences:—

Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek,
Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and
Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect
knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is
man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the
study of the Holy Scriptures: first, in Greek, the New Testament,
with the Epistles of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in
Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of
knowledge....
...It behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to
cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, by faith formed in
charity, to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be
separated from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world.
Set not thy heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory; but the
Word of the Lord endureth forever.
"Friar John" is a mighty man of valor, who figures equivocally in the story
of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Abbey of Thélème is given him in reward
of his services. Some have identified this fighting monk with Martin Luther.
The representation is, on the whole, so conducted as to leave the reader's
sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of the fellow, rough and roistering
as he is.
Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel,—almost more than
Pantagruel himself. It would be unpardonable to dismiss Rabelais without
first making our readers know Panurge by, at least, a few traits of his
character and conduct. Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous adventurer,
whom Pantagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by chance,
took and kept under his patronage. Panurge was an arch-imp of mischief,—
mischief indulged in the form of obscene and malicious practical jokes.
Rabelais describes his accomplishments in a long strain of discourse, from
which we purge our selection to follow,—thereby transforming Panurge
into a comparatively proper and virtuous person:—
He had threescore and three tricks to come by it [money] at his
need, of which the most honorable and most ordinary was in

manner of thieving, secret purloining, and filching, for he was a
wicked, lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roysterer, rover, and a
very dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in Paris;
otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous
man in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and
devising mischief against the serjeants and the watch.
At one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters
and roaring boys; made them in the evening drink like Templars,
afterwards led them till they came under St. Genevieve, or about
the college of Navarre, and, at the hour that the watch was
coming up that way,—which he knew by putting his sword upon
the pavement, and his ear by it, and, when he heard his sword
shake, it was an infallible sign that the watch was near at that
instant,—then he and his companions took a tumbrel or garbage-
cart, and gave it the brangle, hurling it with all their force down
the hill, and then ran away upon the other side; for in less than
two days he knew all the streets, lanes, and turnings in Paris, as
well as his Deus det.
At another time he laid, in some fair place where the said
watch was to pass, a train of gunpowder, and, at the very instant
that they went along, set fire to it, and then made himself sport
to see what good grace they had in running away, thinking that
St. Anthony's fire had caught them by the legs.... In one of his
pockets he had a great many little horns full of fleas and lice,
which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast
them, with small canes or quills to write with, into the necks of
the daintiest gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the
church; for he never seated himself above in the choir, but
always in the body of the church amongst the women, both at
mass, at vespers, and at sermon.
Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the moment on the scent of
illustrations for the philosophy of Kant, said, "Pantagruel is the Reason;
Panurge the Understanding." Rabelais himself, in the fourth book of his
romance, written in the last years of his life, defines the spirit of the work.

This fourth book, the English translator says, is "justly thought his
masterpiece." The same authority adds with enthusiasm, "Being wrote with
more spirit, salt, and flame than the first part." Here, then, is Rabelais's own
expression, sincere or jocular, as you choose to take it, for what constitutes
the essence of his writing. We quote from the "Prologue":—
By the means of a little Pantagruelism (which, you know, is a
certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see
me now ["at near seventy years of age," his translator says], hale
and cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will.
It is impossible to exaggerate the mad, rollicking humor, sticking at
nothing, either in thought or in expression, with which especially this last
book of Rabelais's work is written. But we have no more space for
quotation.
Coleridge's theory of interpretation for Rabelais's writings is hinted in his
"Table Talk," as follows: "After any particularly deep thrust,... Rabelais, as
if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, writes
a chapter or two of pure buffoonery."
The truth seems to us to be, that Rabelais's supreme taste, like his supreme
power, lay in the line of humorous satire. He hated monkery, and he
satirized the system as openly as he dared,—this, however, not so much in
the love of truth and freedom, as in pure fondness for exercising his wit.
That he was more than willing to make his ribald drollery the fool's mask
from behind which he might aim safely his shafts of ridicule at what he
despised and hated, is indeed probable. But in this is supplied to him no
sufficient excuse for his obscene and blasphemous pleasantry. Nor yet are
the manners of the age an excuse sufficient. Erasmus belonged to the same
age, and he disliked the monks not less. But what a contrast, in point of
decency, between Rabelais and Erasmus!

IV.
MONTAIGNE.
1533-1592.
Montaigne is signally the author of one book. His "Essays" are the whole
of him. He wrote letters, to be sure, and he wrote journals of travel in quest
of health and pleasure. But these are chiefly void of interest. Montaigne the
Essayist alone is emphatically the Montaigne that survives. "Montaigne the
Essayist,"—that has become, as it were, a personal name in literary history.
The "Essays" are one hundred and seven in number, divided into three
books. They are very unequal in length; and they are on the most various
topics,—topics often the most whimsical in character. We give a few of his
titles, taking them as found in Cotton's translation:—
That men by various ways arrive at the same end; Whether the
governor of a place ought himself to go out to parley; Of liars;
Of quick or slow speech; A proceeding of some ambassadors;
Various events from the same counsel; Of cannibals; That we
laugh and cry from the same thing; Of smells; That the mind
hinders itself; Of thumbs; Of virtue; Of coaches; Of managing
the will; Of cripples; Of experience.
Montaigne's titles cannot be trusted to indicate the nature of the essays to
which they belong. The author's pen will not be bound. It runs on at its own
pleasure. Things the most unexpected are incessantly turning up in
Montaigne,—things, probably, that were as unexpected to the writer when
he was writing, as they will be to the reader when he is reading. The
writing, on whatever topic, in whatever vein, always revolves around the

writer for its pivot. Montaigne, from no matter what apparent diversion,
may constantly be depended upon to bring up in due time at himself. The
tether is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is securely tied to
Montaigne. This, as we shall presently let the author himself make plain, is
no accident, of which Montaigne was unconscious. It is the express idea on
which the "Essays" were written. Montaigne, in his "Essays," is a pure and
perfect egotist, naked, and not ashamed. Egotism is Montaigne's note, his
differentia, in the world of literature. Other literary men have been egotists
—since. But Montaigne may be called the first, and he is the greatest.
Montaigne was a Gascon, and Gasconisms adulterate the purity of his
French. But his style—a little archaic now, and never finished to the nail—
had virtues of its own which have exercised a wholesome influence on
classic French prose. It is simple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy
of the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive to every rise or fall, of
the thought. It is a steadfast rebuke to rant and fustian. It quietly laughs to
scorn the folly of that style which writhes in an agony of expression, with
neither thought nor feeling present to be expressed. Montaigne's "Essays"
have been a great and a beneficent formative force in the development of
prose style in French.
For substance, Montaigne is rich in practical wisdom, his own by original
reflection, or by discreet purveyal. He had read much, he had observed
much, he had experienced much. The result of all, digested in brooding
thought, he put into his "Essays." These grew as he grew. He got himself
transferred whole into them. Out of them, in turn, the world has been busy
ever since dissolving Montaigne.
Montaigne's "Essays" are, as we have said, himself. Such is his own way
of putting the fact. To one admiring his essays to him, he frankly replied,
"You will like me, if you like my essays, for they are myself." The
originality, the creative character and force, of the "Essays," lies in this
autobiographical quality in them. Their fascination, too, consists in the self-
revelation they contain. This was, first, self-revelation on the part of the
writer; but no less it becomes, in each case, self-revelation in the experience
of the reader. For, as face answereth to face in the glass, so doth the heart of
man to man,—from race to race, and from generation to generation. If

Montaigne, in his "Essays," held the mirror up to himself, he, in the same
act, held up the mirror to you and to me. The image that we, reading, call
Montaigne, is really ourselves. We never tire of gazing on it. We are all of
us Narcissuses. This is why Montaigne is an immortal and a universal
writer.
Here is Montaigne's Preface to his "Essays;" "The Author to the Reader,"
it is entitled:—
Reader, thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the outset
forewarn thee that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to
myself no other than a domestic and private end: I have had no
consideration at all either to thy service or to my glory. My
powers are not capable of any such design. I have dedicated it to
the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that,
having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein
recover some traits of my conditions and humors, and by that
means preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge
they had of me. Had my intention been to seek the world's favor,
I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties. I
desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine,
simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice; for it is
myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to the life, and
my imperfections and my natural form, so far as public
reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations
which (they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature's
primitive laws, I assure thee I would most willingly have
painted myself quite fully, and quite naked. Thus, reader, myself
am the matter of my book. There's no reason thou shouldst
employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject.
Therefore, farewell.
From Montaigne, the 12th of June, 1580.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, our author, as the foregoing date will have
suggested, derived his most familiar name from the place at which he was
born and at which he lived. Readers are not to take too literally Montaigne's

notice of his dispensing with "borrowed beauties." He was, in fact, a
famous borrower. He himself warns his readers to be careful how they
criticise him; they may be flouting unawares Seneca, Plutarch, or some
other, equally redoubtable, of the reverend ancients. Montaigne is perhaps
as signal an example as any in literature, of the man of genius exercising his
prescriptive right to help himself to his own wherever he may happen to
find it. But Montaigne has in turn been freely borrowed from. Bacon
borrowed from him, Shakspeare borrowed from him, Dryden, Pope, Hume,
Burke, Byron,—these, with many more, in England; and, in France, Pascal,
La Rochefoucauld, Voltaire, Rousseau,—directly or indirectly, almost every
writer since his day. No modern writer, perhaps, has gone in solution into
subsequent literature more widely than Montaigne. But no writer remains
more solidly and insolubly entire.
We go at once to chapter twenty-five of the first book of the "Essays,"
entitled, in the English translation, "Of the education of children." The
translation we use henceforth throughout is the classic one of Charles
Cotton, in a text of it edited by Mr. William Carew Hazlitt. The "preface,"
already given, Cotton omitted to translate. We have allowed Mr. Hazlitt to
supply the deficiency. Montaigne addresses his educational views to a
countess. Several others of his essays are similarly inscribed to women. Mr.
Emerson's excuse of Montaigne for his coarseness,—that he wrote for a
generation in which women were not expected to be readers,—is thus seen
to be curiously impertinent to the actual case that existed. Of a far worse
fault in Montaigne than his coarseness,—we mean his outright immorality,
—Mr. Emerson makes no mention, and for it, therefore, provides no excuse.
We shall ourselves, in due time, deal more openly with our readers on this
point.
It was for a "boy of quality" that Montaigne aimed to adapt his
suggestions on the subject of education. In this happy country of ours, all
boys are boys of quality; and we shall go nowhere amiss in selecting from
the present essay:—
For a boy of quality, then, I say, I would also have his friends
solicitous to find him out a tutor who has rather a well-made
than a well-filled head, seeking, indeed, both the one and the

other, but rather of the two to prefer manners and judgment to
mere learning, and that this man should exercise his charge after
a new method.
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in
their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the
business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said:
now, I would have a tutor to correct this error, and that, at the
very first, he should, according to the capacity he has to deal
with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste
things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes
opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it
for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and
speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.... Let
him make him put what he has learned into a hundred several
forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if
he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own.... 'Tis a
sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the
same condition it was swallowed: the stomach has not
performed its office, unless it have altered the form and
condition of what was committed to it to concoct....
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he
reads, and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and
upon trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles
to him than those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of
opinions be propounded to, and laid before, him; he will himself
choose, if he be able; if not, he will remain in doubt.
"Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m'aggrata."
Dante, Inferno, xl. 93.
["That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing."
Longfellow's Translation.]

For, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his
own reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his own.
Who follows another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is
inquisitive after nothing. "Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se
vindicet." ["We are under no king; let each look to himself."—
Seneca, Ep. 33.] Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be
necessary that he imbibe their knowledge, not that he be
corrupted with their precepts; and no matter if he forget where
he had his learning, provided he know how to apply it to his
own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no
more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after;
'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both
he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several
sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and there where
they find them; but themselves afterward make the honey, which
is all and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram:
so the several fragments he borrows from others he will
transform and shuffle together, to compile a work that shall be
absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment: his instruction,
labor, and study tend to nothing else but to form that....
Conversation with men is of very great use, and travel into
foreign countries;... to be able chiefly to give an account of the
humors, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he
has been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing
them against those of others....
In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those
who live only in the records of history: he shall, by reading
those books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best
ages.
It is difficult to find a stopping-place in discourse so wise and so sweet.
We come upon sentences like Plato for height and for beauty. An example:
"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is
like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene."
But the genius of Montaigne does not often soar, though even one little

flight like that shows that it has wings. Montaigne's garnishes of quotation
from foreign tongues are often a cold-blooded device of afterthought with
him. His first edition was without them, in many places where subsequently
they appear. Readers familiar with Emerson will be reminded of him in
perusing Montaigne. Emerson himself said, "It seemed to me [in reading
the "Essays" of Montaigne] as if I had myself written the book in some
former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience." The rich
old English of Cotton's translation had evidently a strong influence on
Emerson, to mould his own style of expression. Emerson's trick of writing
"'tis," was apparently caught from Cotton. The following sentence, from the
present essay of Montaigne, might very well have served Mr. Emerson for
his own rule of writing: "Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence, or
a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit well with what went
before, nor has much coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself."
Montaigne, at any rate, wrote his "Essays" on that easy principle. The logic
of them is the logic of mere chance association in thought. But, with
Montaigne,—whatever is true of Emerson,—the association at least is not
occult; and it is such as pleases the reader, not less than it pleased the writer.
So this Gascon gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and never loses
us out of his hand. We go with him cheerfully where he so blithely leads.
Montaigne tells us how he was himself trained under his father. The elder
Montaigne, too, had his ideas on education,—the subject which his son, in
this essay, so instructively treats. The essayist leads up to his
autobiographical episode by an allusion to the value of the classical
languages, and to the question of method in studying them. He says:—
In my infancy, and before I began to speak, he [my father]
committed me to the care of a German,... totally ignorant of our
language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man,
whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he
entertained with a very great salary, for this only end, had me
continually with him: to him there were also joined two others,
of inferior learning, to attend me, and to relieve him, who all of
them spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest
of his family, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself nor

my mother, man nor maid, should speak any thing in my
company, but such Latin words as every one had learned only to
gabble with me. It is not to be imagined how great an advantage
this proved to the whole family: my father and my mother by
this means learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly well,
and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any
necessary use, as also those of the servants did, who were most
frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at such a rate, that it
overflowed to all the neighboring villages, where there yet
remain, that have established themselves by custom, several
Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what
concerns myself, I was above six years of age before I
understood either French or Perigordin ["Perigordin" is
Montaigne's name for the dialect of his province, Perigord
(Gascony)], any more than Arabic; and, without art, book,
grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had,
by that time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master
himself, for I had no means of mixing it up with any other.
We are now to see how, helped by his wealth, the father was able to
gratify a pleasant whimsey of his own in the nurture of his boy. Highly
æsthetic was the matin reveillé that broke the slumbers of this hopeful
young heir of Montaigne:—
Some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains
of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch
them violently and over-hastily from sleep, wherein they are
much more profoundly involved than we, he [the father] caused
me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and
was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose.... The
good man, being extremely timorous of any way failing in a
thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at
last to be overruled by the common opinions:... he sent me, at
six years of age, to the College of Guienne, at that time the best
and most flourishing in France.

In short, as in the case of Mr. Tulliver, the world was "too many" for
Eyquem père; and, in the education of his son, the stout Gascon, having
started out well as dissenter, fell into dull conformity at last.
We ought to give some idea of the odd instances, classic and other, with
which Montaigne plentifully bestrews his pages. He is writing of the "Force
of Imagination." He says:—
A woman, fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of
bread, cried and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain
in her throat, where she thought she felt it stick; but an
ingenious fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward
tumor nor alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at
some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused
her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin,
which the woman no sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it
up, she presently found herself eased of her pain....
Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field, have, I make
no question, heard the story of the falconer, who, having
earnestly fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that
he would bring her down with the sole power of his sight, and
did so, as it was said; for the tales I borrow, I charge upon the
consciences of those from whom I have them.
We italicize the last foregoing words, to make readers see that Montaigne
is not to be read for the truth of his instances. He uses what comes to hand.
He takes no trouble to verify. "The discourses are my own," he says; but
even this, as we have hinted, must not be pressed too hard in interpretation.
Whether a given reflection of Montaigne's is strictly his own, in the sense of
not having been first another's, who gave it to him, is not to be determined
except upon very wide reading, very well remembered, in all the books that
Montaigne could have got under his eye. That was full fairly his own, he
thought, which he had made his own by intelligent appropriation. And this,
perhaps, expresses in general the sound law of property in the realm of
mind. At any rate, Montaigne will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He will
write as pleases him. Above all things else, he likes his freedom.

Here is one of those sagacious historical scepticisms, in which Montaigne
was so fond of poising his mind between opposite views. It occurs in his
essay entitled, "Of the Uncertainty of our Judgments."
Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the
battle of Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand
still to receive the enemy's charge, "by reason that" (I shall here
steal Plutarch's own words, which are better than mine) "he by
so doing deprived himself of the violent impression the motion
of running adds to the first shock of arms, and hindered that
clashing of the combatants against one another, which is wont to
give them greater impetuosity and fury, especially when they
come to rush in with their utmost vigor, their courages
increasing by the shouts and the career; 'tis to render the
soldiers' ardor, as a man may say, more reserved and cold." This
is what he says. But, if Cæsar had come by the worse, why
might it not as well have been urged by another, that, on the
contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of fighting is that
wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion; and that
they who are steady upon the march, closing up, and reserving
their force within themselves for the push of the business, have a
great advantage against those who are disordered, and who have
already spent half their breath in running on precipitately to the
charge? Besides that, an army is a body made up of so many
individual members, it is impossible for it to move in this fury
with so exact a motion as not to break the order of battle, and
that the best of them are not engaged before their fellows can
come on to help them.
The sententiousness of Montaigne may be illustrated by transferring here
a page of brief excerpts from the "Essays," collected by Mr. Bayle St. John
in his biography of the author. This apothegmatic or proverbial quality in
Montaigne had a very important sequel of fruitful influence on subsequent
French writers, as chapters to follow in this volume will abundantly show.
In reading the sentences subjoined, you will have the sensation of coming
suddenly upon a treasure-trove of coined proverbial wisdom:—

Our minds are never at home, but ever beyond home.
I will take care, if possible, that my death shall say nothing that
my life has not said.
Life in itself is neither good nor bad: it is the place of what is
good or bad.
Knowledge should not be stuck on to the mind, but
incorporated in it.
Irresolution seems to me the most common and apparent vice
of our nature.
Age wrinkles the mind more than the face.
Habit is a second nature.
Hunger cures love.
It is easier to get money than to keep it.
Anger has often been the vehicle of courage.
It is more difficult to command than to obey.
A liar should have a good memory.
Ambition is the daughter of presumption.
To serve a prince, you must be discreet and a liar.
We learn to live when life has passed.
The mind is ill at ease when its companion has the colic.
We are all richer than we think, but we are brought up to go a-
begging.
The greatest masterpiece of man is... to be born at the right
time.

We append a saying of Montaigne's not found in Mr. St. John's collection:
—
There is no so good man who so squares all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve
hanging ten times in his life.
Montaigne was too intensely an egotist, in his character as man no less
than in his character as writer, to have many personal relations that exhibit
him in aspects engaging to our love. But one friendship of his is
memorable,—is even historic. The name of La Boëtie is forever associated
with the name of Montaigne. La Boëtie is remarkable for being, as we
suppose, absolutely the first voice raised in France against the idea of
monarchy. His little treatise "Contr' Un" (literally, "Against One"), or
"Voluntary Servitude," is by many esteemed among the most important
literary productions of modern times. Others, again, Mr. George Saintsbury
for example, consider it an absurdly overrated book. For our own part, we
are inclined to give it conspicuous place in the history of free thought in
France. La Boëtie died young; and his "Contr' Un" was published
posthumously,—first by the Protestants, after the terrible day of St.
Bartholomew. Our readers may judge for themselves whether a pamphlet in
which such passages as the following could occur, must not have had an
historic effect upon the inflammable sentiment of the French people. We
take Mr. Bayle St. John's translation, bracketing a hint or two of correction
suggested by comparison of the original French. The treatise of La Boëtie is
sometimes now printed with Montaigne's "Essays," in French editions of
our author's works: La Boëtie says:—
You sow your fruits [crops] that he [the king] may ravage
them; you furnish and fill your houses that he may have
something to steal; you bring up your daughters that he may
slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take them
to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his avarice,
the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure your forms by
labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he may cocker
himself in delight, and wallow in nasty and disgusting pleasure.

Montaigne seems really to have loved this friend of his, whom he
reckoned the greatest man in France. His account of La Boëtie's death is
boldly, and not presumptuously, paralleled by Mr. St. John with the
"Phædon" of Plato. Noble writing, it certainly is, though its stateliness is a
shade too self-conscious, perhaps.
We have thus far presented Montaigne in words of his own such as may
fairly be supposed likely to prepossess the reader in his favor. We could
multiply our extracts indefinitely in a like unexceptionable vein of writing.
But to do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Montaigne.
Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone
generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not
the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais.
But Rabelais is morality itself compared with Montaigne. Montaigne is
corrupt and corrupting. This feature of his writings, we are necessarily
forbidden to illustrate. In an essay written in his old age,—which we will
not even name, its general tenor is so evil,—Montaigne holds the following
language:—
I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and
cloudy sky I have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard
without fear, but not without meditation and study, and amuse
myself in the remembrance of my better years:—
"Animus quod perdidit, optat,
Atque in præterita se totus imagine versat."
Petronius, c. 128.
["The mind desires what it has lost, and in fancy flings itself
wholly into the past."]
Let childhood look forward, and age backward: is not this the
signification of Janus' double face? Let years haul me along if
they will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can
discern the pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn
them that way; though it escape from my blood and veins, I
shall not, however, root the image of it out of my memory:—

"Hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."
Martial, x. 23, 7.
["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy former life again."]
Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the foregoing strain of
sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the
author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The
venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein,
by writing as follows:—
I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to do; even
thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst of
my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil, as I find it
evil and base not to dare to own them....
...I am greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how
many, provided it be truly.... Many things that I would not say to
a particular individual, I say to the people; and, as to my most
secret thoughts, send my most intimate friends to my book....
For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot,
as being very modest, or very chaste, I should owe him no
thanks [because the recommendation would be false].
We must leave it—as, however, Montaigne himself is far enough from
leaving it—to the imagination of readers to conjecture what "pleasures"
they are, of which this worn-out debauchee (nearing death, and thanking
God that he nears it "without fear") speaks in the following sentimental
strain:—
In farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections towards
the things we take leave of: I take my last leave of the pleasures
of this world; these are our last embraces.
Mr. Emerson, in his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for
The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he
doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary

opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and
he did not clear his mind. "Que sçai-je?" was his motto ("What know I?"), a
question as of hopeless ignorance,—nay, as of ignorance also void of desire
to know. His life was one long interrogation, a balancing of opposites, to
the end.
Such, speculatively, was Montaigne. Such, too, speculatively, was Pascal.
The difference, however, was greater than the likeness, between these two
minds. Pascal, doubting, gave the world of spiritual things the benefit of his
doubt. Montaigne, on the other hand, gave the benefit of his doubt to the
world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a glutton, he was a lecher. He,
for his portion, chose the good things of this life. His body he used to get
him pleasures of the body. In pleasures of the body he sunk and drowned
his conscience,—if he ever had a conscience. But his intelligence survived.
He became, at last,—if he was not such from the first,—almost pure sense,
without soul.
Yet we have no doubt Montaigne was an agreeable gentleman. We think
we should have got on well with him as a neighbor of ours. He was a
tolerably decent father, provided the child were grown old enough to be
company for him. His own lawful children, while infants, had to go out of
the house for their nursing; so it not unnaturally happened that all but one
died in their infancy. Five of such is the number that you can count in his
own journalistic entries of family births and deaths. But, speaking as "moral
philosopher," in his "Essays," he says, carelessly, that he had lost "two or
three" "without repining." This, perhaps, is affectation. But what
affectation!
Montaigne was well-to-do; and he ranked as a gentleman, if not as a great
nobleman. He lived in a castle, bequeathed to him, and by him bequeathed,
—a castle still standing, and full of personal association with its most
famous owner. He occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. Over
the door of this room may still, we believe, be read Montaigne's motto,
"Que sçai-je?" Votaries of Montaigne perform their pious pilgrimages to
this shrine of their idolatry, year after year, century after century.

For, remember, it is now three centuries since Montaigne wrote. He was
before Bacon and Shakspeare. He was contemporary with Charles IX., and
with Henry of Navarre. But date has little to do with such a writer as
Montaigne. His quality is sempiternal. He overlies the ages, as the long hulk
of "The Great Eastern" overlay the waves of the sea, stretching from
summit to summit. Not that, in the form of his literary work, he was
altogether independent of time and of circumstance. Not that he was
uninfluenced by his historic place, in the essential spirit of his work. But,
more than often happens, Montaigne may fairly be judged out of himself
alone. His message he might, indeed, have delivered differently; but it
would have been substantially the same message if he had been differently
placed in the world, and in history. We need hardly, therefore, add any thing
about Montaigne's outward life. His true life is in his book.
Montaigne the Essayist is the consummate, the ideal, expression,
practically incapable of improvement, of the spirit and wisdom of the
world. This characterization, we think, fairly and sufficiently sums up the
good and the bad of Montaigne. We might seem to describe no very
mischievous thing. But to have the spirit and wisdom of this world
expressed, to have it expressed as in a last authoritative form, a form to
commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem sufficient, to erect it
into a kind of gospel,—that means much. It means hardly less than to
provide the world with a new Bible,—a Bible of the world's own, a Bible
that shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the Old and New
Testaments. Montaigne's "Essays" constitute, in effect, such a book. The
man of the world may,—and, to say truth, does,—in this volume, find all
his needed texts. Here is viaticum—daily manna—for him, to last the year
round, and to last year after year; an inexhaustible breviary for the church
of this world! It is of the gravest historical significance that Rabelais and
Montaigne, but especially Montaigne, should, to such an extent, for now
three full centuries, have been furnishing the daily intellectual food of
Frenchmen.
Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (carefully reported by the latter),
in which the conversation was on the subject of Montaigne and Epictetus
contrasted,—these two authors Pascal acknowledged to be the ones most

constantly in his hand,—said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne is
absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion,
or toward vicious indulgences." We, for our part, are prepared, speaking
more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat numerous class of
naturally dominant minds, Montaigne's "Essays," in spite of all that there is
good in them,—nay, greatly because of so much good in them,—are, by
their subtly insidious persuasion to evil, upon the whole quite the most
powerfully pernicious book known to us in literature, either ancient or
modern.

V.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: 1613-1680 (La Bruyère: 1646 (?)-1696;
Vauvenargues: 1715-1747).
In La Rochefoucauld we meet another eminent example of the author of
one book. "Letters," "Memoirs," and "Maxims" indeed name productions in
three kinds, productions all of them notable, and all still extant, from La
Rochefoucauld's pen. But the "Maxims" are so much more famous than
either the "Letters" or the "Memoirs," that their author may be said to be
known only by those. If it were not for the "Maxims," the "Letters" and the
"Memoirs" would probably now be forgotten. We here may dismiss these
from our minds, and concentrate our attention exclusively upon the
"Maxims." Voltaire said, "The 'Memoirs' of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld
are read, but we know his 'Maxims' by heart."
La Rochefoucauld's "Maxims" are detached sentences of reflection and
wisdom on human character and conduct. They are about seven hundred in
number, but they are all comprised in a very small volume; for they
generally are each only two or three lines in length, and almost never does a
single maxim occupy more than the half of a moderate-sized page. The
"Maxims," detached, as we have described them, have no very marked
logical sequence in the order in which they stand. They all, however, have a
profound mutual relation. An unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact,
runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so
many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same
persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive
of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of the
"Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld.

The writer's qualifications for treating his theme were unsurpassed. He
had himself the right character, moral and intellectual; his scheme of
conduct in life corresponded; he wrote in the right language, French; and he
was rightly situated in time, in place, and in circumstance. He needed but to
look closely within him and without him,—which he was gifted, with eyes
to do,—and then report what he saw, in the language to which he was born.
This he did, and his "Maxims" are the fruit. His method was largely the
sceptical method of Montaigne. His result, too, was much the same result as
his master's. But the pupil surpassed the master in the quality of his work.
There is a fineness, an exquisiteness, in the literary form of La
Rochefoucauld, which Montaigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but
which he could never, even with seeking, have attained. Each maxim of La
Rochefoucauld is a "gem of purest ray serene," wrought to the last degree of
perfection in form with infinite artistic pains. Purity, precision, clearness,
density, point, are perfectly reconciled in La Rochefoucauld's style with
ease, grace, and brilliancy of expression. The influence of such literary
finish, well bestowed on thought worthy to receive it, has been incalculably
potent in raising the standard of French production in prose. It was
Voltaire's testimony, "One of the works which has most contributed to form
the national taste, and give it a spirit of accuracy and precision, was the
little collection of 'Maxims' by François Duc de La Rochefoucauld."
There is a high-bred air about La Rochefoucauld the writer, which well
accords with the rank and character of the man La Rochefoucauld. He was
of one of the noblest families in France. His instincts were all aristocratic.
His manners and his morals were those of his class. Brave, spirited, a touch
of chivalry in him, honorable and amiable as the world reckons of its own,
La Rochefoucauld ran a career consistent throughout with his own master-
principle, self-love. He had a wife whose conjugal fidelity her husband
seems to have thought a sufficient supply in that virtue for both himself and
her. He behaved himself accordingly. His illicit relations with other women
were notorious. But they unhappily did not make La Rochefoucauld in that
respect at all peculiar among the distinguished men of his time. His brilliant
female friends collaborated with him in working out his "Maxims." These
were the labor of years. They were published in successive editions, during

the lifetime of the author; and some final maxims were added from his
manuscripts after his death.
Using, for the purpose, a very recent translation, that of A. S. Bolton
(which, in one or two places, we venture to conform more exactly to the
sense of the original), we give almost at hazard a few specimens of these
celebrated apothegms. We adopt the numbering given in the best Paris
edition of the "Maxims:"—
No. 11. The passions often beget their contraries. Avarice
sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice: we are
often firm from weakness, and daring from timidity.
No. 13. Our self-love bears more impatiently the condemnation
of our tastes than of our opinions.
How much just detraction from all mere natural human greatness is
contained in the following penetrative maxim!—
No. 18. Moderation is a fear of falling into the envy and
contempt which those deserve who are intoxicated with their
good fortune; it is a vain parade of the strength of our mind; and,
in short, the moderation of men in their highest elevation is a
desire to appear greater than their fortune.
What effectively quiet satire in these few words!—
No. 19. We have strength enough to bear the ills of others.
This man had seen the end of all perfection in the apparently great of this
world. He could not bear that such should flaunt a false plume before their
fellows:—
No. 20. The steadfastness of sages is only the art of locking up
their uneasiness in their hearts.
Of course, had it lain in the author's chosen line to do so, he might, with as
much apparent truth, have pointed out, that to lock up uneasiness in the

heart requires steadfastness no less—nay, more—than not to feel
uneasiness.
The inflation of "philosophy" vaunting itself is thus softly eased of its
painful distention:—
No. 22. Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed and
troubles to come, but present troubles triumph over it.
When Jesus once rebuked the fellow-disciples of James and John for
blaming those brethren as self-seekers, he acted on the same profound
principle with that disclosed in the following maxim:—
No. 34. If we had no pride, we should not complain of that of
others.
How impossible it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude the presence of
mind, the inexorable eye, the fast hand, of this incredulous Frenchman:—
No. 39. Interest [self-love] speaks all sorts of languages, and
plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness.
No. 49. We are never so happy, or so unhappy, as we imagine.
No. 78. The love of justice is, in most men, only the fear of
suffering injustice.
What a subtly unsoldering distrust the following maxim introduces into
the sentiment of mutual friendship!—
No. 83. What men have called friendship, is only a partnership,
a mutual accommodation of interests, and an exchange of good
offices: it is, in short, only a traffic, in which self-love always
proposes to gain something.
No. 89. Every one complains of his memory, and no one
complains of his judgment.
How striking, from its artful suppression of strikingness, is the first
following, and what a wide, easy sweep of well-bred satire it contains!—

No. 93. Old men like to give good advice, to console
themselves for being no longer able to give bad examples.
No. 119. We are so much accustomed to disguise ourselves to
others, that, at last, we disguise ourselves to ourselves.
No. 127. The true way to be deceived, is to think one's self
sharper than others.
The plain-spoken proverb, "A man that is his own lawyer, has a fool for
his client," finds a more polished expression in the following:—
No. 132. It is easier to be wise for others, than to be so for
one's self.
How pitilessly this inquisitor pursues his prey, "the human soul, into all its
useless hiding-places!—
No. 138. We would rather speak ill of ourselves, than not talk
of ourselves.
The following maxim, longer and less felicitously phrased than is usual
with La Rochefoucauld, recalls that bitter definition of the bore,—"One
who insists on talking about himself all the time that you are wishing to talk
about yourself:"—
No. 139. One of the causes why we find so few people who
appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation, is, that there is
scarcely any one who does not think more of what he wishes to
say, than of replying exactly to what is said to him. The
cleverest and the most compliant think it enough to show an
attentive air; while we see in their eyes and in their mind a
wandering from what is said to them, and a hurry to return to
what they wish to say, instead of considering that it is a bad way
to please or to persuade others, to try so hard to please one's self,
and that to listen well is one of the greatest accomplishments we
can have in conversation.

If we are indignant at the maxims following, it is probably rather because
they are partly true than, because they are wholly false:—
No. 144. We are not fond of praising, and, without interest, we
never praise any one. Praise is a cunning flattery, hidden and
delicate, which, in different ways, pleases him who gives and
him who receives it. The one takes it as a reward for his merit:
the other gives it to show his equity and his discernment.
No. 146. We praise generally only to be praised.
No. 147. Few are wise enough to prefer wholesome blame to
treacherous praise.
No. 149. Disclaiming praise is a wish to be praised a second
time.
No. 152. If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others
could not hurt us.
No. 184. We acknowledge our faults in order to atone, by our
sincerity, for the harm they do us in the minds of others.
No. 199. The desire to appear able often prevents our
becoming so.
No. 201. Whoever thinks he can do without the world,
deceives himself much; but whoever thinks the world cannot do
without him, deceives himself much more.
With the following, contrast Ruskin's noble paradox, that the soldier's
business, rightly conceived, is self-sacrifice; his ideal purpose being, not to
kill, but to be killed:—
No. 214. Valor, in private soldiers, is a perilous calling, which
they have taken to in order to gain their living.
Here is, perhaps, the most current of all La Rochefoucauld's maxims:—
No. 218. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue.

Of the foregoing maxim, it may justly be said, that its truth and point
depend upon the assumption, implicit, that there is such a thing as virtue,—
an assumption which the whole tenor of the "Maxims," in general,
contradicts.
How incisive the following!—
No. 226. Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind
of ingratitude.
No. 298. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to
receive greater favors.
No. 304. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot
forgive those whom we bore.
No. 318. Why should we have memory enough to retain even
the smallest particulars of what has happened to us, and yet not
have enough to remember how often we have told them to the
same individual?
The first following maxim satirizes both princes and courtiers. It might be
entitled, "How to insult a prince, and not suffer for your temerity":—
No. 320. To praise princes for virtues they have not, is to insult
them with impunity.
No. 347. We find few sensible people, except those who are of
our way of thinking.
No. 409. We should often be ashamed of our best actions, if the
world saw the motives which cause them.
No. 424. We boast of faults the reverse of those we have: when
we are weak, we boast of being stubborn.
Here, at length, is a maxim that does not depress,—that animates you:—
No. 432. To praise noble actions heartily, is in some sort to take
part in them.

The following is much less exhilarating:—
No. 454. There are few instances in which we should make a
bad bargain, by giving up the good that is said of us, on
condition that nothing bad be said.
This, also:—
No. 458. Our enemies come nearer to the truth, in the opinions
they form of us, than we do ourselves.
Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly "suppressed" by the author, after first
publication:—
No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always find
something which does not displease us.
Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, "Even in the midst of
compassion, we feel within us an unaccountable bitter-sweet titillation of
ill-natured pleasure in seeing another suffer;" and Burke, after both, wrote
(in his "Sublime and Beautiful") with a heavier hand, "I am convinced that
we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes
and pains of others."
La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than is Montaigne. But, as a
man, he wins upon you less. His maxims are like hard and sharp crystals,
precipitated from the worldly wisdom blandly solute and dilute in
Montaigne.
The wise of this world reject the dogma of human depravity, as taught in
the Bible. They willingly accept it,—nay, accept it complacently, hugging
themselves for their own penetration,—as taught in the "Maxims" of La
Rochefoucauld.

Jean de La Bruyère is personally almost as little known as if he were an
ancient of the Greek or Roman world, surviving, like Juvenal, only in his
literary production. Bossuet got him employed to teach history to a great
duke, who became his patron, and settled a life-long annuity upon him. He

published his one book, the "Characters," in 1687, was made member of the
French Academy in 1693, and died in 1696. That, in short, is La Bruyère's
biography.
His book is universally considered one of the most finished products of
the human mind. It is not a great work,—it lacks the unity and the majesty
of design necessary for that. It consists simply of detached thoughts and
observations on a variety of subjects. It shows the author to have been a
man of deep and wise reflection, but especially a consummate master of
style. The book is one to read in, rather than to read. It is full of food to
thought. The very beginning exhibits a self-consciousness on the writer's
part very different from that spontaneous simplicity in which truly great
books originate. La Bruyère begins:—
Every thing has been said; and one comes too late, after more
than seven thousand years that there have been men, and men
who have thought.
La Bruyère has something to say, and that at length unusual for him, of
pulpit eloquence. We select a few specimen sentences:—
Christian eloquence has become a spectacle. That gospel
sadness, which is its soul, is no longer to be observed in it; its
place is supplied by advantages of facial expression, by
inflexions of the voice, by regularity of gesticulation, by choice
of words, and by long categories. The sacred word is no longer
listened to seriously; it is a kind of amusement, one among
many; it is a game in which there is rivalry, and in which there
are those who lay wagers.
Profane eloquence has been transferred, so to speak, from the
bar,... where it is no longer employed, to the pulpit, where it
ought not to be found.
Matches of eloquence are made at the very foot of the altar,
and in the presence of the mysteries. He who listens sits in
judgment on him who preaches, to condemn or to applaud, and
is no more converted by the discourse which he praises than by

that which he pronounces against. The orator pleases some,
displeases others, and has an understanding with all in one thing,
—that as he does not seek to render them better, so they do not
think of becoming better.
The almost cynical acerbity of the preceding is ostensibly relieved of an
obvious application to certain illustrious contemporary examples among
preachers by the following open allusion to Bossuet and Bourdaloue:—
The Bishop of Meaux [Bossuet] and Father Bourdaloue make
me think of Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them, masters of
pulpit eloquence, have had the fortune of great models; the one
has made bad critics, the other, bad imitators.
Here is a happy instance of La Bruyère's successful pains in redeeming a
commonplace sentiment by means of a striking form of expression; the
writer is disapproving the use of oaths in support of one's testimony:—
An honest man who says, Yes, or No, deserves to be believed;
his character swears for him.
Highly satiric in his quiet way, La Bruyère knew how to be. Witness the
following thrust at a contemporary author, not named by the satirist, but, no
doubt, recognized by the public of the time:—
He maintains that the ancients, however unequal and negligent
they may be, have fine traits; he points these out; and they are so
fine that they make his criticism readable.
How painstakingly, how self-consciously, La Bruyère did his literary
work, is evidenced by the following:—

A good author, and one who writes with care, often has the
experience of finding that the expression which he was a long
time in search of without reaching it, and which at length he has
found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and
that which, as it would seem, should have presented itself at
first, and without effort.
We feel that the quality of La Bruyère is such as to fit him for the
admiration and enjoyment of but a comparatively small class of readers. He
was somewhat over-exquisite. His art at times became artifice—infinite
labor of style to make commonplace thought seem valuable by dint of
perfect expression. We dismiss La Bruyère with a single additional extract,
—his celebrated parallel between Corneille and Racine:—
Corneille subjects us to his characters and to his ideas; Racine
accommodates himself to ours. The one paints men as they
ought to be; the other paints them as they are. There is more in
the former of what one admires, and of what one ought even to
imitate; there is more in the latter of what one observes in
others, or of what one experiences in one's self. The one
inspires, astonishes, masters, instructs; the other pleases, moves,
touches, penetrates. Whatever there is most beautiful, most
noble, most imperial, in the reason is made use of by the former;
by the latter, whatever is most seductive and most delicate in
passion. You find in the former, maxims, rules, and precepts; in
the latter, taste and sentiment. You are more absorbed in the
plays of Corneille; you are more shaken and more softened in
those of Racine. Corneille is more moral; Racine, more natural.
The one appears to make Sophocles his model; the other owes
more to Euripides.

Less than half a century after La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère had
shown the way, Vauvenargues followed in a similar style of authorship,
promising almost to rival the fame of his two predecessors. This writer,
during his brief life (he died at thirty-two), produced one not inconsiderable

literary work more integral and regular in form, entitled, "Introduction to
the Knowledge of the Human Mind"; but it is his disconnected thoughts and
observations chiefly that continue to preserve his name.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, though nobly born, was poor.
His health was frail. He did not receive a good education in his youth.
Indeed, he was still in his youth when he went to the wars. His culture
always remained narrow. He did not know Greek and Latin, when to know
Greek and Latin was, as it were, the whole of scholarship. To crown his
accidental disqualifications for literary work, he fell a victim to the small-
pox, which left him wrecked in body. This occurred almost immediately
after he abandoned a military career which had been fruitful to him of
hardship, but not of promotion. In spite of all that was thus against him,
Vauvenargues, in those years, few and evil, that were his, thought finely and
justly enough to earn for himself a lasting place in the literary history of his
nation. He was in the eighteenth century of France, without being of it. You
have to separate him in thought from the infidels and the "philosophers" of
his time. He belongs in spirit to an earlier age. His moral and intellectual
kindred was with such as Pascal, far more than with such as Voltaire.
Vauvenargues is, however, a writer for the few, instead of for the many. His
fame is high, but it is not wide. Historically, he forms a stepping-stone of
transition to a somewhat similar nineteenth-century name, that of Joubert. A
very few sentences of his will suffice to indicate to our readers the quality
of Vauvenargues. Self-evidently, the following antithesis drawn by him
between Corneille and Racine is subtly and ingeniously thought, as well as
very happily expressed—this, whatever may be considered to be its aptness
in point of literary appreciation:—
Corneille's heroes often say great things without inspiring
them; Racine's inspire them without saying them.
Here is a good saying:—
It is a great sign of mediocrity always to be moderate in
praising.
There is worldly wisdom also here:—

He who knows how to turn his prodigalities to good account,
practises a large and noble economy.
Virgil's "They are able, because they seem to themselves to be able," is
recalled by this:—
The consciousness of our strength makes our strength greater.
So much for Vauvenargues.

VI.
LA FONTAINE.
1621-1695.
La Fontaine enjoys a unique fame. He has absolutely "no fellow in the
firmament" of literature. He is the only fabulist, of any age or any nation,
that, on the score simply of his fables, is admitted to be poet as well as
fabulist. There is perhaps no other literary name whatever among the
French, by long proof more secure, than is La Fontaine's, of universal and
of immortal renown. Such a fame is, of course, not the most resplendent in
the world; but to have been the first, and to remain thus far the only, writer
of fables enjoying recognition as true poetry,—this surely is an achievement
entitling La Fontaine to monumental mention in any sketch, however
summary, of French literature.
Jean de La Fontaine was humbly born, at Château-Thierry in Champagne.
His early education was sadly neglected. At twenty years of age he was still
phenomenally ignorant. About this time, being now better situated, he
developed a taste for the classics and for poetry. With La Fontaine the man,
it is the sadly familiar French story of debauched manners in life and in
literary production. We cannot acquit him, but we are to condemn him only
in common with the most of his age and of his nation. As the world goes,
La Fontaine was a "good fellow," never lacking friends. These were held
fast in loyalty to the poet, not so much by any sterling worth of character
felt in him, as by an exhaustless, easy-going good-nature, that, despite his
social insipidity, made La Fontaine the most acceptable of every-day
companions. It would be easy to repeat many stories illustrative of this
personal quality in La Fontaine, while to tell a single story illustrative of
any lofty trait in his character would he perhaps impossible. Still, La

Fontaine seemed not ungrateful for the benefits he received from others;
and gratitude, no commonplace virtue, let us accordingly reckon to the
credit of a man in general so slenderly equipped with positive claims to
admiring personal regard. The mirror of bonhomie (easy-hearted good-
fellowship), he always was. Indeed, that significant, almost untranslatable,
French word might have been coined to fit La Fontaine's case. On his
amiable side—a full hemisphere or more of the man—it sums him up
completely. Twenty years long, this mirror of bonhomie was domiciliated,
like a pet animal, under the hospitable roof of the celebrated Madame de la
Sablière. There was truth as well as humor implied in what she said one
day: "I have sent away all my domestics; I have kept only my dog, my cat,
and La Fontaine."
But La Fontaine had that in him which kept the friendship of serious men.
Molière, a grave, even melancholy spirit, however gay in his comedies;
Boileau and Racine, decorous both of them, at least in manners,—
constituted, together with La Fontaine, a kind of private "Academy,"
existing on a diminutive scale, which was not without its important
influence on French letters. La Fontaine seems to have been a sort of
Goldsmith in this club of wits, the butt of many pleasantries from his
colleagues, called out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augustine was
one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La Fontaine lost the
benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged meantime on a quite
different character. Catching, however, at the name, La Fontaine, as he
came to himself for a moment, betrayed the secret of his absent thoughts by
asking, "Do you think St. Augustine had as much wit as Rabelais?"—"Take
care, Monsieur La Fontaine: you have put one of your stockings on wrong
side out,"—he had actually done so,—was the only answer vouchsafed to
his question. The speaker in this case was a doctor of the Sorbonne (brother
to Boileau), present as guest. The story is told of La Fontaine, that egged on
to groundless jealousy of his wife,—a wife whom he never really loved,
and whom he soon would finally abandon,—he challenged a military friend
of his to combat with swords. The friend was amazed, and, amazed,
reluctantly fought with La Fontaine, whom he easily put at his mercy.
"Now, what is this for?" he demanded. "The public says you visit my house
for my wife's sake, not for mine," said La Fontaine. "Then I never will

come again." "Far from it," responds La Fontaine, seizing his friend's hand.
"I have satisfied the public. Now you must come to my house every day, or
I will fight you again." The two went back in company, and breakfasted
together in mutual good humor.
A trait or two more, and there will have been enough of the man La
Fontaine. It is said that when, on the death of Madame de la Sablière, La
Fontaine was homeless, he was met on the street by a friend, who
exclaimed, "I was looking for you; come to my house, and live with me!" "I
was on the way there," La Fontaine characteristically replied. At seventy, La
Fontaine went through a process of "conversion," so called, in which he
professed repentance of his sins. On the genuineness of this inward
experience of La Fontaine, it is not for a fellow-creature of his, especially at
this distance of time, to pronounce. When he died, at seventy-three, Fénelon
could say of him (in Latin), "La Fontaine is no more! He is no more; and
with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces,
and the sweet Muses!"
La Fontaine's earliest works were Contes, so styled; that is, stories, tales,
or romances. These are in character such that the subsequent happy change
in manners, if not in morals, has made them unreadable,—for their
indecency. We need concern ourselves only with the Fables, for it is on
these that La Fontaine's fame securely rests. The basis of story in them was
not generally original with La Fontaine. He took whatever fittest came to
his hand. With much modesty, he attributed all to Æsop and Phædrus. But
invention of his own is not altogether wanting to his books of fables. Still, it
is chiefly the consummate artful artlessness of the form that constitutes the
individual merit of La Fontaine's productions. With something, too, of the
air of real poetry, he has undoubtedly invested his verse.
We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been the prime favorite
of the author himself. It is the fable of "The Oak and the Reed." Of this
fable, French critics have not scrupled to speak in terms of almost the very
highest praise. Chamfort says, "Let one consider, that, within the limit of
thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield himself to the current of
his story, has taken on every tone, that of poetry the most graceful, that of
poetry the most lofty, and one will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch

at which this fable appeared, there was nothing comparable to it in the
French language." There are, to speak precisely, thirty-two lines in the
fable. In this one case, let us try representing La Fontaine's compression by
our English form. For the rest of our specimens, we shall use Elizur
Wright's translation,—a meritorious one, still master of the field which,
near fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here expands La
Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty-four. The additions are not ungraceful,
but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the
original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition
which had been making Alexandrines—lines of six feet—obligatory in
French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice, and makes his verses long or
short, as pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece is, in
accordance with the intended majesty of the representation, an Alexandrine.

The Oak one day said to the Reed,
"Justly might you dame Nature blame:
A wren's weight would bow down your frame;
The lightest wind that chance may make
Dimple the surface of the lake
Your head bends low indeed,
The while, like Caucasus, my front
To meet the branding sun is wont,
Nay, more, to take the tempest's brunt.

A blast you feel, I feel a breeze.
Had you been born beneath my roof,
Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof,
Less had you known your life to tease;
I should have sheltered you from storm.
But oftenest you rear your form
On the moist limits of the realm of wind.
Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned."
"Your pity," answers him the Heed,
"Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain;
I more than you may winds disdain.

I bend, and break not. You, indeed,
Against their dreadful strokes till now
Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow:
But wait we for the end."
Scarce had he spoke,
When fiercely from the far horizon broke
The wildest of the children, fullest fraught
With terror, that till then the North had brought.
The tree holds good; the reed it bends.
The wind redoubled might expends,
And so well works that from his bed
Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head
Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the dead.

In the fable of the "Rat retired from the World," La Fontaine rallies the
monks. "With French finesse, he hits his mark by expressly avoiding it.
"What think you I mean by my disobliging rat? A monk? No, but a
Mahometan devotee; I take it for granted that a monk is always ready with
his help to the needy!"

The sage Levantines have a tale
About a rat that weary grew
Of all the cares which life assail,
And to a Holland cheese withdrew.
His solitude was there profound,
Extending through his world so round.
Our hermit lived on that within;
And soon his industry had been
With claws and teeth so good,
That in his novel heritage,
He had in store for wants of age,
Both house and livelihood.
What more could any rat desire?
He grew fat, fair, and round.

God's blessings thus redound
To those who in his vows retire.
One day this personage devout,
Whose kindness none might doubt,
Was asked, by certain delegates
That came from Rat United States,
For some small aid, for they
To foreign parts were on their way,
For succor in the great cat-war:
Ratopolis beleaguered sore,
Their whole republic drained and poor,
No morsel in their scrips they bore.
Slight boon they craved, of succor sure
In days at utmost three or four.
"My friends," the hermit said,
"To worldly things I'm dead.
How can a poor recluse
To such a mission be of use?
What can he do but pray
That God will aid it on its way?
And so, my friends, it is my prayer
That God will have you in his care."
His well-fed saintship said no more,
But in their faces shut the door.
What think you, reader, is the service,
For which I use this niggard rat?
To paint a monk? No, but a dervise.
A monk, I think, however fat,
Must be more bountiful than that.

The fable entitled "Death and the Dying" is much admired for its union of
pathos with wit. "The Two Doves" is another of La Fontaine's more tender
inspirations. "The Mogul's Dream" is a somewhat ambitious flight of the
fabulist's muse. On the whole, however, the masterpiece among the fables
of La Fontaine is that of "The Animals Sick of the Plague." Such at least is

the opinion of critics in general. The idea of this fable is not original with
La Fontaine. The homilists of the middle ages used a similar fiction to
enforce on priests the duty of impartiality in administering the sacrament,
so called, of confession. We give this famous fable as our closing specimen
of La Fontaine:—

The sorest ill that Heaven hath
Sent oil this lower world in wrath,—
The plague (to call it by its name),
One single day of which
Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,
Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame.
They died not all, but all were sick:
No hunting now, by force or trick,
To save what might so soon expire.
No food excited their desire:
Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay
The innocent and tender prey.
The turtles fled,
So love and therefore joy were dead.
The lion council held, and said,
"My friends, I do believe
This awful scourge for which we grieve,
Is for our sins a punishment
Most righteously by Heaven sent.
Let us our guiltiest beast resign,
A sacrifice to wrath divine.
Perhaps this offering, truly small,
May gain the life and health of all.
By history we find it noted
That lives have been just so devoted.
Then let us all turn eyes within,
And ferret out the hidden sin.
Himself, let no one spare nor flatter,
But make clean conscience in the matter.

For me, my appetite has played the glutton
Too much and often upon mutton.
What harm had e'er my victims done?
I answer, truly, None.
Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger pressed,
I've eat the shepherd with the rest.
I yield myself if need there be;
And yet I think, in equity,
Each should confess his sins with me;
For laws of right and justice cry,
The guiltiest alone should die."
"Sire," said the fox, "your majesty
Is humbler than a king should be,
And over-squeamish in the case.
What! eating stupid sheep a crime?
No, never, sire, at any time.

It rather was an act of grace,
A mark of honor to their race.
And as to shepherds, one may swear,
The fate your majesty describes,
Is recompense less full than fair
For such usurpers o'er our tribes."

Thus Renard glibly spoke,
And loud applause from listeners broke.
Of neither tiger, boar, nor bear,
Did any keen inquirer dare
To ask for crimes of high degree;
The fighters, biters, scratchers, all
From every mortal sin were free;
The very dogs, both great and small,
Were saints, as far as dogs could be.

The ass, confessing in his turn,
Thus spoke in tones of deep concern:

"I happened through a mead to pass;
The monks, its owners, were at mass:
Keen hunger, leisure, tender grass,
And, add to these the devil, too,
All tempted me the deed to do.
I browsed the bigness of my tongue:
Since truth must out, I own it wrong."
On this, a hue and cry arose,
As if the beasts were all his foes.
A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise,
Denounced the ass for sacrifice,—
The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout,
By whom the plague had come, no doubt.
His fault was judged a hanging crime.
What! eat another's grass? Oh, shame!
The noose of rope, and death sublime,
For that offence were all too tame!
And soon poor Grizzle felt the same.

Thus human courts acquit the strong,
And doom the weak, as therefore wrong.

It is suitable to add, in conclusion, that La Fontaine is a crucial author for
disclosing the irreconcilable difference that exists, at bottom, between the
Englishman's and the Frenchman's idea of poetry. No English-speaker, heir
of Shakspeare and Milton, will ever be able to satisfy a Frenchman with
admiration such as he can conscientiously profess for the poetry of La
Fontaine.

VII.
MOLIÈRE.
1623-1673.
Molière is confessedly the greatest writer of comedy in the world. Greek
Menander might have disputed the palm; but Menander's works have
perished, and his greatness must be guessed. Who knows but we guess him
too great? Molière's works survive, and his greatness may be measured.
We have stinted our praise. Molière is not only; the foremost name in a
certain department of literature; he is one of the foremost names in
literature. The names are few on which critics are willing to bestow this
distinction. But critics generally agree in bestowing this distinction on
Molière.
Molière's comedy is by no means mere farce. Farces he wrote,
undoubtedly; and some element of farce, perhaps, entered to qualify nearly
every comedy that flowed from his pen. But it is not for his farce that
Molière is rated one of the few greatest producers of literature. Molière's
comedy constitutes to Molière the patent that it does of high degree in
genius, not because it provokes laughter, but because, amid laughter
provoked, it not seldom reveals, as if with flashes of lightning,—lightning
playful, indeed, but lightning that might have been deadly,—the "secrets of
the nethermost abyss" of human nature. Not human manners merely, those
of a time, or of a race, but human attributes, those of all times, and of all
races, are the things with which, in his higher comedies, Molière deals.
Some transient whim of fashion may in these supply to him the mould of
form that he uses, but it is human nature itself that supplies to Molière the
substance of his dramatic creations. Now and again, if you read Molière

wisely and deeply, you find your laughter at comedy fairly frozen in your
throat, by a gelid horror seizing you, to feel that these follies or these crimes
displayed belong to that human nature, one and the same everywhere and
always, of which also you yourself partake. Comedy, Dante, too, called his
poem, which included the "Inferno." And a Dantesque quality, not of
method, but of power, is to be felt in Molière.
This character in Molière the writer, accords with the character of the man
Molière. It might not have seemed natural to say of Molière, as was said of
Dante, "There goes the man that has been in hell." But Molière was
melancholy enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an
exclamation such as, 'There goes the man that has seen the human heart.'
A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at least, feel
Molière to be. In Victor Hugo's list of the eight greatest poets of all time,
two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks (Homer and Æschylus), one
is a Roman (Lucretius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman
(Shakspeare),—seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a Frenchman, and
that Frenchman is Molière. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps make the list
nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo himself.
Curiously enough, Molière is not this great writer's real name. It is a stage
name. It was assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty-four years
of age, on occasion of his becoming one in a strolling band of players,—in
1646 or thereabout. This band, originally composed of amateurs, developed
into a professional dramatic company, which passed through various
transformations, until, from being at first grandiloquently self-styled,
L'Illustre Théâtre, it was, twenty years after, recognized by the national title
of Théâtre Français. Molière's real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin.
Young Poquelin's bent, early encouraged by seeing plays and ballets, was
strongly toward the stage. The drama, under the quickening patronage of
Louis XIII.'s lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public interest
of those times in Paris. Molière's evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that
brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired a certain actress in the
capital. She became the companion—probably not innocent companion—of
his wandering life as actor. A sister of this actress—a sister young enough to

be daughter, instead of sister—Molière finally married. She led her jealous
husband a wretched conjugal life. A peculiarly dark tradition of shame,
connected with Molière's marriage, has lately been to a good degree
dispelled. But it is not possible to redeem this great man's fame to chastity
and honor. He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs of
jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy for himself hidden
within the comedy that he acted for others. (Molière, to the very end of his
life, acted in the comedies that he wrote.) When some play of his
represented the torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it was
probably not so much acting, as it was real life, that the spectators saw
proceeding on the stage between Molière and his wife, confronted with
each other in performing the piece.
Despite his faults, Molière was cast in a noble, generous mould, of
character as well as of genius. Expostulated with for persisting to appear on
the stage when his health was such that he put his life at stake in so doing,
he replied that the men and women of his company depended for their bread
on the play's going through, and appear he would. He actually died an hour
or so after playing the part of the Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that
name. That piece was the last work of his pen.
Molière produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from among which
we select a few of the most celebrated for brief description and illustration.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" ("Shopkeeper turned Gentleman")
partakes of the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy.
But it is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Molière
ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure
in a social rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his merit. Jourdain
is the name under which Molière satirizes such a character. We give a
fragment from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process of fitting himself
for that higher position in society to which he aspires. He will equip himself
with the necessary knowledge. To this end he employs a professor of
philosophy to come and give him lessons at his house:—
M. Jourdain. I have the greatest desire in the world to be
learned; and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and

mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when
I was young.
Professor of Philosophy. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam
sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this,
and you have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin?
M. Jour. Yes; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the
meaning of it.
Prof. Phil. The meaning of it is, that, without science, life is an
image of death.
M. Jour. That Latin is quite right.
Prof. Phil. Have you any principles, any rudiments, of
science?
M. Jour. Oh, yes! I can read and write.
Prop. Phil. With what would you like to begin? Shall I teach
you logic?
M. Jour. And what may this logic be?
Prof. Phil. It is that which teaches us the three operations of
the mind.
M. Jour. What are they—these three operations of the mind?
Prof. Phil. The first, the second, and the third. The first is to
conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well
by means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion
aright by means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio,
Baralipton, etc.
M. Jour. Pooh! what repulsive words! This logic does not by
any means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening.
Prof. Phil. Will you learn moral philosophy?

M. Jour. Moral philosophy?
Prof. Phil. Yes.
M. Jour. What does it say, this moral philosophy?
Prof. Phil.It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their
passions, and—
M. Jour. No, none of that. I am devilishly hot-tempered, and
morality, or no morality, I like to give full vent to my anger
whenever I have a mind to it.
Prof. Phil. Would you like to learn physics?
M. Jour. And what have physics to say for themselves?
Prof. Phil. Physics are that science which explains the
principles of natural things and the properties of bodies; which
discourses of the nature of the elements, of metals, minerals,
stones, plants, and animals; which teaches us the cause of all the
meteors, the rainbow, the ignis fatuus, comets, lightning,
thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, and whirlwinds.
M. Jour. There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too much
riot and rumpus.
Prof. Phil. Very good.
M. Jour. And now I want to intrust you with a great secret. I
am in love with a lady of quality, and I should be glad if you
would help me to write something to her in a short letter which I
mean to drop at her feet.
Prof. Phil. Very well.
M. Jour. That will be gallant, will it not?
Prof. Phil. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her?
M. Jour. Oh, no! not verse.

Prof. Phil. You only wish prose?
M. Jour. No. I wish for neither verse nor prose.
Prof. Phil. It must be one or the other.
M. Jour.Why?
Prof. Phil. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can
express ourselves except prose or verse.
M. Jour. There is nothing but prose or verse?
Prof. Phil. No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; and
whatever is not verse, is prose.
M. Jour.And when we speak, what is that, then?
Prof. Phil. Prose.
M. Jour. What! when I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and
give me my nightcap," is that prose?
Prof. Phil. Yes, sir.
M. Jour. Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these
forty years without being aware of it; and I am under the
greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. Well, then, I
wish to write to her in a letter, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful
eyes make me die of love;" but I would have this worded in a
genteel manner, and turned prettily.
Prof. Phil. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart
to ashes; that you suffer day and night for her, tortures—
M. Jour. No, no, no, I don't any of that. I simply wish for what
I tell you,—"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die
of love."
Prof. Phil. Still, you might amplify the thing a little.

M. Jour. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these very
words in the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way,
and arranged as they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I
may see the different ways in which they can be put.
Prof. Phil. They may be put first of all, as you have said, "Fair
Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" or else,
"Of love die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes;"
or, "Your beautiful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness,
die;" or, "Die of love your beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness,
make me;" or else, "Me make your beautiful eyes die, fair
Marchioness, of love."
M. Jour. But of all these ways, which is the best?
Prof. Phil. The one you said,—"Fair Marchioness, your
beautiful eyes make me die of love."
M. Jour. Yet I have never studied, and I did all right off at the
first shot.
The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" is a very amusing comedy throughout.
From "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Women")—"The Blue-
Stockings," we might perhaps freely render the title—we present one scene
to indicate the nature of the comedy. There had grown to be a fashion in
Paris, among certain women high in social rank, of pretending to the
distinction of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in science. It was
the Hôtel de Rambouillet reduced to absurdity. That fashionable affectation
Molière made the subject of his comedy, "The Learned Women."
In the following extracts, Molière satirizes, under the name of Trissotin, a
contemporary writer, one Cotin. The poem which Trissotin reads for the
learned women to criticise and admire, is an actual production of this
gentleman. Imagine the domestic coterie assembled, and Trissotin, the poet,
their guest. He is present, prepared to regale them with what he calls his
sonnet. We need to explain that the original poem is thus inscribed: "To
Mademoiselle de Longueville, now Duchess of Namur, on her Quartan

Fever." The conceit of the sonneteer is that the fever is an enemy
luxuriously lodged in the lovely person of its victim, and there insidiously
plotting against her life:—
Trissotin. Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever,
Your prudence sure is fast asleep,
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
Bélise. Ah! what a pretty beginning!
Armande. What a charming turn it has!
Philaminte. He alone possesses the talent of making easy verses.
Arm. We must yield to prudence fast asleep.
Bél. Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe is full of charms for me.
Phil. I like luxuriously and magnificently: these two adverbs joined
together sound admirably.
Bél. Let us hear the rest.
Triss. Your prudence sure is fast asleep,
That thus luxuriously you keep
And lodge magnificently so
Your very hardest-hearted foe.
Arm. Prudence fast asleep.
Bél. To lodge one's foe.
Phil. Luxuriously and magnificently.
Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
From out your chamber, decked so gay,
Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,
Bold she assails your lovely life.

Bél. Ah! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you.
Arm.Give us time to admire, I beg.
Phil. One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable something
which goes through one's inmost soul, and makes one feel quite
faint.
Arm. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, From out your chamber,
decked so gay—
How prettily chamber, decked so gay, is said here! And with what wit
the metaphor is introduced!
Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say.
Ah! in what an admirable taste that whate'er men say is! To my mind,
the passage is invaluable.
Arm. My heart is also in love with whate'er men say.
Bél. I am of your opinion: whate'er men say is a happy expression.
Arm. I wish I had written it.
Bél. It is worth a whole poem.
Phil. But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the wit of it?
Arm. and Bél. Oh! Oh!
Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say. Although another should
take the fever's part, pay no attention; laugh at the gossips.
Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,
Whate'er men say, whate'er men say.
This whate'er men say, says a great deal more than it seems. I do not know
if every one is like me, but I discover in it a hundred meanings.
Bél. It is true that it says more than its size seems to imply.

Phil. (to Trissotin). But when you wrote this charming whate'er men
say, did you yourself understand all its energy? Did you realize all
that it tells us? And did you then think that you were writing
something so witty?
Triss. Ah! ah!
Arm. I have likewise the ingrate in my head,—this ungrateful, unjust,
uncivil fever that ill-treats people who entertain her.
Phil. In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us come quickly to
the triplets, I pray.
Arm. Ah! once more, whate'er men say, I beg.
Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Whate'er men say!
Triss. From out your chamber, decked so gay,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Chamber decked so gay!
Triss. Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. That ingrate fever!
Triss. Bold she assails your lovely life.
Phil. Your lovely life!
Arm. and Bél. Ah!
Triss. What! reckless of your ladyhood,
Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood,—
Phil., Arm., and Bél. Ah!
Triss. And day and night to work you harm.
When to the baths sometime you've brought her
No more ado, with your own arm
Whelm her and drown her in the water.

Phil. Ah! It is quite overpowering.
Bél. I faint.
Arm. I die from pleasure.
Phil. A thousand sweet thrills seize one.
Arm. When to the baths sometime you've brought her,
Bél. No more ado, with your own arm
Phil. Whelm her and drown her in the water. With your own arm,
drown her there in the baths.
Arm. In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty.
Bél. One promenades through them with rapture.
Phil. One treads on fine things only.
Arm. They are little lanes all strewn with roses.
Triss. Then, the sonnet seems to you—
Phil. Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more
beautiful.
Bél. (to Henriette). What! my niece, you listen to what has been read
without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!
Hen. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a wit
does not depend on our will.
Triss. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.
Hen. No. I do not listen.
Phil. Ah! Let us hear the epigram.
But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epigram. They will
relish, however, a fragment taken from a subsequent part of the same

protracted scene. The conversation has made the transition from literary
criticism to philosophy, in Molière's time a fashionable study rendered such
by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande resents the
limitations imposed upon her sex:—
Arm. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the
power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the
beauties of lace, or of a new brocade.
Bél. We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely
proclaim our emancipation.
Triss. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that, if I
render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honor the
splendor of their intellect.
Phil. And our sex does you justice in this respect: but we will show to
certain minds who treat us with proud contempt, that women also
have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned meetings—
regulated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite what
elsewhere is kept apart, join noble language to deep learning,
reveal nature's laws by a thousand experiments; and, on all
questions proposed, admit every party, and ally themselves to
none.
Triss. For order, I prefer peripateticism.
Phil. For abstractions, I love platonism.
Arm. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid.
Bél. I agree with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to
understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter.
Triss. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.
Arm. I like his vortices.
Phil. And I, his falling worlds.

Arm. I long to see our assembly opened, and to distinguish ourselves
by some great discovery.
Triss. Much is expected from your enlightened knowledge, for nature
has hidden few things from you.
Phil. For my part, I have, without boasting, already made one
discovery; I have plainly seen men in the moon.
Bél. I have not, I believe, as yet quite distinguished men, but I have
seen steeples as plainly as I see you.
Arm. In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into grammar,
history, verse, ethics, and politics.
Phil. I find in ethics charms which delight my heart; it was formerly
the admiration of great geniuses: but I give the preference to the
Stoics, and I think nothing so grand as their founder.
"Les Précieuses Ridicules" is an earlier and lighter treatment of the same
theme. The object of ridicule in both these pieces was a lapsed and
degenerate form of what originally was a thing worthy of respect, and even
of praise. At the Hôtel de Rambouillet, conversation was cultivated as a fine
art. There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the standards which the
ladies of that circle enforced. Their mutual communication was all
conducted in a peculiar style of language, the natural deterioration of which
was into a kind of euphuism, such as English readers will remember to have
seen exemplified in Walter Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies called
each other, with demonstrative fondness, "Ma précieuse." Hence at last the
term précieuse as a designation of ridicule. Madame de Sévigné was a
précieuse. But she, with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic
common sense to be a précieuse ridicule. Molière himself, thrifty master of
policy that he was, took pains to explain that he did not satirize the real
thing, but only the affectation.
"Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most celebrated of all Molière's
plays. Scarcely comedy, scarcely tragedy, it partakes of both characters.
Like tragedy, serious in purpose, it has a happy ending like comedy. Pity

and terror are absent; or, if not quite absent, these sentiments are present
raised only to a pitch distinctly below the tragic. Indignation is the chief
passion excited, or detestation, perhaps, rather than indignation. This
feeling is provided at last with its full satisfaction in the condign
punishment visited on the impostor.
The original "Tartuffe," like the most of Molière's comedies, is written in
rhymed verse. We could not, with any effort, make the English-reading
student of Molière sufficiently feel how much is lost when the form is lost
which the creations of this great genius took, in their native French, under
his own master hand. A satisfactory metrical rendering is out of the
question. The sense, at least, if not the incommunicable spirit, of the
original is very well given in Mr. C. H. Wall's version, which we use.
The story of "Tartuffe" is briefly this: Tartuffe, the hero, is a pure villain.
He mixes no adulteration of good in his composition. He is hypocrisy itself,
the strictly genuine article. Tartuffe has completely imposed upon one
Orgon, a man of wealth and standing. Orgon, with his wife, and with his
mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. These people have received the
canting rascal into their house, and are about to bestow upon him their
daughter in marriage. The following scene from act first shows the skill
with which Molière could exhibit, in a few strokes of bold exaggeration, the
infatuation of Orgon's regard for Tartuffe. Orgon has been absent from
home. He returns, and meets Cléante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness,
he begs to excuse his not answering a question just addressed to him:—
Orgon (to Cléante). Brother, pray excuse me: you will kindly
allow me to allay my anxiety by asking news of the family. (To
Dorine, a maid-servant.) Has every thing gone on well these last
two days? What has happened? How is everybody?
Dor. The day before yesterday our mistress was very feverish
from morning to night, and suffered from a most extraordinary
headache.
Org. And Tartuffe?

Dor. Tartuffe! He is wonderfully well, stout and fat, with
blooming cheeks and ruddy lips.
Org. Poor man!
Dor. In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain in her head
was so great that she could not touch any thing at supper.
Org. And Tartuffe?
Dor. He ate his supper by himself before her, and very
devoutly devoured a brace of partridges, and half a leg of
mutton hashed.
Org. Poor man!
Dor. She spent the whole of the night without getting one wink
of sleep: she was very feverish, and we had to sit up with her
until the morning.
Org. And Tartuffe?
Dor. Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from the
table to his room, and got at once into his warmed bed, where he
slept comfortably till the next morning.
Org. Poor man!
Dor. At last yielding to our persuasions, she consented to be
bled, and immediately felt relieved.
Org. And Tartuffe?
Dor. He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his soul
against all evils, to make up for the blood which our lady had
lost, drank at breakfast four large bumpers of wine.
Org. Poor man!
Dor. Now, at last, they are both well; and I will go and tell our
lady how glad you are to hear of her recovery.

Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefactor by making improper
advances to that benefactor's wife. Orgon's son, who does not share his
father's confidence in Tartuffe, happens to be an unseen witness of the
man's infamous conduct. He exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the result
of being himself expelled from the house for his pains; while Tartuffe, in
recompense for the injury done to his feelings, is presented with a gift-deed
of Orgon's estate. But now Orgon's wife contrives to let her husband see
and hear for himself the vileness of Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts the
villain, and, with just indignation, orders him out of his house. Tartuffe
reminds Orgon that the shoe is on the other foot; that he is himself now
owner there, and that it is Orgon, instead of Tartuffe, who must go. Orgon
has an interview with his mother, who is exasperatingly sure still that
Tartuffe is a maligned good man:—
Madame Pernelle. I can never believe, my son, that he would
commit so base an action.
Org. What?
Per. Good people are always subject to envy.
Org. What do you mean, mother?
Per. That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but
too well aware of the ill will they all bear him.
Org. What has this ill will to do with what I have just told you?
Per. I have told it you a hundred times when you were young,
that in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that,
although the envious die, envy never dies.
Org. But what has this to do with what has happened to-day?
Per. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against
him.
Org. I have already told you that I saw it all myself.
Per. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great.

Org. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw
his audacious attempt with my own eyes.
Per. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and
here below, there is nothing proof against them.
Org. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I
tell you,—saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w,
saw! Must I din it over and over into your ears, and shout as
loud as half a dozen people?
Per. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We
must not always judge by what we see.
Org. I shall go mad!
Per. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is
often mistaken for evil.
Org. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as
charitable?
Per. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse
another, and you should have waited till you were quite sure of
the fact.
Org. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I
suppose, mother, I ought to have waited till—you will make me
say something foolish.
Per. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I
cannot possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what
you accuse him of.
Org. If you were not my mother, I really don't know what I
might now say to you, you make me so savage.
The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea, the suggestion
that under the existing circumstances some sort of peace ought to be

patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Meantime one Loyal is observed
coming, whereupon the fourth scene of act fifth opens:—
Loy. (to Dorine at the farther part of the stage). Good-day, my
dear sister; pray let me speak to your master.
Dor. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see any one
just now.
Loy. I would not be intrusive. I feel sure that he will find
nothing unpleasant in my visit: in fact, I come for something
which will be very gratifying to him.
Dor. What is your name?
Loy. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tartuffe, for his
benefit.
Dor. (to Orgon). It is a man who comes in a civil way from
Mr. Tartuffe, on some business which will make you glad, he
says.
Clé. (to Orgon). You must see who it is, and what the man
wants.
Org. (to Cléante). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters
between us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to
behave to him?
Clé. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of an
agreement, listen to him.
Loy. (to Orgon). Your servant, sir! May heaven punish
whoever wrongs you! and may it be as favorable to you, sir, as I
wish!
Org. (aside to Cléante). This pleasant beginning agrees with
my conjectures, and argues some sort of reconciliation.

Loy. All your family was always dear to me, and I served your
father.
Org. Sir, I am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not know
who you are, neither do I remember your name.
Loy. My name is Loyal; I was born in Normandy, and am a
royal bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years I have had
the good fortune to fill the office, thanks to Heaven, with great
credit; and I come, sir, with your leave, to serve you the writ of a
certain order.
Org. What! you are here—
Loy. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons,—a notice for
you to leave this place, you and yours; to take away all your
goods and chattels, and make room for others, without delay or
adjournment, as hereby decreed.
Org. I! leave this place?
Loy. Yes, sir; if you please. The house incontestably belongs,
as you are well aware, to the good Mr. Tartuffe. He is now lord
and master of your estates, according to a deed I have in my
keeping. It is in due form, and cannot be challenged.
Damis (to Mr. Loyal). This great impudence is, indeed, worthy
of all admiration.
Loy. (to Damis). Sir, I have nothing at all to do with you.
(Pointing to Orgon.) My business is with this gentleman. He is
tractable and gentle, and knows too well the duty of a gentleman
to try to oppose authority.
Org. But—
Loy. Yes, sir: I know that you would not, for any thing, show
contumacy; and that you will allow me, like a reasonable man,
to execute the orders I have received....

The scene gives in conclusion some spirited by-play of asides and
interruptions from indignant members of the family. Then follows scene
fifth, one exchange of conversation from which will sufficiently indicate the
progress of the plot:—
Org. Well, mother, you see whether I am right; and you can
judge of the rest by the writ. Do you at last acknowledge his
rascality?
Per. I am thunderstruck, and can scarcely believe my eyes and
ears.
The next scene introduces Valère, the noble lover of that daughter whom
the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Valère comes to
announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Orgon to the king. Orgon
must fly. Valère offers him his own carriage and money,—will, in fact,
himself keep him company till he reaches a place of safety. As Orgon,
taking hasty leave of his family, turns to go, he is encountered by—the
following scene will show whom:—
Tar. (stopping Orgon). Gently, sir, gently; not so fast, I beg.
You have not far to go to find a lodging, and you are a prisoner
in the king's name.
Org. Wretch! you had reserved this shaft for the last; by it you
finish me, and crown all your perfidies.
Tar. Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I know how
to suffer every thing for the sake of Heaven.
Clé. Your moderation is really great, we must acknowledge.
Da. How impudently the infamous wretch sports with Heaven!
Tar. Your anger cannot move me. I have no other wish but to
fulfil my duty.
Marianne. You may claim great glory from the performance of
this duty: it is a very honorable employment for you.

Tar. The employment cannot be otherwise than glorious, when
it comes from the power that sends me here.
Org. But do you remember that my charitable hand, ungrateful
scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery?
Tar. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the
interest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this
sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would
sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself with them.
Elmire. The impostor!
Dor. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all
that men revere!...
Tar. (to the Officer). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all
this noise, and to act according to the orders you have received.
Officer. I have certainly put off too long the discharge of my
duty, and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order,
follow me immediately to the prison in which a place is
assigned to you.
Tar. Who? I, sir?
Officer. Yes, you.
Tar. Why to prison?
Officer. To you I have no account to render. (To Orgon.) Pray,
sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under a king [Louis
XIV.] who is an enemy to fraud,—a king who can read the heart,
and whom all the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great
mind, endowed with delicate discernment, at all times sees
things in their true, light.... He annuls, by his sovereign will, the
terms of the contract by which you gave him [Tartuffe] your
property. He moreover forgives you this secret offence in which
you were involved by the flight of your friend. This to reward

the zeal which you once showed for him in maintaining his
rights, and to prove that his heart, when it is least expected,
knows how to recompense a good action. Merit with him is
never lost, and he remembers good better than evil.
Dor. Heaven be thanked!
Per. Ah! I breathe again.
El. What a favorable end to our troubles!
Mar. Who would have foretold it?
Org. (to Tartuffe, as the Officer leads him off). Ah, wretch!
now you are—
Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends, with a vanishing
glimpse afforded us of a happy marriage in prospect for Valère with the
daughter.
Molière is said to have had a personal aim in drawing the character of
Tartuffe. This, at least, was like Dante. There is not much sweet laughter in
such a comedy. But there is a power that is dreadful.
Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies its bright and
ingenious wits who produce comedy. But as there is no second Shakspeare,
so there is but one Molière.

VIII.
PASCAL.
1623-1662.
Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. He achieved
notable things. But it is what he might have done, still more than what he
did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of
the chief intellectual glories of France.
Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is
that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of
languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject.
Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow, about his
eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible
progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a
treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of
Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations
in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches toward
Newton's binomial theorem.
Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His
health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed mental
diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at first with
reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and
susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was
going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in
which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the
world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he
died—in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed

with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he
detected himself at fault in his spirit.
Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted, worthy of fame, in science,
it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. His,
in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had not written the
"Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."
The "Provincial Letters" is an abbreviated title. The title in full originally
was, "Letters written by Louis de Montalte to a Provincial, one of his
friends, and to the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits, on the subject of the
morality and the policy of those Fathers."
Of the "Provincial Letters," several English translations have been made.
No one of these that we have been able to find, seems entirely satisfactory.
There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, and in losing this you seem to
lose something of Pascal's thought. For with Pascal the thought and the
style penetrate each other inextricably and almost indistinguishably. You
cannot print a smile, an inflection of the voice, a glance of the eye, a French
shrug of the shoulders. And such modulations of the thought seem
everywhere to lurk in the turns and phrases of Pascal's inimitable French.
To translate them is impossible.
Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern master of that indescribably
delicate art in expression, which, from its illustrious ancient exemplar, has
received the name of the Socratic irony. With this fine weapon, in great part,
it was, wielded like a magician's invisible wand, that Pascal did his
memorable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals and casuistry, in
the "Provincial Letters." In great part, we say; for the flaming moral
earnestness of the man could not abide only to play with his adversaries, to
the end of the famous dispute. His lighter cimeter blade he flung aside
before he had done, and, toward the last, brandished a sword that had
weight as well as edge and temper. The skill that could halve a feather in the
air with the sword of Saladin was proved to be also strength that could
cleave a suit of mail with the brand of Richard the Lion-hearted.

It is universally acknowledged, that the French language has never in any
hands been a more obedient instrument of intellectual power than it was in
the hands of Pascal. He is rated the earliest writer to produce what may be
called the final French prose. "The creator of French style," Villemain
boldly calls him. Pascal's style remains to this day almost perfectly free
from adhesions of archaism in diction and in construction. Pascal showed,
as it were at once, what the French language was capable of doing in
response to the demands of a master. It was the joint achievement of genius,
of taste, and of skill, working together in an exquisite balance and harmony.
But let us be entirely frank. The "Provincial Letters" of Pascal are now, to
the general reader, not so interesting as from their fame one would seem
entitled to expect. You cannot read them intelligently without considerable
previous study. You need to have learned, imperfectly, with labor, a
thousand things that every contemporary reader of Pascal perfectly knew, as
if by simply breathing,—the necessary knowledge being then, so to speak,
abroad in the air. Even thus, you cannot possibly derive that vivid delight
from perusing in bulk the "Provincial Letters" now, which the successive
numbers of the series, appearing at brief irregular intervals, communicated
to the eagerly expecting French public, at a time when the topics discussed
were topics of a present and pressing practical interest. Still, with whatever
disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must give our readers a taste of the
quality of Pascal's "Provincial Letters."
We select a passage at the commencement of the Seventh Letter. We use
the translation of Mr. Thomas M'Crie. This succeeds very well in conveying
the sense, though it necessarily fails to convey either the vivacity or the
eloquence, of the incomparable original. The first occasion of the
"Provincial Letters" was a championship proposed to Pascal to be taken up
by him on behalf of his beleaguered and endangered friend Arnauld, the
Port-Royalist. (Port Royal was a Roman-Catholic abbey, situated some
eight miles to the south-west of Versailles, and therefore not very remote
from Paris.) Arnauld was "for substance of doctrine" really a Calvinist,
though he quite sincerely disclaimed being such; and it was for his defence
of Calvinism (under its ancient form of Augustinianism) that he was
threatened, through Jesuit enmity, with condemnation for heretical opinion.

The problem was to enlist the sentiment of general society in his favor. The
friends in council at Port Royal said to Pascal, "You must do this." Pascal
said, "I will try." In a few days, the first letter of a series destined to such
fame, was submitted for judgment to Port Royal and approved. It was
printed—anonymously. The success was instantaneous and brilliant. A
second letter followed, and a third. Soon, from strict personal defence of
Arnauld, the writer went on to take up a line of offence and aggression. He
carried the war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as teachers of immoral
doctrine.
The plan of these later letters was, to have a Paris gentleman write to a
friend of his in the country (the "provincial"), detailing interviews held by
him with a Jesuit priest of the city. The supposed Parisian gentleman, in his
interviews with the supposed Jesuit father, affects the air of a very simple-
hearted seeker after truth. He represents himself as, by his innocent-
seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher on to make the most
astonishingly frank exposures of the secrets of the casuistical system held
and taught by his order.
The Seventh Letter tells the story of how Jesuit confessors were instructed
to manage their penitents in a matter made immortally famous by the wit
and genius of Pascal, the matter of "directing the intention." There is
nothing in the "Provincial Letters" better suited than this at the same time to
interest the general reader, and to display the quality of these renowned
productions. (We do not scruple to change our chosen translation a little, at
points where it seems to us susceptible of some easy improvement.)
Remember it is an imaginary Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend
of his in the country:—
"You know," he said, "that the ruling passion of persons in that
rank of life [the rank of gentleman] is 'the point of honor,' which
is perpetually driving them into acts of violence apparently quite
at variance with Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be
almost all of them excluded from our confessionals, had not our
fathers relaxed a little from the strictness of religion, to
accommodate themselves to the weakness of humanity. Anxious
to keep on good terms, both with the gospel, by doing their duty

to God, and with the men of the world, by showing charity to
their neighbor, they needed all the wisdom they possessed to
devise expedients for so nicely adjusting matters as to permit
these gentlemen to adopt the methods usually resorted to for
vindicating their honor without wounding their consciences, and
thus reconcile things apparently so opposite to each other as
piety and the point of honor."...
"I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most
exquisite irony couched under a cover of admiring simplicity],
—I should certainly have considered the thing perfectly
impracticable, if I had not known, from what I have seen of your
fathers, that they are capable of doing with ease what is
impossible to other men. This led me to anticipate that they must
have discovered some method for meeting the difficulty,—a
method which I admire, even before knowing it, and which I
pray you to explain to me."
"Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, "I
cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous principle is
our grand method of directing the intention—the importance of
which, in our moral system, is such, that I might almost venture
to compare it with the doctrine of probability. You have had
some glimpses of it in passing, from certain maxims which I
mentioned to you. For example, when I was showing you how
servants might execute certain troublesome jobs with a safe
conscience, did you not remark that it was simply by diverting
their intention from the evil to which they were accessory, to the
profit which they might reap from the transaction? Now, that is
what we call directing the intention. You saw, too, that, were it
not for a similar divergence of the mind, those who give money
for benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I will now
show you this grand method in all its glory, as it applies to the
subject of homicide,—a crime which it justifies in a thousand
instances,—in order that, from this startling result, you may
form an idea of all that it is calculated to effect."

"I foresee already," said I, "that, according to this mode, every
thing will be permitted: it will stick at nothing."
"You always fly from the one extreme to the other," replied the
monk; "prithee avoid that habit. For just to show you that we are
far from permitting every thing, let me tell you that we never
suffer such a thing as a formal intention to sin, with the sole
design of sinning; and, if any person whatever should persist in
having no other end but evil in the evil that he does, we break
with him at once; such conduct is diabolical. This holds true,
without exception of age, sex, or rank. But when the person is
not of such a wretched disposition as this, we try to put in
practice our method of directing the intention, which consists in
his proposing to himself, as the end of his actions, some
allowable object. Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can,
to dissuade men from doing things forbidden; but, when we
cannot prevent the action, we at least purify the motive, and thus
correct the viciousness of the mean by the goodness of the end.
Such is the way in which our fathers have contrived to permit
those acts of violence to which men usually resort in vindication
of their honor. They have no more to do than to turn off their
intention from the desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and
direct it to a desire to defend their honor, which, according to us,
is quite warrantable. And in this way our doctors discharge all
their duty towards God and towards man. By permitting the
action, they gratify the world; and by purifying the intention,
they give satisfaction to the gospel. This is a secret, sir, which
was entirely unknown to the ancients; the world is indebted for
the discovery entirely to our doctors. You understand it now, I
hope?"
"Perfectly," was my reply. "To men you grant the outward
material effect of the action, and to God you give the inward and
spiritual movement of the intention; and, by this equitable
partition, you form an alliance between the laws of God and the
laws of men. But, my dear sir, to be frank with you, I can hardly

trust your premises, and I suspect that your authors will tell
another tale."
"You do me injustice," rejoined the monk; "I advance nothing
but what I am ready to prove, and that by such a rich array of
passages, that altogether their number, their authority, and their
reasonings, will fill you with admiration. To show you, for
example, the alliance which our fathers have formed between
the maxims of the gospel and those of the world, by thus
regulating the intention, let me refer you to Reginald. (In praxi.,
liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.) [These, and all that follow, are
verifiable citations from real and undisputed Jesuit authorities,
not to this day repudiated by that order.] 'Private persons are
forbidden to avenge themselves; for St. Paul says to the Romans
(ch. 12th), "Recompense to no man evil for evil;" and
Ecclesiasticus says (ch. 28th), "He that taketh vengeance shall
draw on himself the vengeance of God, and his sins will not be
forgotten." Besides all that is said in the gospel about forgiving
offences, as in the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.'"
"Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing
contrary to the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack of
scriptural knowledge. Pray, how does he conclude?"
"You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears that a
military man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the
person who has injured him—not, indeed, with the intention of
rendering evil for evil, but with that of preserving his honor—
non ut malum pro malo reddat, sed ut conservat honorem. See
you how carefully, because the Scripture condemns it, they
guard against the intention of rendering evil for evil? This is
what they will tolerate on no account. Thus Lessius observes
(De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79), that, 'If a man has received a
blow on the face, he must on no account have an intention to
avenge himself; but he may lawfully have an intention to avert
infamy, and may, with that view, repel the insult immediately,
even at the point of the sword—etiam cum gladio.' So far are we

from permitting any one to cherish the design of taking
vengeance on his enemies, that our fathers will not allow any
even to wish their death—by a movement of hatred. 'If your
enemy is disposed to injure you,' says Escobar, 'you have no
right to wish his death, by a movement of hatred; though you
may, with a view to save yourself from harm.' So legitimate,
indeed, is this wish, with such an intention, that our great
Hurtado de Mendoza says that 'we may pray God to visit with
speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if there is no
other way of escaping from it.'" (In his book, De Spe, vol. ii., d.
15, sec. 4, 48.)
"May it please your reverence," said I, "the Church has
forgotten to insert a petition to that effect among her prayers."
"They have not put every thing into the prayers that one may
lawfully ask of God," answered the monk. "Besides, in the
present case, the thing was impossible, for this same opinion is
of more recent standing than the Breviary. You are not a good
chronologist, friend. But, not to wander from the point, let me
request your attention to the following passage, cited by Diana
from Gaspar Hurtado (De Sub. Pecc., diff. 9; Diana, p. 5; tr. 14,
r. 99), one of Escobar's four-and-twenty fathers: 'An incumbent
may, without any mortal sin, desire the decease of a life-renter
on his benefice, and a son that of his father, and rejoice when it
happens; provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is to
accrue from the event, and not from personal aversion.'"
"Good," cried I. "That is certainly a very happy hit, and I can
easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide application. But yet
there are certain cases, the solution of which, though of great
importance for gentlemen, might present still greater
difficulties."
"Propose such, if you please, that we may see," said the monk.

"Show me, with all your directing of the intention," returned I,
"that it is allowable to fight a duel."
"Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, "will satisfy
you on that point in a twinkling. 'If a gentleman,' says he, in a
passage cited by Diana, 'who is challenged to fight a duel, is
well known to have no religion, and if the vices to which he is
openly and unscrupulously addicted, are such as would lead
people to conclude, in the event of his refusing to fight, that he
is actuated, not by the fear of God, but by cowardice, and induce
them to say of him that he was a hen, and not a man—gallina, et
non vir; in that case he may, to save his honor, appear at the
appointed spot—not, indeed, with the express intention of
fighting a duel, but merely with that of defending himself,
should the person who challenged him come there unjustly to
attack him. His action in this case, viewed by itself, will be
perfectly indifferent; for what moral evil is there in one's
stepping into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a
person, and defending one's self in the event of being attacked?
And thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for in fact,
it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention
being directed to other circumstances, and the acceptance of a
challenge consisting in an express intention to fight, which we
are supposing the gentleman never had.'"
The humorous irony of Pascal, in the "Provincial Letters," plays like the
diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis over the whole surface of the
composition. It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges
as of lightning. You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine
effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in pleasantry,
that, before Pascal, had been common, almost universal, in controversy, and
you will better understand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling,
and of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, the ineffable
Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the "Provincial Letters" which
will make these writings live as long as men anywhere continue to read the

productions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of all modern
predecessors to anticipating the purified pleasantry of Pascal.
It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's own statement of his
reasons for adopting the bantering style which he did in the "Provincial
Letters," as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair,
under which he wrote. Pascal says:—
I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and
diverting style. I reply... I thought it a duty to write so as to be
comprehended by women and men of the world, that they might
know the danger of their maxims and propositions which were
then universally propagated.... I have been asked, lastly, if I
myself read all the books which I quoted. I answer, No. If I had
done so, I must have passed a great part of my life in reading
very bad books; but I read Escobar twice through, and I
employed some of my friends in reading the others. But I did
not make use of a single passage without having myself read it
in the book from which it is cited, without having examined the
subject of which it treats, and without having read what went
before and followed, so that I might run no risk of quoting an
objection as an answer, which would have been blameworthy
and unfair.
Of the wit of the "Provincial Letters," their wit and their controversial
effectiveness, the specimens given will have afforded readers some
approximate idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of presenting a
brief passage, which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to
exemplify from the same source Pascal's serious eloquence. It was Voltaire
who said of these productions: "Molière's best comedies do not excel them
in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." Something of
Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet's, our
readers will discover in citations to follow from the "Thoughts."
Pascal's "Thoughts," the printed book, has a remarkable history. It was a
posthumous publication. The author died, leaving behind him a
considerable number of detached fragments of composition, first jottings of

thought on a subject that had long occupied his mind. These precious
manuscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used for his
purpose any chance scrap of paper,—old wrapping, for example, or margin
of letter,—that, at the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest his
hand. Sentences, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no
coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, among his
friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had meditated a work
on religion designed to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. For this he had
been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable
conversation, sketched his project at some length to his Port Royal friends.
With so much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide their editorial
work, these friends prepared and issued a volume of Pascal's "Thoughts."
With the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited too
much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they provided clauses or
sentences of connection, they toned down expressions deemed too bold,
they improved Pascal's style! After having suffered such things from his
friends, the posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The
infidel Condorcet published an edition of the "Thoughts." Whereas the Port-
Royalists had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to
please the "philosophers." Between those on the one side, and these on the
other, Pascal's "Thoughts" had experienced what might well have killed any
production of the human mind that could die. It was not till near the middle
of the present century that Cousin called the attention of the world to the
fact that we had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of
Pascal's "Thoughts." M. Faugère took the hint, and consulting the original
manuscripts, preserved in the national library at Paris, produced, with
infinite editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the thinker's death,
the first satisfactory edition of Pascal's "Thoughts." Since Faugère, M.
Havet has also published an edition of Pascal's works entire, by him now
first adequately annotated and explained. The arrangement of the
"Thoughts" varies in order, according to the varying judgment of editors.
We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which we modify at our
discretion, by comparison of the original text as given in M. Havet's
elaborate work.

Our first extract is a passage in which the writer supposes a sceptic of the
more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This sceptic represents his own state of
mind in the following strain as of soliloquy:—
'I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world
is, nor what I am myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all
things. I do not know what my body is, what my senses are,
what my soul is, and that very part of me which thinks what I
am saying, which reflects upon every thing and upon itself, and
is no better acquainted with itself than with any thing else. I see
these appalling spaces of the universe which enclose me, and I
find myself tethered in one corner of this immense expansion
without knowing why I am stationed in this place rather than in
another, or why this moment of time which is given me to live is
assigned me at this point rather than at another of the whole
eternity that has preceded me, and of that which is to follow me.
'I see nothing but infinities on every side, which enclose me
like an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an
instant, and returns no more.
'All that I know, is that I am soon to die; but what I am most
ignorant of, is that very death which I am unable to avoid.
'As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and
I know only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into
nothingness or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing
which of these two conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is
my state,—full of misery, of weakness, and of uncertainty.
'And from all this I conclude, that I ought to pass all the days
of my life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall
me hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts I might find some
enlightenment; but I am unwilling to take the trouble, or go a
single step in search of it; and, treating with contempt those who
perplex themselves with such solicitude, my purpose is to go
forward without forethought and without fear to try the great

event, and passively to approach death in uncertainty of the
eternity of my future condition.'
Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in
this manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of
his affairs? Who would have recourse to such a one in his
afflictions? And, in fine, for what use of life could such a man
be destined?
The central thought on which the projected apologetic of Pascal was to
revolve as on a pivot, is the contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man,
—with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine of a fall on man's part from
original nobleness, supplying the needed link, and the only link
conceivable, of explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human
greatness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity and
disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader of the "Thoughts" of
Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very necessary light upon the
meaning of the separate fragments that make up the series.
We now present a brief fragment asserting, with vivid metaphor, at the
same time the fragility of man's frame and the majesty of man's nature. This
is a very famous Thought:—
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking
reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to
crush him. An exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him.
But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more
noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is
dying, and knows the advantage that the universe has over him.
The universe knows nothing of it.
Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought.
One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated philosopher: "In
the universe there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great
but mind."

What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the greatness of
Cæsar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when looked at in the way in which
Pascal asks you to look at it in the following Thought! (Remember that
Cæsar, when he began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years of
age:)—
Cæsar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with
conquering the world. This amusement was well enough for
Augustus or Alexander; they were young people, whom it is
difficult to stop; but Cæsar ought to have been more mature.
That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result
of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.
The following sentence might be a Maxim of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal
was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:—
I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of
them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Here is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings:—
Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish
to go.
The following "Thought" condenses the substance of the book proposed,
into three short sentences:—
The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces
pride. The knowledge of our misery without that of God gives
despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because
therein we find God and our misery.
The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal's
"Thoughts" yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such
utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to the
penitent seeking to be saved:—

Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not
found me.
I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for
thee.
It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks as follows:—
Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the
pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What do
they complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by
seeking it?
But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an
aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not
suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at
a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind
him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of investigation on
the curve called the cycloid. During his final illness he pierced himself
through with many sorrows,—unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore
a double edge, hurting not only him, but also his kindred,—in practising,
from mistaken religious motives, a hard repression upon his natural instinct
to love, and to welcome love. He thought that God should be all, the
creature nothing. The thought was half true, but it was half false. God
should, indeed, be all. But, in God, the creature also should be something.
In French history,—we may say, in the history of the world,—if there are
few brighter, there also are few purer, fames than the fame of Pascal.

IX.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.
1626-1696.
Of Madame de Sévigné, if it were permitted here to make a pun and a
paradox, one might justly and descriptively say that she was not a woman
of letters, but only a woman of—letters. For Madame de Sévigné's
addiction to literature was not at all that of an author by profession. She
simply wrote admirable private letters, in great profusion, and became
famous thereby.
Madame de Sévigné's fame is partly her merit, but it is also partly her
good fortune. She was rightly placed to be what she was. This will appear
from a sketch of her life, and still more from specimens to be exhibited of
her own epistolary writing.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was her maiden name. She was born a
baroness. She was married, young, a marchioness. First early left an orphan,
she was afterward early left a widow,—not too early, however, to have
become the mother of two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter
grew to be the life-long idol of the widowed mother's heart. The letters she
wrote to this daughter, married, and living remote from her, compose the
greater part of that voluminous epistolary production by which Madame de
Sévigné became, without her ever aiming at such a result, or probably ever
thinking of it, one of the classics of the French language.
Madame de Sévigné was wealthy as orphan heiress, and she should have
been wealthy as widow. But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her
substance. She turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of affairs who

managed her property well. During her long and stainless widowhood—her
husband fell in a shameful duel when she was but twenty-five years old,
and she lived to be seventy—she divided her time between her estate, The
Rocks, in Brittany, and her residence in Paris. This period was all embraced
within the protracted reign of Louis XIV., perhaps, upon the whole, the
most memorable age in the history of France.
Beautiful, and, if not brilliantly beautiful, at least brilliantly witty,
Madame de Sévigné was virtuous—in that chief sense of feminine virtue—
amid an almost universal empire of profligacy around her. Her social
advantages were unsurpassed, and her social success was equal to her
advantages. She had the woman courtier's supreme triumph in being once
led out to dance by the king—her own junior by a dozen years—no vulgar
king, remember, but the "great" Louis XIV. Her cynical cousin, himself a
writer of power, who had been repulsed in dishonorable proffers of love by
the young marchioness during the lifetime of her husband,—we mean
Count Bussy,—says, in a scurrilous work of his, that Madame de Sévigné
remarked, on returning to her seat after her dancing-bout with the king, that
Louis possessed great qualities, and would certainly obscure the lustre of all
his predecessors. "I could not help laughing in her face," the ungallant
cousin declared, "seeing what had produced this panegyric." Probably,
indeed, the young woman was pleased. But, whatever may have been her
faults or her follies, nothing can rob Madame de Sévigné of the glory that is
hers, in having been strong enough in womanly and motherly honor to
preserve, against many dazzling temptations, amid general bad example,
and even under malignant aspersions, a chaste and spotless name. When it
is added, that, besides access to the royal court itself, this gifted woman
enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of La Rochefoucauld and other high-bred
wits, less famous, not a few, enough will have been said to show that her
position was such as to give her talent its best possible chance. The French
history of the times of Louis XIV. is hinted in glimpses the most vivid and
the most suggestive, throughout the whole series of the letters.
We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de Sévigné no less) first of all to
let them see a specimen of the affectionate adulation that this French
woman of rank and of fashion, literally in almost every letter of hers,

effuses on her daughter,—a daughter who, by the way, seems very languidly
to have responded to such demonstrations:—
The Rocks, Sunday, June 28, 1671.
You have amply made up to me my late losses; I have received
two letters from you which have filled me with transports of joy.
The pleasure I take in reading them is beyond all imagination. If
I have in any way contributed to the improvement of your style I
did it in the thought that I was laboring for the pleasure of
others, not for my own. But Providence, who has seen fit to
separate us so often, and to place us at such immense distances
from each other, has repaid me a little for the privation in the
charms of your correspondence, and still more in the satisfaction
you express in your situation, and the beauty of your castle; you
represent it to me with an air of grandeur and magnificence that
enchants me. I once saw a similar account of it by the first
Madame de Grignan; but I little thought at that time, that all
these beauties were one day to be at your command. I am very
much obliged to you for having given me so particular an
account of it. If I could be tired in reading your letters, it would
not only betray a very bad taste in me, but would likewise show
that I could have very little love or friendship for you. Divest
yourself of the dislike you have taken to circumstantial details. I
have often told you, and you ought yourself to feel the truth of
this remark, that they are as dear to us from those we love, as
they are tedious and disagreeable from others. If they are
displeasing to us, it is only from the indifference we feel for
those who write them. Admitting this observation to be true, I
leave you to judge what pleasure yours afford me. It is a fine
thing, truly, to play the great lady, as you do at present.
Conceive the foregoing multiplied by the whole number of the separate
letters composing the correspondence, and you will have no exaggerated
idea of the display that Madame de Sévigné makes of her regard for her
daughter. This regard was a passion, morbid, no doubt, by excess, and, even
at that, extravagantly demonstrated; but it was fundamentally sincere.

Madame de Sévigné idealized her absent daughter, and literally "loved but
only her." We need not wholly admire such maternal affection. But we
should not criticise it too severely.
We choose next a marvellously vivid "instantaneous view," in words, of a
court afternoon and evening at Versailles. This letter, too, is addressed to the
daughter—Madame de Grignan, by her married name. It bears date, "Paris,
Wednesday, 29th July." The year is 1676, and the writer is just fifty:—
I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses.... At three
the king, the queen, Monsieur [eldest brother to the king],
Madame [that brother's wife], Mademoiselle [that brother's
eldest unmarried daughter], and every thing else which is royal,
together with Madame de Montespan [the celebrated mistress of
the king] and train, and all the courtiers, and all the ladies,—all,
in short, which constitutes the court of France, is assembled in
the beautiful apartment of the king's, which you remember. All
is furnished divinely, all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is
unknown; you pass from one place to another without the
slightest pressure. A game at reversis [the description is of a
gambling scene, in which Dangeau figures as a cool and skilful
gamester] gives the company a form and a settlement. The king
and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together; different
tables are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and Madame de
Soubise, Dangeau and party, Langlée and party. Everywhere you
see heaps of louis d'ors; they have no other counters. I saw
Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him.
He dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he wins
where others lose; he neglects nothing, profits by every thing,
never has his attention diverted; in short, his science bids
defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a
hundred thousand crowns in a month, these are the pretty
memorandums he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind
enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an
excellent seat. I made my obeisance to the king, as you told me;
and he returned it as if I had been young and handsome.... The

duke said a thousand kind things without minding a word he
uttered. Marshal de Lorges attacked me in the name of the
Chevalier de Grignan; in short, tutti quanti [the whole
company]. You know what it is to get a word from everybody
you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and
asked me how I liked Vichi, and whether the place did me good.
She said that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her
knees, injured both.... Her size is reduced by a good half, and yet
her complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She
was dressed all in French point, her hair in a thousand ringlets,
the two side ones hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on
her head, pearls (the same that belonged to Madame de
l'Hôpital), the loveliest diamond earrings, three or four bodkins
—nothing else on the head; in short, a triumphant beauty,
worthy the admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was
accused of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the
king; she has restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you
cannot conceive the joy it has given all the world, and the
splendor it has thrown upon the court. This charming confusion,
without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues
from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king retires a moment to
read the despatches, and returns. There is always some music
going on, to which he listens, and which has an excellent effect.
He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to enjoy that
honor.... At six the carriages are at the door. The king is in one of
them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de
Thianges, and honest d'Heudicourt in a fool's paradise on the
stool. You know how these open carriages are made; they do not
sit face to face, but all looking the same way. The queen
occupies another with the princess; and the rest come flocking
after, as it may happen. There are then gondolas on the canal,
and music; and at ten they come back, and then there is a play;
and twelve strikes, and they go to supper; and thus rolls round
the Saturday. If I were to tell you how often you were asked
after, how many questions were put to me without waiting for
answers, how often I neglected to answer, how little they cared,

and how much less I did, you would see the iniqua corte
[wicked court] before you in all its perfection. However, it never
was so pleasant before, and everybody wishes it may last.
There is your picture. Picture, pure and simple, it is—comment none, least
of all, moralizing comment. The wish is sighed by "everybody," that such
pleasant things may "last." Well, they did last the writer's time. But
meanwhile the French revolution was a-preparing. A hundred years later it
will come, with its terrible reprisals.
We have gone away from the usual translations to find the foregoing
extract in an article published forty years ago and more, in the "Edinburgh
Review." Again we draw from the same source—this time, the description
of a visit paid by a company of grand folks, of whom the writer of the letter
was one, to an iron-foundery:—
Friday, 1st Oct. (1677).
Yesterday evening at Cone, we descended into a veritable hell,
the true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were at work,
forging, not arms for Æneas, but anchors for ships. You never
saw strokes redoubled so justly, nor with so admirable a
cadence. We stood in the middle of four furnaces; and the
demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat, with pale
faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaches, and hair long and
black,—a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks than
ourselves. As for me, I could not comprehend the possibility of
refusing any thing which these gentlemen, in their hell, might
have chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower
of silver, with which we took care to refresh their souls, and
facilitate our exit.
Once more:—
Paris, 29th November (1679).
I have been to the wedding of Madame de Louvois. How shall
I describe it? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all

gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of
flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, lighted
torches, pushings back, people run over; in short, a whirlwind, a
distraction; questions without answers, compliments without
knowing what is said, civilities without knowing who is spoken
to, feet entangled in trains. From the midst of all this, issue
inquiries after your health, which not being answered as quick
as lightning, the inquirers pass on, contented to remain in the
state of ignorance and indifference in which they [the inquiries]
were made. O vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has
had the small-pox. O vanity, et cætera!
Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, perhaps hurt, by a friend's
frankly writing to her, "You are old." To her daughter:—
So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la
Fayette, blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own,
which I ought to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it
astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself any such
decay. Nevertheless, I cannot help making many reflections and
calculations, and I find the conditions of life hard enough. It
seems to me that I have been dragged, against my will, to the
fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I have come
to it; and I would fain, if I could help it, not go any farther; not
advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of losses
of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage; and I hear
a voice which says, "You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if
you will not go on, you must die;" and this is another extremity
from which nature revolts. Such is the lot, however, of all who
advance beyond middle life. What is their resource? To think of
the will of God and of universal law, and so restore reason to its
place, and be patient. Be you, then, patient accordingly, my dear
child, and let not your affection soften into such tears as reason
must condemn.
She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was the anniversary of an event
in her life:—

Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672.
This day thousand years I was married.
Here is a passage with power in it. The great war minister of Louis has
died. Madame de Sévigné was now sixty-five years old. The letter is to her
cousin Coulanges:—
I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. de
Louvois, that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however,
he is, this great minister, this potent being, who occupied so
great a place; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide
a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs
had he not to manage! what designs, what projects, what secrets!
what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what
intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah!
my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke
of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall
not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events like these
to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our
closets.
A glimpse of Bourdaloue:—
Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, they say,
the most perfect thing of the kind that can be imagined; it was
the same he preached last year, but revised and altered with the
assistance of some of his friends, that it might be wholly
inimitable. How can one love God, if one never hears him
properly spoken of? You must really possess a greater portion of
grace than others.
A distinguished caterer or steward, a gentleman described as possessing
talent enough to have governed a province, commits suicide on a
professional point of honor:—
Paris, Sunday, April 26, 1671.

I have just learned from Moreuil, of what passed at Chantilly
with regard to poor Vatel. I wrote to you last Friday that he had
stabbed himself—these are the particulars of the affair: The king
arrived there on Thursday night; the walk, and the collation,
which was served in a place set apart for the purpose, and
strewed with jonquils, were just as they should be. Supper was
served; but there was no roast meat at one or two of the tables,
on account of Vatel's having been obliged to provide several
dinners more than were expected. This affected his spirits; and
he was heard to say several times, "I have lost my honor! I
cannot bear this disgrace!" "My head is quite bewildered," said
he to Gourville. "I have not had a wink of sleep these twelve
nights; I wish you would assist me in giving orders." Gourville
did all he could to comfort and assist him, but the failure of the
roast meat (which, however, did not happen at the king's table,
but at some of the other twenty-five) was always uppermost
with him. Gourville mentioned it to the prince [Condé, the great
Condé, the king's host], who went directly to Vatel's apartment,
and said to him, "Every thing is extremely well conducted,
Vatel; nothing could be more admirable than his Majesty's
supper." "Your highness's goodness," replied he, "overwhelms
me; I am sensible that there was a deficiency of roast meat at
two tables." "Not at all," said the prince; "do not perplex
yourself, and all will go well." Midnight came; the fireworks did
not succeed; they were covered with a thick cloud; they cost
sixteen thousand francs. At four o'clock in the morning Vatel
went round and found everybody asleep; he met one of the
under-purveyors, who was just come in with only two loads of
fish. "What!" said he, "is this all?" "Yes, sir," said the man, not
knowing that Vatel had despatched other people to all the
seaports around. Vatel waited for some time; the other purveyors
did not arrive; his head grew distracted; he thought there was no
more fish to be had. He flew to Gourville: "Sir," said he, "I
cannot outlive this disgrace." Gourville laughed at him. Vatel,
however, went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his sword
against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded, in the

third, in forcing his sword through his heart. At that instant the
couriers arrived with the fish; Vatel was inquired after to
distribute it. They ran to his apartment, knocked at the door, but
received no answer; upon which they broke it open, and found
him weltering in his blood. A messenger was immediately
despatched to acquaint the prince with what had happened, who
was like a man in despair. The Duke wept, for his Burgundy
journey depended upon Vatel.
The italics here are our own. We felt that we must use them.
Is it not all pathetic? But how exquisitely characteristic of the nation and
of the times! "Poor Vatel," is the extent to which Madame de Sévigné
allows herself to go in sympathy. Her heart never bleeds very freely—for
anybody except her daughter. Madame de Sévigné's heart, indeed, we
grieve to fear, was somewhat hard.
In another letter, after a long strain as worldly as any one could wish to
see, this lively woman thus touches, with a sincerity as unquestionable as
the levity is, on the point of personal religion:—
But, my dear child, the greatest inclination I have at present is
to be a little religious. I plague La Mousse about it every day. I
belong neither to God nor to the devil. I am quite weary of such
a situation; though, between you and me, I look upon it as the
most natural one in the world. I am not the devil's, because I fear
God, and have at the bottom a principle of religion; then, on the
other hand, I am not properly God's, because his law appears
hard and irksome to me, and I cannot bring myself to acts of
self-denial; so that altogether I am one of those called lukewarm
Christians, the great number of which does not in the least
surprise me, for I perfectly understand their sentiments, and the
reasons that influence them. However, we are told that this is a
state highly displeasing to God; if so, we must get out of it.
Alas! this is the difficulty. Was ever any thing so mad as I am, to
be thus eternally pestering you with my rhapsodies?

Madame de Sévigné involuntarily becomes a maxim-maker:—
The other day I made a maxim off-hand, without once thinking
of it; and I liked it so well that I fancied I had taken it out of M.
de la Rochefoucauld's. Pray tell me whether it is so or not, for in
that case my memory is more to be praised than my judgment. I
said, with all the ease in the world, that "ingratitude begets
reproach, as acknowledgment begets new favors." Pray, where
did this come from? Have I read it? Did I dream it? Is it my own
idea? Nothing can be truer than the thing itself, nor than that I
am totally ignorant how I came by it. I found it properly
arranged in my brain, and at the end of my tongue.
The partial mother lets her daughter know whom the maxim was meant
for. She says, "It is intended for your brother." This young fellow had, we
suspect, been first earning his mother's "reproaches" for spendthrift habits,
and then getting more money from her by "acknowledgment."
She hears that son of hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which
were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot
affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a
prude this woman was not. She had the strong æsthetic stomach of her time.
It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole ("We are
going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe Port-Royalist, in one
and the same letter. But this is French; above all, it is Madame de Sévigné.
By the way, she and her friends, first and last, "die" a thousand jolly deaths
"with laughing."
A contemporary allusion to "Tartuffe," with more French manners
implied:—
The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. Being at
table, she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or other, which
I noticed, and told her of it; she cast her eyes to the ground, and
with a very demure air, "Yes, indeed, madam," said she, "I am
the greatest liar in the world; I am very much obliged to you for
telling me of it. "We all burst out a-laughing, for it was exactly

the tone of Tartuffe,—"Yes, brother, I am a wretch, a vessel of
iniquity."
M. de La Rochefoucauld appears often by name in the letters. Here he
appears anonymously by his effect:—
"Warm affections are never tranquil"; a maxim.
Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. We must immediately
make up to our readers, on Madame de Sévigné's behalf, for the insipidity
of the foregoing "maxim" of hers, by giving here two or three far more
sententious excerpts from the letters, excerpts collected by another:—
There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is no
way of being delivered from it but by ingratitude.
Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out joy.
Shadow is never long taken for substance; you must be, if you
would appear to be. The world is not unjust long.
Madame de Sévigné makes a confession, which will comfort readers who
may have experienced the same difficulty as that of which she speaks:—
I send you M. de Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," revised and
corrected, with additions; it is a present to you from himself.
Some of them I can make shift to guess the meaning of; but
there are others that, to my shame be it spoken, I cannot
understand at all. God knows how it will be with you.
What was it changed this woman's mood to serious? She could not have
been hearing Massillon's celebrated sermon on the "fewness of the elect,"
for Massillon was yet only a boy of nine years; she may have been reading
Pascal's "Thoughts,"—Pascal had been dead ten years, and the "Thoughts"
had been published; or she may have been listening to one of those sifting,
heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue,—the date of her letter is March
16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year Bourdaloue preached at
Versailles,—when she wrote sombrely as follows:—

You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own to you
that I experience mortifications, and severe ones too; but I am
still unhappy at the thoughts of death; I consider it so great a
misfortune to see the termination of all my pursuits, that I
should desire nothing better, if it were practicable, than to begin
life again. I find myself engaged in a scene of confusion and
trouble; I was embarked in life without my own consent, and
know I must leave it again; this distracts me, for how shall I
leave it? In what manner? By what door? At what time? In what
disposition? Am I to suffer a thousand pains and torments that
will make me die in a state of despair? Shall I lose my senses?
Am I to die by some sudden accident? How shall I stand with
God? What shall I have to offer to him? Will fear and necessity
make my peace with him? Shall I have no other sentiment but
that of fear? What have I to hope? Am I worthy of heaven? Or
have I deserved the torments of hell? Dreadful alternative!
Alarming uncertainty! Can there be greater madness than to
place our eternal salvation in uncertainty? Yet what is more
natural, or can be more easily accounted for, than the foolish
manner in which I have spent my life? I am frequently buried in
thoughts of this nature, and then death appears so dreadful to me
that I hate life more for leading me to it, than I do for all the
thorns that are strewed in its way. You will ask me, then, if I
would wish to live forever? Far from it; but, if I had been
consulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse's arms; it
would have spared me many vexations, and would have insured
heaven to me at a very easy rate; but let us talk of something
else.
A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de Sévigné, at the very
close of one of her letters:—
Guillenagues said yesterday that Pelisson abused the privilege
men have of being ugly.
Readers familiar with Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," will recognize in the
following narrative a state of society not unlike that described by the

novelist as immediately preceding the French Revolution:—
The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St.
Germain, met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual
rate, like a whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great man, his
servants think him still greater. They passed through Nanterre,
when they met a man on horseback, and in an insolent tone bid
him clear the way. The poor man used his utmost endeavors to
avoid the danger that threatened him, but his horse proved
unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six turned
them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was
completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man,
instead of amusing themselves with having their limbs broken,
rose almost miraculously; the man remounted, and galloped
away, and is galloping still, for aught I know; while the servants,
the archbishop's coachman, and the archbishop himself at the
head of them, cried out, "Stop that villain, stop him! thrash him
soundly!" The rage of the archbishop was so great, that
afterward, in relating the adventure, he said, if he could have
caught the rascal, he would have broke all his bones, and cut off
both his ears.
If such things were done by the aristocracy—and the spiritual aristocracy
at that!—in the green tree, what might not be expected in the dry? The
writer makes no comment—draws no moral. "Adieu, my dear, delightful
child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you," are her next words. She
rattles along, three short sentences more, and finishes her letter.
We should still not have done with these letters, were we to go on a
hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers have already seen truly
what Madame de Sévigné is. They have only not seen fully all that she is.
And that they would not see short of reading her letters entire. Horace
Walpole aspired to do in English for his own time something like what
Madame de Sévigné had done in French for hers. In a measure he
succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative and affected, where she
was original and genuine.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be named, as, by her
sex, her social position, her talent, and the devotion of her talent, an English
analogue to Madame de Sévigné. But these comparisons, and all
comparison, leave the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her
rank, the most famous letter-writer in the world.

X.
CORNEILLE.
1606-1684.
The two great names in French tragedy are Corneille and Racine. French
tragedy is a very different affair from either modern tragedy in English or
ancient tragedy in Greek. It comes nearer being Roman epic, such as Lucan
wrote Roman epic, dramatized.
Drama is everywhere and always, and this from the nature of things, a
highly conventional literary form. But the convention under which French
tragedy should be judged differs, on the one hand, from that which existed
for Greek tragedy, and, on the other hand, from that existing for the English.
The atmosphere of real life present in English tragedy is absent in French.
The quasi-supernatural religious awe that reigned over Greek tragedy,
French tragedy does not affect. You miss also in French tragedy the severe
simplicity, the self-restraint, the statuesque repose, belonging to the Greek
model. Loftiness, grandeur, a loftiness somewhat strained, a grandeur
tending to be tumid, an heroic tone sustained at sacrifice of ease and nature
—such is the element in which French tragedy lives and flourishes. You
must grant your French tragedists this their conventional privilege, or you
will not enjoy them. You must grant them this, or you cannot understand
them. Resolve that you will like grandiloquence, requiring only that the
grandiloquence be good, and on this condition we can promise that you will
be pleased with Corneille and Racine. In fact, our readers, we are sure, will
find the grandiloquence of these two tragedy-writers so very good that a
little will suffice them.

Voltaire in his time impressed himself strongly enough on his countrymen
to get accepted by his own generation as an equal third in tragedy with
Corneille and Racine. There was then a French triumvirate of tragedists to
be paralleled with the triumvirate of the Greeks. Corneille was Æschylus;
Racine was Sophocles; and, of course, Euripides had his counterpart in
Voltaire. Voltaire has since descended from the tragic throne, and that neat
symmetry of trine comparison is spoiled. There is, however, some trace of
justice in making Corneille as related to Racine resemble Æschylus as
related to Sophocles. Corneille was first, more rugged, loftier; Racine was
second, more polished, more severe in taste. Racine had, too, in contrast
with Corneille, more of the Euripidean sweetness. In fact, La Bruyère's
celebrated comparison of the two Frenchmen—made, of course, before
Voltaire—yoked them, Corneille with Sophocles, Racine with Euripides.
It was perhaps not without its influence on the style of Corneille, that a
youthful labor of his in authorship was to translate, wholly or partially, the
"Pharsalia" of Lucan. Corneille always retained his fondness for Lucan.
This taste on his part, and the rhymed Alexandrines in which he wrote
tragedy, may together help account for the hyper-heroic style which is
Corneille's great fault. A lady criticised his tragedy, "The Death of Pompey,"
by saying: "Very fine, but too many heroes in it." Corneille's tragedies
generally have, if not too many heroes, at least too much hero, in them.
Concerning the historian Gibbon's habitual pomp of expression, it was once
wittily said that nobody could possibly tell the truth in such a style as that.
It would be equally near the mark if we should say of Corneille's chosen
mould of verse, that nobody could possibly be simple and natural in that.
Molière's comedy, however, would almost confute us.
Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen. He studied law, and he was admitted
to practice as an advocate, like Molière; but, like Molière, he heard and he
heeded an inward voice summoning him away from the bar to the stage.
Corneille did not, however, like Molière, tread the boards as an actor. He
had a lively sense of personal dignity. He was eminently the "lofty, grave
tragedian," in his own esteem. "But I am Pierre Corneille notwithstanding,"
he self-respectingly said once, when friends were regretting to him some

deficiency of grace in his personal carriage. One can imagine him taking off
his hat to himself with unaffected deference.
But this serious genius began dramatic composition with writing comedy.
He made several experiments in this kind with no commanding success; but
at thirty he wrote the tragedy of "The Cid," and instantly became famous.
His subsequent plays were chiefly on classical subjects. The subject of "The
Cid" was drawn from Spanish literature. This was emphatically what has
been called an "epoch-making" production. Richelieu's "Academy," at the
instigation, indeed almost under the dictation, of Richelieu, who was
jealous of Corneille, tried to write it down. They succeeded about as
Balaam succeeded in prophesying against Israel. "The Cid" triumphed over
them, and over the great minister. It established not only Corneille's fame,
but his authority. The man of genius taken alone, proved stronger than the
men of taste taken together.
For all this, however, our readers would hardly relish "The Cid." Let us go
at once to that tragedy of Corneille's which, by the general consent of
French critics, is the best work of its author, the "Polyeuctes." The
following is the rhetorical climax of praise in which Gaillard, one of the
most enlightened of Corneille's eulogists, arranges the different
masterpieces of his author: "'The Cid' raised Corneille above his rivals; the
'Horace' and the 'Cinna' above his models; the 'Polyeuctes' above himself."
This tragedy will, we doubt not, prove to our readers the most interesting of
all the tragedies of Corneille.
"The great Corneille"—to apply the traditionary designation which,
besides attributing to our tragedian his conceded general eminence in
character and genius, serves also to distinguish him by merit from his
younger brother, who wrote very good tragedy—was an illustrious figure at
the Hôtel de Rambouillet, that focus of the best literary criticism in France.
Corneille reading a play of his to the coterie of wits assembled there under
the presidency of ladies whose eyes, as in a kind of tournament of letters,
rained influence on authors, and judged the prize of genius, is the subject of
a striking picture by a French painter. Corneille read "Polyeuctes" at the
Hôtel de Rambouillet, and that awful court decided against the play.
Corneille, like Michel Angelo, had to a good degree the courage of his own

productions; but, in the face of adverse decision so august on his work, he
needed encouragement, which happily he did not fail to receive, before he
would allow his "Polyeuctes" to be represented. The theatre crowned it with
the laurels of victory. It thus fell to Corneille to triumph successively,
single-handed, over two great adversary courts of critical appreciation,—the
Academy of Richelieu and the not less formidable Hôtel de Rambouillet.
The objection raised by the Hôtel de Rambouillet against the "Polyeuctes"
was that it made the stage encroach on the prerogative of the pulpit, and
preach instead of simply amusing. And, indeed, never, perhaps, since the
Greek tragedy, was the theatre made so much to serve the solemn purposes
of religion. (We except the miracle and passion plays and the mysteries of
the middle ages, as not belonging within the just bounds of a comparison
like that now made.) Corneille's final influence was to elevate and purify
the French theatre. In his early works, however, he made surprising
concessions to the lewd taste in the drama that he found prevailing when he
began to write. With whatever amount of genuine religious scruple affecting
his conscience,—on that point we need not judge the poet,—Corneille used,
before putting them on the stage, to take his plays to the "Church,"—that is,
to the priestly hierarchy who constituted the "Church,"—that they might be
authoritatively judged as to their possible influence on the cause of
Christian truth.
In the "Polyeuctes," the motive is religion. Polyeuctes is an historic or
traditional saint of the Roman-Catholic church. His conversion from
paganism is the theme of the play. Polyeuctes has a friend Nearchus who is
already a Christian convert, and who labors earnestly to make Polyeuctes a
proselyte to the faith. Polyeuctes has previously married a noble Roman
lady, daughter of Felix, governor of Armenia, in which province the action
of the story occurs. (The persecuting Emperor Decius is on the throne of the
Roman world.) Paulina is the daughter's name. Paulina married Polyeuctes
against her own choice, for she loved Roman Severus better. Her father had
put his will upon her, and Paulina had filially obeyed in marrying
Polyeuctes. Such are the relations of the different persons of the drama. It
will be seen that there is ample room for the play of elevated and tragic
passions. Paulina, in fact, is the lofty, the impossible, ideal of wifely and

daughterly truth and devotion. Pagan though she is, she is pathetically
constant, both to the husband that was forced upon her, and to the father
that did the forcing; while still she loves, and cannot but love, the man
whom, in spite of her love for him, she, with an act like prolonged suicide,
stoically separates from her torn and bleeding heart.
But Severus on his part emulates the nobleness of the woman whom he
vainly loves. Learning the true state of the case, he rises to the height of his
opportunity for magnanimous behavior, and bids the married pair be happy
in a long life together.
A change in the situation occurs, a change due to the changed mood of the
father, Felix. Felix learns that Severus is high in imperial favor, and he
wishes now that Severus, instead of Polyeuctes, were his son-in-law. A
decree of the emperor makes it possible that this preferable alternative may
yet be realized. For the emperor has decreed that Christians must be
persecuted to the death, and Polyeuctes has been baptized a Christian—
though of this Felix will not hear till later.
A solemn sacrifice to the gods is to be celebrated in honor of imperial
victories lately won. Felix sends to summon Polyeuctes, his son-in-law. To
Felix's horror, Polyeuctes, with his friend Nearchus, coming to the temple,
proceeds in a frenzy of enthusiasm to break and dishonor the images of the
gods, proclaiming himself a Christian. In obedience to the imperial decree,
Nearchus is hurried to execution, in the sight of his friend, while Polyeuctes
is thrown into prison to repent and recant.
'Now is my chance,' muses Felix. 'I dare not disobey the emperor, to spare
Polyeuctes. Besides, with Polyeuctes once out of the way, Severus and
Paulina may be husband and wife.'
Polyeuctes in prison hears that his Paulina is coming to see him. With a
kind of altruistic nobleness which seems contagious in this play, Polyeuctes
resolves that Severus shall come too, and he will resign his wife, soon to be
a widow, to the care of his own rival, her Roman lover. First, Polyeuctes
and Paulina are alone together—Polyeuctes having, before she arrived,

fortified his soul for the conflict with her tears, by singing in his solitude a
song of high resolve and of anticipative triumph over his temptation.
The scene between Paulina, exerting all her power to detach Polyeuctes
from what she believes to be his folly, and Polyeuctes, on the other hand,
rapt to the pitch of martyrdom, exerting all his power to resist his wife, and
even to convert her—this scene, we say, is full of noble height and pathos,
as pathos and height were possible in the verse which Corneille had to
write. Neither struggler in this tragic strife moves the other. Paulina is
withdrawing when Severus enters. She addresses her lover severely, but
Polyeuctes intervenes to defend him. In a short scene, Polyeuctes, by a sort
of last will and testament, bequeaths his wife to his rival, and retires with
his guard. Now, Severus and Paulina are alone together. If there was a trace
of the false heroic in Polyeuctes's resignation of his wife to Severus, the
effect of that is finely counteracted by the scene which immediately follows
between Paulina and Severus. Severus begins doubtfully, staggering, as it
were, to firm posture, while he speaks to Paulina. He expresses amazement
at the conduct of Polyeuctes. Christians certainly deport themselves
strangely, he says. He at length finds himself using the following lover-like
language:—

As for me, had my destiny become a little earlier propitious
and honored my devotion by marriage with you, I should have
adored only the splendor of your eyes; of them I should have
made my kings; of them I should have made my gods; sooner
would I have been reduced to dust, sooner would I have been
reduced to ashes, than—
But here Paulina interrupts, and Severus is not permitted to finish his
protestation. Her reply is esteemed, and justly esteemed, one of the noblest
things in French tragedy—a French critic would be likely to say, the very
noblest in tragedy. She says:—
Let us break off there; I fear listening too long; I fear lest this
warmth, which feels your first fires, force on some sequel
unworthy of us both. [Voltaire, who edited Corneille with a
feeling of freedom toward a national idol comparable to the
sturdy independence that animated Johnson in annotating
Shakspeare, says of "This warmth which feels your first fires
and which forces on a sequel": "That is badly written, agreed;
but the sentiment gets the better of the expression, and what
follows is of a beauty of which there had been no example. The
Greeks were frigid declaimers in comparison with this passage
of Corneille."] Severus, learn to know Paulina all in all.
My Polyeuctes touches on his last hour; he has but a moment
to live; you are the cause of this, though innocently so. I know
not if your heart, yielding to your desires, may have dared build
any hope on his destruction; but know that there is no death so
cruel that to it with firm brow I would not bend my steps, that
there are in hell no horrors that I would not endure, rather than
soil a glory so pure, rather than espouse, after his sad fate, a man
that was in any wise the cause of his death; and if you suppose
me of a heart so little sound, the love which I had for you would
all turn to hate. You are generous; be so even to the end. My
father is in a state to yield every thing to you; he fears you; and I
further hazard this saying, that, if he destroys my husband, it is

to you that he sacrifices him. Save this unhappy man, use your
influence in his favor, exert yourself to become his support. I
know that this is much that I ask; but the greater the effort, the
greater the glory from it. To preserve a rival of whom you are
jealous, that is a trait of virtue which appertains only to you.
And if your renown is not motive sufficient, it is much that a
woman once so well beloved, and the love of whom perhaps is
still capable of touching you, will owe to your great heart the
dearest possession that she owns; remember, in short, that you
are Severus. Adieu. Decide with yourself alone what you ought
to do; if you are not such as I dare hope that you are, then, in
order that I may continue to esteem you, I wish not to know it.
Voltaire, as editor and commentator of Corneille, is freezingly cold. It is
difficult not to feel that at heart he was unfriendly to the great tragedist's
fame. His notes often are remorselessly grammatical. "This is not French;"
"This is not the right word;" "According to the construction, this should
mean so and so—according to the sense, it must mean so and so;" "This is
hardly intelligible;" "It is a pity that such or such a fault should mar these
fine verses;" "An expression for comedy rather than tragedy,"—are the kind
of remarks with which Voltaire chills the enthusiasm of the reader. It is
useless, however, to deny that the criticisms thus made are many of them
just. Corneille does not belong to the class of the "faultily faultless" writers.
Severus proves equal to Paulina's noble hopes of him. With a great effort
of self-sacrifice, he resolves to intercede for Polyeuctes. This is shown in an
interview between Severus and his faithful attendant Fabian. Fabian warns
him that he appeals for Polyeuctes at his own peril. Severus loftily replies
(and here follows one of the most lauded passages in the play):—
That advice might be good for some common soul. Though he
[the Emperor Decius] holds in his hands my life and my fortune,
I am yet Severus; and all that mighty power is powerless over
my glory, and powerless over my duty. Here honor compels me,
and I will satisfy it; whether fate afterward show itself
propitious or adverse, perishing glorious I shall perish content.

I will tell thee further, but under confidence, the sect of
Christians is not what it is thought to be. They are hated, why I
know not; and I see Decius unjust only in this regard. From
curiosity I have sought to become acquainted with them. They
are regarded as sorcerers taught from hell; and, in this
supposition, the punishment of death is visited on secret
mysteries which we do not understand. But Eleusinian Ceres
and the Good Goddess have their secrets, like those at Rome and
in Greece; still we freely tolerate everywhere, their god alone
excepted, every kind of god; all the monsters of Egypt have their
temples in Rome; our fathers, at their will, made a god of a man;
and, their blood in our veins preserving their errors, we fill
heaven with all our emperors; but, to speak without disguise of
deifications so numerous, the effect is very doubtful of such
metamorphoses.
Christians have but one God, absolute master of all, whose
mere will does whatever he resolves; but, if I may venture to say
what seems to me true, our gods very often agree ill together;
and, though their wrath crush me before your eyes, we have a
good many of them for them to be true gods. Finally, among the
Christians, morals are pure, vices are hated, virtues flourish;
they offer prayers on behalf of us who persecute them; and,
during all the time since we have tormented them, have they
ever been seen mutinous? Have they ever been seen rebellious?
Have our princes ever had more faithful soldiers? Fierce in war,
they submit themselves to our executioners; and, lions in
combat, they die like lambs. I pity them too much not to defend
them. Come, let us find Felix; let us commune with his son-in-
law; and let us thus, with one single action, gratify at once
Paulina, and my glory, and my compassion.
Such is the high heroic style in which pagan Severus resolves and speaks.
And thus the fourth act ends.
Felix makes a sad contrast with the high-heartedness which the other
characters, most of them, display. He is base enough to suspect that Severus

is base enough to be false and treacherous in his act of intercession for
Polyeuctes. He imagines he detects a plot against himself to undermine him
with the emperor. Voltaire criticises Corneille for giving this sordid
character to Felix. He thinks the tragedist might better have let Felix be
actuated by zeal for the pagan gods. The mean selfishness that animates the
governor, Voltaire regards as below the right tragic pitch. It is the poet
himself, no doubt, with that high Roman fashion of his, who, unconsciously
to the critic, taught him to make the criticism.
Felix summons Polyeuctes to an interview, and adjures him to be a
prudent man. Felix at length says, "Adore the gods, or die." "I am a
Christian," simply replies the martyr. "Impious! Adore them, I bid you, or
renounce life." (Here again Voltaire offers one of his refrigerant criticisms:
"Renounce life does not advance upon the meaning of die; when one repeats
the thought, the expression should be strengthened.") Paulina meantime has
entered to expostulate with Polyeuctes and with her father. Polyeuctes bids
her, 'Live with Severus.' He says he has revolved the subject, and he is
convinced that another love is the sole remedy for her woe. He proceeds in
the calmest manner to point out the advantages of the course recommended.
Voltaire remarks,—justly, we are bound to say,—that these maxims are here
somewhat revolting; the martyr should have had other things to say. On
Felix's final word, "Soldiers, execute the order that I have given," Paulina
exclaims, "Whither are you taking him?" "To death," says Felix. "To glory,"
says Polyeuctes. "Admirable dialogue, and always applauded," is Voltaire's
note on this.
The tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of Polyeuctes. Paulina
becomes a Christian, but remains pagan enough to call her father
"barbarous" in acrimoniously bidding him finish his work by putting his
daughter also to death. Severus reproaches Felix for his cruelty, and
threatens him with his own enmity. Felix undergoes instantaneous
conversion,—a miracle of grace which, under the circumstances provided
by Corneille, we may excuse Voltaire for laughing at. Paulina is delighted;
and Severus asks, "Who would not be touched by a spectacle so tender?"
The tragedy thus comes near ending happily enough to be called a
comedy.

Such as the foregoing exhibits him, is Corneille, the father of French
tragedy, where at his best; where at his worst, he is something so different
that you would hardly admit him to be the same man. For never was genius
more unequal in different manifestations of itself, than Corneille in his
different works. Molière is reported to have said that Corneille had a
familiar, or a fairy, that came to him at times, and enabled him to write
sublimely; but that, when the poet was left to himself, he could write as
poorly as another man.
Corneille produced some thirty-three dramatic pieces in all, but of these
not more than six or seven retain their place on the French stage.
Besides his plays, there is a translation in verse by him of the "Imitation of
Christ;" there are metrical versions of a considerable number of the Psalms;
there are odes, madrigals, sonnets, stanzas, addresses to the king. Then there
are discourses in prose on dramatic poetry, on tragedy, and on the three
unities. Add to these, elaborate appreciations by himself of a considerable
number of his own plays, prefaces, epistles, arguments to his pieces, and
you have, what with the notes, the introductions, the eulogies, and other
such things that the faithful French editor knows so well how to
accumulate, matter enough of Corneille to swell out eleven, or, in one
edition,—that issued under Napoleon as First Consul,—even twelve,
handsome volumes of his works.
Corneille and Bossuet together constitute a kind of rank by themselves
among the Dii Majores of the French literary Olympus.

XI.
RACINE.
1639-1699.
Jean Racine was Pierre Corneille reduced to rule. The younger was to the
elder somewhat as Sophocles or Euripides was to Æschylus, as Virgil was
to Lucretius, as Pope was to Dryden. Nature was more in Corneille, art was
more in Racine. Corneille was a pathfinder in literature. He led the way,
even for Molière, still more for Racine. But Racine was as much before
Corneille in perfection of art, as Corneille was before Racine in audacity of
genius. Racine, accordingly, is much more even and uniform than Corneille.
Smoothness, polish, ease, grace, sweetness,—these, and monotony in these,
are the mark of Racine. But if there is, in the latter poet, less to admire,
there is also less to forgive. His taste and his judgment were surer than the
taste and the judgment of Corneille. He enjoyed, moreover, an inestimable
advantage in the life-long friendship of the great critic of his time, Boileau.
Boileau was a literary conscience to Racine. He kept Racine constantly
spurred to his best endeavors in art. Racine was congratulating himself to
his friend on the ease with which he produced his verse. "Let me teach you
to produce easy verse with difficulty," was the critic's admirable reply.
Racine was a docile pupil. He became as painstaking an artist in verse as
Boileau would have him.
It will always be a matter of individual taste, and of changing fashion in
criticism, to decide which of the two is, on the whole, to be preferred to the
other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter.
Corneille's old age was, perhaps, seriously saddened by the consciousness,
which he could not but have, of being retired from the place of ascendency
once accorded to him over all. His case repeated the fortune of Æschylus in

relation to Sophocles. The eighteenth century, taught by Voltaire,
established the precedence of Racine. But the nineteenth century has
restored the crown to the brow of Corneille. To such mutations is subject
the fame of an author.
Jean Racine was early left an orphan. His grandparents put him, after
preparatory training at another establishment, to school at Port Royal,
where during three years he had the best opportunities of education that the
kingdom afforded. His friends wanted to make a clergyman of him; but the
preferences of the boy prevailed, and he addicted himself to literature. The
Greek tragedists became familiar to him in his youth, and their example in
literary art exercised a sovereign influence over Racine's development as
author. It pained the good Port-Royalists to see their late gifted pupil, now
out of their hands, inclined to write plays. Nicole printed a remonstrance
against the theatre, in which Racine discovered something that he took to
slant anonymously at himself. He wrote a spirited reply, of which no notice
was taken by the Port-Royalists. Somebody, however, on their behalf,
rejoined to Racine, whereupon the young author wrote a second letter to the
Port-Royalists, which he showed to his friend Boileau. "This may do credit
to your head, but it will do none to your heart," was that faithful mentor's
comment, in returning the document. Racine suppressed his second letter,
and did his best to recall the first. But he went on in his course of writing
for the stage.
The "Thebaïd" was Racine's first tragedy,—at least his first that attained to
the honor of being represented. Molière brought it out in his theatre, the
Palais Royal. His second tragedy, the "Alexander the Great," was also put
into the hands of Molière.
This latter play the author took to Corneille to get his judgment on it.
Corneille was thirty-three years the senior of Racine, and he was at this
time the undisputed master of French tragedy. "You have undoubted talent
for poetry—for tragedy, not; try your hand in some other poetical line," was
Corneille's sentence on the unrecognized young rival, who was so soon to
supplant him in popular favor.

The "Andromache" followed the "Alexander," and then Racine did try his
hand in another poetical line; for he wrote a comedy, his only one, "The
Suitors," as is loosely translated "Les Plaideurs," a title which has a legal,
and not an amorous, meaning. This play, after it had at first failed, Louis
XIV. laughed into court favor. It became thenceforward a great success. It
still keeps its place on the stage. It is, however, a farce, rather than a
comedy.
We pass over now one or two of the subsequent productions of Racine, to
mention next a play of his which had a singular history. It was a fancy of
the brilliant Princess Henriette (that same daughter of English Charles I.,
Bossuet's funeral oration on whom, presently to be spoken of, is so
celebrated) to engage the two great tragedists, Corneille and Racine, both at
once, in labor, without their mutual knowledge, upon the same subject,—a
subject which she herself, drawing it from the history of Tacitus, conceived
to be eminently fit for tragical treatment. Corneille produced his "Berenice,"
and Racine his "Titus and Berenice." The princess died before the two plays
which she had inspired were produced; but, when they were produced,
Racine's work won the palm. The rivalry created a bitterness between the
two authors, of which, naturally, the defeated one tasted the more deeply.
An ill-considered pleasantry, too, of Racine's, in making, out of one of
Corneille's tragic lines in his "Cid," a comic line in "The Suitors," hurt the
old man's pride. That pride suffered a worse hurt still. The chief Parisian
theatre, completely occupied with the works of his victorious rival, rejected
tragedies offered by Corneille.
Still, Racine did not have things all his own way. Some good critics
considered the rage for this younger dramatist a mere passing whim of
fashion. These—Madame de Sévigné was of them—stood by their "old
admiration," and were true to Corneille.
A memorable mortification and chagrin for our poet was now prepared by
his enemies—he seems never to have lacked enemies—with lavish and
elaborate malice. Racine had produced a play from Euripides, the "Phædra,"
on which he had unstintingly bestowed his best genius and his best art. It
was contrived that another poet, one Pradon, should, at the self-same
moment, have a play represented on the self-same subject. At a cost of

many thousands of dollars, the best seats at Racine's theatre were all bought
by his enemies, and left solidly vacant. The best seats at Pradon's theatre
were all bought by the same interested parties, and duly occupied with
industrious and zealous applauders. This occurred at six successive
representations. The result was the immediate apparent triumph of Pradon
over the humiliated Racine. Boileau in vain bade his friend be of good
cheer, and await the assured reversal of the verdict. Racine was deeply
wounded.
This discomposing experience of the poet's, joined with conscientious
misgivings on his part as to the propriety of his course in writing for the
stage, led him now, at the early age of thirty-eight, to renounce tragedy
altogether. His son Louis, from whose life of Racine we have chiefly drawn
our material for the present sketch, conceives this change in his father as a
profound and genuine religious conversion. Writers whose spirit inclines
them not to relish a condemnation such as seems thus to be reflected on the
theatre, take a less charitable view of the change. They account for it as a
reaction of mortified pride. Some of them go so far as groundlessly to
impute sheer hypocrisy to Racine.
A long interval of silence, on Racine's part, had elapsed, when Madame de
Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV., asked the unemployed poet to prepare a
sacred play for the use of the high-born girls educated under her care at St.
Cyr. Racine consented, and produced his "Esther." This achieved a
prodigious success; for the court took it up, and an exercise written for a
girls' school became the admiration of a kingdom. A second similar play
followed, the "Athaliah,"—the last, and, by general agreement, the most
perfect, work of its author. We thus reach that tragedy of Racine's which
both its fame and its character dictate to us as the one by eminence to be
used here in exhibition of the quality of this Virgil among tragedists.
Our readers may, if they please, refresh their recollection of the history on
which the drama is founded by perusing Second Kings, chapter eleven, and
Second Chronicles, chapters twenty-two and twenty-three. Athaliah, whose
name gives its title to the tragedy, was daughter to the wicked king, Ahab.
She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the kingdom of Judah. To secure her
usurped position, she had sought to kill all the descendants of King David,

even her own grandchildren. She had succeeded,—but not quite. Young
Joash escaped, to be secretly reared in the temple by the high priest. The
final disclosure of this hidden prince, and his coronation as king in place of
usurping Athaliah, destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death in
his name, afford the action of the play. Action, however, there is almost
none in classic French tragedy. The tragic drama is, with the French, as it
was with the Greeks, after whom it was framed, merely a succession of
scenes in which speeches are made by the actors. Lofty declamation is
always the character of the play. In the "Athaliah," as in the "Esther,"
Racine introduced the feature of the chorus, a restoration which had all the
effect of an innovation. The chorus in "Athaliah" consisted of Hebrew
virgins, who, at intervals marking the transitions between the acts, chanted
the spirit of the piece in its successive stages of progress toward the final
catastrophe. The "Athaliah" is almost proof against technical criticism. It is
acknowledged to be, after its kind, a nearly ideal product of art.
There is a curious story about the fortune of this piece with the public, that
will interest our readers. The first success of "Athaliah" was not great. In
fact, it was almost a flat failure. But a company of wits, playing at forfeits
somewhere in the country, severely sentenced one of their number to go by
himself, and read the first act of "Athaliah." The victim went, and did not
return. Sought at length, he was found just commencing a second perusal of
the play entire. He reported of it so enthusiastically, that he was asked to
read it before the company, which he did, to their delight. This started a
reaction in favor of the condemned play, which soon came to be counted the
masterpiece of its author.
First, in specimen of the choral feature of the drama, we content ourselves
with giving a single chorus from the "Athaliah." This we turn into rhyme,
clinging pretty closely all the way to the form of the original. Attentive
readers may, in one place of our rendering, observe an instance of identical
rhyme. This, in a piece of verse originally written in English, would, of
course, be a fault. In a translation from French, it may pass for a merit;
since, to judge from the practice of the national poets, the French ear seems
to be even better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the close of
corresponding lines, than it is with those definite mere resemblances to

which, in English versification, rhymes are rigidly limited. Suspense
between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of feeling
represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the leading singer:—

Salomith.
The Lord hath deigned to speak,
But what he to his prophet now hath shown—
Who unto us will make it clearly known?
Arms he himself to save us, poor and weak?
Arms he himself to have us overthrown?
The whole Chorus.
O promises! O threats! O mystery profound!
What woe, what weal, are each in turn foretold?
How can so much of wrath be found
So much of love to enfold?
A Voice.
Zion shall be no more; a cruel flame
Will all her ornaments devour.
A Second Voice.
God shelters Zion; she has shield and tower
In His eternal name.
First Voice.
I see her splendor all from vision disappear.
Second Voice.
I see on every side her glory shine more clear.
First Voice.
Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight.
Second Voice.
Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light.
First Voice.
What dire despair!
Second Voice.

What praise from every tongue!
First Voice.
What cries of grief!
Second Voice.
What songs of triumph sung!
A Third Voice.
Cease we to vex ourselves; our God, one day,
Will this great mystery make clear.
All Three Voices.
Let us his wrath revere,
While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay.

The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash as king, and in
the destruction of usurping and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by the way,
with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself, for the
moment, a certain factitious interest, from the resemblance, meant by the
poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the little Duke of
Burgundy, Louis XIV.'s grandson, then of about the same age with the
Hebrew boy, and of high reputation for mental vivacity.
The scene in which the high priest, Jehoiada, for the first time discloses to
his foster-son, Joash, the latter's royal descent from David, and his true
heirship to the throne of Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what
maturity of modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this
Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Racine makes
Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture, interpreted without violence, would
make him. The lad has had his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations
in progress for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own
coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly
asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in tears:—
What pity touches you? Is it that in a holocaust to be this day
offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, must pacify by
my death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that
does not belong to his father!

The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, Jehoiada, now
approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of the high priest, exclaiming, "My
father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest replies. "What preparations, then,
are these?" asks Joash. The high priest bids him prepare himself to listen
and learn, the time being now come for him to pay his debt to God:—
Joash. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my
life.
Jehoiada. You have often heard read the history of our kings.
Do you remember, my son, what strict laws a king worthy of the
crown ought to impose upon himself?
Joash. A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared,
puts not his reliance upon riches and gold; he fears the Lord his
God, has ever before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments
severe, and does not with unjust burdens overwhelm his
brethren.
Fénelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy
when this tragedy was written. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must
have had that prince in mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash
sentiments so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil,
the great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fénelon. How could the
selfish old monarch of France contrive to avoid recognizing his own
portrait, suggested by contrast in that description of the good king from the
lips of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous ground. He will
presently find his footing quite give way under him, to let him down into
the "horrible pit" of disgrace with his king. This not, however, in the present
play.
The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen Athaliah a
certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in the final catastrophe,
almost redeems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There is nothing in
the play more nearly sublime in declamation than the final speech in which
Athaliah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for young
King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. With this admirable piece of

rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy from Satan in "Paradise Lost," so
far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our
representation of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of
things that assure her of the overthrow of her usurpation. She expresses
herself in a speech, the first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the
poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate,
uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes,—"O
Galilean, thou hast conquered!" as follows:—

God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail!
Ay, it is Joash; all without avail
Seek I to cheat myself with other thought:
I know the wound my weapon on him wrought;
I see his father Ahaziah's face;
Naught but brings back to me that hated race.
David doth triumph, Ahab only fall,—
Unpitying God, thou only hast done all!
'Tis thou that flattering me to hope in vain
For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again
Hast with myself myself embroiled anew,
Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few,
Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare,
Which I to burn or pillage did not dare.
Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil,
And, so to signalize his new-got spoil,
Let him into my bosom plunge the knife,
And take with filial hand his mother's life.
Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes—
Wish? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths,—
That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he,
Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me,
To his grandfather, to his father, like,
Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike
Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell

Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel!

With words thus rendered into such English verse as we could command
for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from the stage. Her execution follows
immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced with brief, solemn
comment from Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends.
The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no means equal to its
fame. One reproaches one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously perusing
it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be irreproachably, nay,
consummately, good. But fashions in taste change; and we cannot hold
ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for enjoying, according
to the judgment of other races and of former generations. It is—so, with
grave concurrence, we say—It is a great classic, worthy of the praise that it
receives. We are glad that we have read it; and, let us be candid, equally
glad that we have not to read it again.
As has already been intimated, Racine, after "Athaliah," wrote tragedy no
more. He ceased to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His son
Louis, in his Life of his father, testifies that he never heard his father speak
in the family of the dramas that he had written. His theatrical triumphs
seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of them rather than gloried
in them.
While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine's for the devotion of
his powers to the production of tragedy, was a sincere regret of his
conscience, one may properly wish that the regret had been more heroic.
The fact is, Racine was somewhat feminine in character as well as in
genius. He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against an
adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to Racine, from the
principal quarter, the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite with
his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of an exile from the royal
presence. The immediate occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise
to the poet.

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had expressed views
on the state of France and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which so
impressed her mind that she desired him to reduce his observations to
writing, and confide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly
secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manuscript in her hand.
Taking it from her, he read in it, and demanded to know the author. Madame
de Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. "Does M. Racine, because he
is a great poet, think that he knows every thing?" the despot angrily asked.
Louis never spoke to Racine again. The distressed and infatuated poet still
made some paltry request of the king, to experience the humiliation that he
invoked. His request was not granted. Racine wilted, like a tender plant,
under the sultry frown of his monarch. He could not rally. He soon after
died, literally killed by the mere displeasure of one man. Such was the
measureless power wielded by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff
in Racine. A spirit partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop Fénelon, will
presently be shown to have had at about the same time a partly similar
experience.

XII.
BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-1704; MASSILLON:
1663-1742.
We group three names in one title, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, to
represent the pulpit orators of France. There are other great names,—as
Fléchier, with Claude and Saurin, the last two, Protestants both,—but the
names we choose are the greatest.
Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as a
great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply;
Massillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their subject,
their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces of pure and
classic style, became at once, and permanently became, a part of French
literature.
The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No
Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it. Protestant
agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in this. Bossuet,
twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as Milton is to the
Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, seems a
thing too near the common human level to answer fully the need that
Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not eloquent, he is
sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory, while in English it is
poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature its satisfaction to the
sentiment of the sublime, very well represents the difference in genius
between the two races. The French idea of poetry is eloquence; and it is
eloquence carried to its height, whether in verse or in prose, that constitutes
for the Frenchman sublimity. The difference is a difference of blood.
English blood is Teutonic in base, and the imagination of the Teuton is

poetic. French blood, in base, is Celtic; and the imagination of the Celt is
oratoric.
Jacques Bénigne Bossuet was of good bourgeois, or middle-class, stock.
He passed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic consistency
with what was to be his subsequent career. He was brought forward while a
young man in the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where, on a certain occasion, he
preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices of his admiring patron.
In due time he attracted wide public attention, not merely as an eloquent
orator, but as a profound student and as a powerful controversialist. His
character and influence became in their maturity such, that La Bruyère aptly
called him a "Father of the Church." "The Corneille of the pulpit," was
Henri Martin's characterization and praise. A third phrase, "the eagle of
Meaux," has passed into almost an alternative name for Bossuet. He soared
like an eagle in his eloquence, and he was bishop of Meaux.
Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to each other, in the mutual
relation of subject and sovereign. Bossuet preached sincerely—as
everybody knows Louis sincerely practised—the doctrine of the divine right
of kings to rule absolutely. But the proud prelate compromised neither his
own dignity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence of the absolute
monarch.
Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to prodigious effect, into the
controversy against Protestantism. His "History of the Variations of the
Protestant Churches," in two good volumes, was one of the mightiest
pamphlets ever written. As tutor to the Dauphin (the king's eldest son), he
produced, with other works, his celebrated "Discourse on Universal
History."
In proceeding now to give, from the three great preachers named in our
title, a few specimen passages of the most famous pulpit oratory in the
world, we need to prepare our readers against a natural disappointment.
That which they are about to see has nothing in it of what will at first strike
them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age of France was
distinctly "classic," and not at all "romantic," in style. Its character is not
ornate, but severe. There is little rhetorical figure in it, little of that

"illustration" which our own different national taste is accustomed to
demand from the pulpit. There is plenty of white light, "dry light" and
white, for the reason; but there is almost no bright color for the fancy, and,
it must be added, not a great deal of melting warmth for the heart.
The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally esteemed the masterpieces
of this orator's eloquence. He had great occasions, and he was great to
match them. Still, readers might easily be disappointed in perusing a funeral
oration of Bossuet's. The discourse will generally be found to deal in
commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment. Those
commonplaces, however, are often made very impressive by the lofty, the
magisterial, the imperial, manner of the preacher in treating them. We
exhibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a brief one, in the majestic
exordium to the funeral oration on the Princess Henrietta of England.
This princess was the last one left of the children of King Charles I. of
England. Her mother's death—her mother was of the French house of
Bourbon—had occurred but a short time before, and Bossuet had on that
occasion pronounced the eulogy. The daughter, scarcely returned to France
from a secret mission of state to England, the success of which made her an
object of distinguished regard at Versailles, suddenly fell ill and died.
Bossuet was summoned to preach at her funeral. (We have not been able to
find an English translation of Bossuet, and we accordingly make the present
transfer from French ourselves. We do the same, for the same reason, in the
case of Massillon. In the case of Bourdaloue, we succeeded in obtaining a
printed translation which we could modify to suit our purpose.) Bossuet:—
It was then reserved for my lot to pay this funereal tribute to
the high and potent princess, Henrietta of England, Duchess of
Orleans. She whom I had seen so attentive while I was
discharging a like office for the queen her mother, was so soon
after to be the subject of a similar discourse, and my sad voice
was predestined to this melancholy service. O vanity! O
nothingness! O mortals! ignorant of their destiny! Ten months
ago, would she have believed it? And you, my hearers, would
you have thought, while she was shedding so many tears in this
place, that she was so soon to assemble you here to deplore her

own loss? O princess! the worthy object of the admiration of
two great kingdoms, was it not enough that England should
deplore your absence, without being yet further compelled to
deplore your death? France, who with so much joy beheld you
again, surrounded with a new brilliancy, had she not in reserve
other pomps and other triumphs for you, returned from that
famous voyage whence you had brought hither so much glory,
and hopes so fair? "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Nothing is
left for me to say but that; that is the only sentiment which, in
presence of so strange a casualty, grief so well-grounded and so
poignant, permits me to indulge. Nor have I explored the Holy
Scriptures in order to find therein some text which I might apply
to this princess; I have taken, without premeditation and without
choice, the first expression presented to me by the Preacher,
with whom vanity, although it has been so often named, is yet,
to my mind, not named often enough to suit the purpose that I
have in view. I wish, in a single misfortune, to lament all the
calamities of the human race, and in a single death to exhibit the
death and the nothingness of all human greatness. This text,
which suits all the circumstances and all the occurrences of our
life, becomes, by a special adaptedness, appropriate to my
mournful theme; since never were the vanities of the earth either
so clearly disclosed or so openly confounded. No, after what we
have just seen, health is but a name, life is but a dream, glory is
but a shadow, charms and pleasures are but a dangerous
diversion. Every thing is vain within us, except the sincere
acknowledgment made before God of our vanity, and the fixed
judgment of the mind, leading us to despise all that we are.
But did I speak the truth? Man, whom God made in his own
image, is he but a shadow? That which Jesus Christ came from
heaven to earth to seek, that which he deemed that he could,
without degrading himself, ransom with his own blood, is that a
mere nothing? Let us acknowledge our mistake; surely this sad
spectacle of the vanity of things human was leading us astray,
and public hope, baffled suddenly by the death of this princess,

was urging us too far. It must not be permitted to man to despise
himself entirely, lest he, supposing, in common with the wicked,
that our life is but a game in which chance reigns, take his way
without rule and without self-control, at the pleasure of his own
blind wishes. It is for this reason that the Preacher, after having
commenced his inspired production by the expressions which I
have cited, after having filled all its pages with contempt for
things human, is pleased at last to show man something more
substantial, by saying to him, "Fear God, and keep his
commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Thus every thing is
vain in man, if we regard what he gives to the world; but, on the
contrary, every thing is important, if we consider what he owes
to God. Once again, every thing is vain in man, if we regard the
course of his mortal life; but every thing is of value, every thing
is important, if we contemplate the goal where it ends, and the
account of it which he must render. Let us, therefore, meditate
to-day, in presence of this altar and of this tomb, the first and the
last utterance of the Preacher; of which the one shows the
nothingness of man, the other establishes his greatness. Let this
tomb convince us of our nothingness, provided that this altar,
where is daily offered for us a Victim of price so great, teach us
at the same time our dignity. The princess whom we weep shall
be a faithful witness, both of the one and of the other. Let us
survey that which a sudden death has taken away from her; let
us survey that which a holy death has bestowed upon her. Thus
shall we learn to despise that which she quitted without regret,
in order to attach all our regard to that which she embraced with
so much ardor,—when her soul, purified from all earthly
sentiments, full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw
the light completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have
to treat, and which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so
great a prince, and to the most illustrious assembly in the world.

It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort,
on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the far-fetched and
unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet was not always—
as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always was—superior to the
temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. Bossuet was a
great man, but he was not quite great enough to be wholly free from pride
of self-consciousness in matching himself as orator against "the most
illustrious assembly in the world."
The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, and they less deserve
perhaps to be read, than those of Bourdaloue and Massillon.

Bourdaloue was a voice. He was the voice of one crying, not in the
wilderness, but amid the homes and haunts of men, and, by eminence, in the
court of the most powerful and most splendid of earthly monarchs. He was
a Jesuit, one of the most devoted and most accomplished of an order filled
with devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to his Jesuit character and
Jesuit training, that Bourdaloue should hold the place that he did as ever-
successful courtier at Versailles, all the while that, as preacher, he was using
the "holy freedom of the pulpit" to launch those blank fulminations of his at
sin in high places, at sin even in the highest, and all the briefer while that, as
confessor to Madame de Maintenon, he was influencing the policy of Louis
XIV.
No scandal of any sort attaches to the reputation of Louis Bourdaloue. He
was a man of spotless fame,—unless it be a spot on his fame that he could
please the most selfish of sinful monarchs well enough to be that monarch's
chosen preacher during a longer time than any other pulpit orator whatever
was tolerated at Versailles. He is described by all who knew him as a man
of gracious spirit. If he did not reprobate and denounce the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, that was rather of the age than of Bourdaloue.
Sainte-Beuve, in a remarkably sympathetic appreciation of Bourdaloue,—
free, contrary to the critic's wont, from hostile insinuation even,—regards it
as part of the merit of this preacher that there is, and that there can be, no
biography of him. His public life is summed up in simply saying that he

was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful years he preached
the doctrines of the Church; and this is the sole account to be given of him,
except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, all that time, learning those
secrets of the human heart which he used to such effect in composing his
sermons. He had very suave and winning ways as confessor, though he
enjoined great strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to
say of him: "Father Bourdaloue charges high in the pulpit, but he sells
cheap in the confessional." How much laxity he allowed as confessor, it is,
of course, impossible to say. But his sermons remain to show that, though
indeed he was severe and high in requirement as preacher, he did not fail to
soften asperity by insisting on the goodness, while he insisted on the
awfulness, of God. Still, it cannot be denied, that somehow the elaborate
compliments which, as an established convention of his pulpit, he not
infrequently delivered to Louis XIV., tended powerfully to make it appear
that his stern denunciation of sin, which at first blush might seem directly
levelled at the king, had in reality no application at all, or but the very
gentlest application, to the particular case of his Most Christian Majesty.
We begin our citations from Bourdaloue with an extract from a sermon of
his on "A Perverted Conscience." The whole discourse is one well worth the
study of any reader. It is a piece of searching psychological analysis, and
pungent application to conscience. Bourdaloue, in his sermons, has always
the air of a man seriously intent on producing practical results. There are no
false motions. Every swaying of the preacher's weapon is a blow, and every
blow is a hit. There is hardly another example in homiletic literature of such
compactness, such solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such cogency,
such freedom from surplusage. Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing
counts. You meet with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally
assume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, Bourdaloue has thrown
these in without rigorously definite purpose, simply to heighten a general
effect. Not at all. There follows a development of the preacher's thought,
constituting virtually a distinct justification of each adjective employed.
You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in this man's words. But
here is the promised extract from the sermon on "A Perverted Conscience."
In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and discharges it point-blank at the
audience before him. You can almost imagine you see the ranks of "the

great" laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of biting the dust, those
courtiers, with the king in the midst of them to set the example, only cried
bravo in their hearts at the skill of the gunner:—
I have said more particularly that in the world in which you
live,—I mean the court,—the disease of a perverted conscience
is far more common, and far more difficult to be avoided; and I
am sure that in this you will agree with me. For it is at the court
that the passions bear sway, that desires are more ardent, that
self-interest is keener, and that, by infallible consequence, self-
blinding is more easy, and consciences, even the most
enlightened and the most upright, become gradually perverted. It
is at the court that the goddess of the world, I mean fortune,
exercises over the minds of men, and in consequence over their
consciences, a more absolute dominion. It is at the court that the
aim to maintain one's self, the impatience to raise one's self, the
frenzy to push one's self, the fear of displeasing, the desire of
making one's self agreeable, produce consciences, which
anywhere else would pass for monstrous, but which, finding
themselves there authorized by custom, seem to have acquired a
right of possession and of prescription. People, from living at
court, and from no other cause than having lived there, are filled
with these errors. Whatever uprightness of conscience they may
have brought thither, by breathing its air and by hearing its
language, they are habituated to iniquity, they come to have less
horror of vice, and, after having long blamed it, a thousand
times condemned it, they at last behold it with a more favorable
eye, tolerate it, excuse it; that is to say, without observing what
is happening, they make over their consciences, and, by
insensible steps, from Christian, which they were, by little and
little become quite worldly, and not far from pagan.
What could surpass the adaptedness of such preaching as that to the need
of the moment for which it was prepared? And how did the libertine French
monarch contrive to escape the force of truth like the following, with which
the preacher immediately proceeds?—

You would say, and it really seems, that for the court, there are
other principles of religion than for the rest of the world, and
that the courtier has a right to make for himself a conscience
different in kind and in quality from that of other men; for such
is the prevailing idea of the matter,—an idea well sustained, or
rather unfortunately justified, by experience.... Nevertheless, my
dear hearers, St. Paul assures us, that there is but one God and
one faith; and woe to the man who dividing Him, this one God,
shall represent Him as at court less an enemy to human
transgressions than He is outside of the court; or, severing this
one faith, shall suppose it in the case of one class more
indulgent than in the case of another.
Bourdaloue, as Jesuit, could not but feel the power of Pascal in his
"Provincial Letters," constantly undermining the authority of his order. His
preaching, as Sainte-Beuve well says, may be considered to have been, in
the preacher's intention, one prolonged confutation of Pascal's immortal
indictment. We borrow of Sainte-Beuve a short extract from Bourdaloue's
sermon on slander, which may serve as an instance to show with what
adroitness the Jesuit retorted anonymously upon the Jansenist:—
Behold one of the abuses of our time. Means have been found
to consecrate slander, to change it into a virtue, and even into
one of the holiest virtues—that means is, zeal for the glory of
God.... We must humble those people, is the cry; and it is for the
good of the Church to tarnish their reputation and to diminish
their credit. That idea becomes, as it were, a principle; the
conscience is fashioned accordingly, and there is nothing that is
not permissible to a motive so noble. You fabricate, you
exaggerate, you give things a poisonous taint, you tell but half
the truth; you make your prejudices stand for indisputable facts;
you spread abroad a hundred falsehoods; you confound what is
individual with what is general; what one man has said that is
bad, you pretend that all have said; and what many have said
that is good, you pretend that nobody has said; and all that, once
again, for the glory of God. For such direction of the intention

justifies all that. Such direction of the intention will not suffice
to justify a prevarication, but it is more than sufficient to justify
calumny, provided only you are convinced that you are serving
God thereby.
In conclusion, we give a passage or two of Bourdaloue's sermon on "An
Eternity of Woe." Stanch orthodoxy the reader will find here. President
Edwards's discourse, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is not more
unflinching. But what a relief of contrasted sweetness does Bourdaloue
interpose in the first part of the ensuing extract, to set off the grim and
grisly horror of that which is to follow! We draw, for this case, from a
translation, issued in Dublin under Roman-Catholic auspices, of select
sermons by Bourdaloue. The translator, throughout his volume, has been
highly loyal in spirit toward the great French preacher; but this has not
prevented much enfeebling by him of the style of his original:—
There are some just, fervent, perfect souls, who, like children
in the house of the Heavenly Father, strive to please and possess
him, in order only to possess and to love him; and who,
incessantly animated by this unselfish motive, inviolably adhere
to his divine precepts, and lay it down as a rigorous and
unalterable rule, to obey the least intimation of his will. They
serve him with an affection entirely filial. But there are also
dastards, worldlings, sinners, terrestrial and sensual men, who
are scarcely susceptible of any other impressions than those of
the judgments and vengeance of God. Talk to them of his
greatness, of his perfections, of his benefits, or even of his
rewards, and they will hardly listen to you; and, if they are
prevailed upon to pay some attention and respect to your words,
they will sound in their ears, but not reach their hearts....
Therefore, to move them, to stir them up, to awaken them from
the lethargic sleep with which they are overwhelmed, the
thunder of divine wrath and the decree that condemns them to
eternal flames must be dinned into their ears: "Depart from me,
ye accursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. xxv.). Make them

consider attentively, and represent to them with all the force of
grace, the consequences and horror of this word "eternal."...
It is not imagination, it is pure reason and intelligence, that now in
Bourdaloue goes about the business of impressing the thought of the
dreadfulness of an eternity of woe. The effect produced is not that of the
lightning-flash suddenly revealing the jaws agape of an unfathomable abyss
directly before you. It is rather that of steady, intolerable pressure gradually
applied to crush, to annihilate, the soul:—
...Struck with horror at so doleful a destiny, I apply to this
eternity all the powers of my mind; I examine and scrutinize it
in all its parts; and I survey, as it were, its whole dimensions.
Moreover, to express it in more lively colors, and to represent it
in my mind more conformably to the senses and the human
understanding, I borrow comparisons from the Fathers of the
Church, and I make, if I may so speak, the same computations. I
figure to myself all the stars of the firmament; to this
innumerable multitude I add all the drops of water in the bosom
of the ocean; and if this be not enough, I reckon, or at least
endeavor to reckon, all the grains of sand on its shore. Then I
interrogate myself, I reason with myself, and I put to myself the
question—If I had for as many ages, and a thousand times as
many, undergone torments in that glowing fire which is kindled
by the breath of the Lord in his anger to take eternal vengeance,
would eternity be at an end? No; and why? Because it is eternity,
and eternity is endless. To number up the stars that shine in the
heavens, to count the drops of water that compose the sea, to tell
the grains of sand that lie upon the shore, is not absolutely
impossible; but to measure in eternity the number of days, of
years, of ages, is what cannot be compassed, because the days,
the years, and the ages are without number; or, to speak more
properly, because in eternity there are neither days, nor years,
nor ages, but a single, endless, infinite duration.
To this thought I devote my mind. I imagine I see and rove
through this same eternity, and discover no end, but find it to be

always a boundless tract. I imagine the wide prospect lies open
on all sides, and encompasseth me around; that if I rise up, or if
I sink down, or what way soever I turn my eyes, this eternity
meets them; and that after a thousand efforts to get forward, I
have made no progress, but find it still eternity. I imagine that
after long revolutions of time, I behold in the midst of this
eternity a damned soul, in the same state, in the same affliction,
in the same misery still; and putting myself mentally in the place
of this soul, I imagine that in this eternal punishment I feel
myself continually devoured by that fire which nothing
extinguishes; that I continually shed those floods of tears which
nothing can dry up; that I am continually gnawed by the worm
of conscience, which never dies; that I continually express my
despair and anguish by that gnashing of teeth, and those
lamentable cries, which never can move the compassion of God.
This idea of myself, this representation, amazes and terrifies me.
My whole body shudders, I tremble with fear, I am filled with
horror, I have the same feelings as the royal prophet, when he
cried, "Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear, for I am afraid of thy
judgments."
That was a touching tribute from the elder to the younger—tribute
touching, whether wrung, perforce, from a proudly humble, or freely
offered by a simply magnanimous, heart—when, like John the Baptist
speaking of Jesus, Bourdaloue, growing old, said of Massillon, enjoying his
swiftly crescent renown: "He must increase, and I must decrease." It was a
true presentiment of the comparative fortune of fame that impended for
these two men. It was not, however, in the same path, but in a different, that
Massillon outran Bourdaloue. In his own sphere, that of unimpassioned
appeal to reason and to conscience, Bourdaloue is still without a rival. No
one else, certainly, ever earned, so well as he, the double title which his
epigrammatic countrymen were once fond of bestowing upon him,—"The
king of preachers, and the preacher of kings."

Jean Baptiste Massillon became priest by his own internal sense of
vocation to the office, against the preference of his family that he should

become, like his father, a notary. He seems to have been by nature sincerely
modest in spirit. He had to be forced into the publicity of a preaching career
at Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily required at his hands the
sacrifice of his wish to be obscure. He at once filled Paris with his fame.
The inevitable consequence followed. He was summoned to preach before
the king at Versailles. Here he received, as probably he deserved, that
celebrated compliment in epigram, from Louis XIV.: "In hearing some
preachers, I feel pleased with them; in hearing you, I feel displeased with
myself."
It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon preached like a prophet
Nathan saying to King David, "Thou art the man;" or like a John the Baptist
saying to King Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have her;" or like a John
Knox denouncing Queen Mary. Massillon, if he was stern, was suavely
stern. He complimented the king. The sword with which he wounded was
wreathed deep with flowers. It is difficult not to feel that some unspoken
understanding subsisted between the preacher and the king, which
permitted the king to separate the preacher from the man when Massillon
used that great plainness of speech to his sovereign. The king did not,
however, often invite this master of eloquence to make the royal conscience
displacent with itself. Bourdaloue was ostensibly as outspoken as
Massillon; but somehow that Jesuit preacher contented the king to be his
hearer during as many as ten annual seasons, against the one or two only
that Massillon preached at court before Louis.
The work of Massillon generally judged, though according to Sainte-
Beuve not wisely judged, to be his choicest, is contained in that volume of
his which goes by the name of "Le Petit Carême,"—literally, "The Little
Lent,"—a collection of sermons preached during a Lent before the king's
great-grandson and successor, youthful Louis XV. These sermons especially
have given to their author a fame that is his by a title perhaps absolutely
unique in literature. We know no other instance of a writer, limited in his
production strictly to sermons, who holds his place in the first rank of
authorship simply by virtue of supreme mastership in literary style.
Still, from the text of his printed discourses,—admirable, exquisite, ideal
compositions in point of form as these are,—it will be found impossible to

conceive adequately the living eloquence of Massillon. There are interesting
traditions of the effects produced by particular passages of particular
sermons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon preached his funeral
sermon. He began with that celebrated single sentence of exordium which,
it is said, brought his whole audience, by instantaneous, simultaneous
impulse, in a body to their feet. The modern reader will experience some
difficulty in comprehending at once why that perfectly commonplace-
seeming expression of the preacher should have produced an effect so
powerful. The element of the opportune, the apposite, the fit, is always great
part of the secret of eloquence. Nothing more absolutely appropriate can be
conceived than was the sentiment, the exclamation, with which Massillon
opened that funeral sermon. The image and symbol of earthly greatness, in
the person of Louis XIV., had been shattered under the touch of iconoclast
death. "God only is great!" said the preacher; and all was said. Those four
short words had uttered completely, and with a simplicity incapable of
being surpassed, the thought that usurped every breast. It is not the surprise
of some striking new thought that is the most eloquent thing. The most
eloquent thing is the surprise of that one word, suddenly spoken, which
completely expresses some thought, present already and uppermost, but
silent till now, awaiting expression, in a multitude of minds. This most
eloquent thing it was which, from Massillon's lips that day, moved his
susceptible audience to rise, like one man, and bow in mute act of
submission to the truth of his words. The inventive and curious reader may
exercise his ingenuity at leisure. He will strive in vain to conceive any other
exordium than Massillon's that would have matched the occasion presented.
There is an admirable anecdote of the pulpit, which—though since often
otherwise applied—had, perhaps, its first application to Massillon. Some
one congratulating the orator, as he came down from his pulpit, on the
eloquence of the sermon just preached, that wise self-knower fenced by
replying, "Ah, the devil has already apprised me of that!" The recluse
celibate preacher was one day asked whence he derived that marvellous
knowledge which he displayed of the passions, the weaknesses, the follies,
the sins, of human nature. "From my own heart," was his reply. Source
sufficient, perhaps; but from the confessional, too, one may confidently add.

There is probably no better brief, quotable passage to represent Massillon
at his imaginative highest in eloquence, than that most celebrated one of all,
occurring toward the close of his memorable sermon on the "Fewness of the
Elect." The effect attending the delivery of this passage, on both of the two
recorded occasions on which the sermon was preached, is reported to have
been remarkable. The manner of the orator—downcast, as with the inward
oppression of the same solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a spell on
the audience—indefinitely heightened the magical power of the awful
conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with that preternatural skill of
his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have
exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the
discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering consciences of his
hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the shadows of the world to come, were
thus already on all hearts. So much as this. Bourdaloue, too, with his
incomparable dialectic, could have accomplished. But there immediately
follows a culmination in power, such as was distinctly beyond the height of
Bourdaloue. Genius must be superadded to talent if you would have the
supreme, either in poetry or in eloquence. There was an extreme point in
Massillon's discourse at which mere reason, having done, and done terribly,
its utmost, was fain to confess that it could not go a single step farther. At
that extreme point, suddenly, inexhaustible imagination took up the part of
exhausted reason. Reason had made men afraid; imagination now appalled
them. Massillon said:—
I confine myself to you, my brethren, who are gathered here. I
speak no longer of the rest of mankind. I look at you as if you
were the only ones on the earth; and here is the thought that
seizes me, and that terrifies me. I make the supposition that this
is your last hour, and the end of the world; that the heavens are
about to open above your heads, that Jesus Christ is to appear in
his glory in the midst of this sanctuary, and that you are gathered
here only to wait for him, and as trembling criminals on whom
is to be pronounced either a sentence of grace or a decree of
eternal death. For, vainly do you flatter yourselves; you will die
such in character as you are to-day. All those impulses toward
change with which you amuse yourselves, you will amuse

yourselves with them down to the bed of death. Such is the
experience of all generations. The only thing new you will then
find in yourselves will be, perhaps, a reckoning a trifle larger
than that which you would to-day have to render; and according
to what you would be if you were this moment to be judged, you
may almost determine what will befall you at the termination of
your life.
Now I ask you, and I ask it smitten with terror, not separating
in this matter my lot from yours, and putting myself into the
same frame of mind into which I desire you to come,—I ask
you, then, If Jesus Christ were to appear in this sanctuary, in the
midst of this assembly, the most illustrious in the world, to pass
judgment on us, to draw the dread line of distinction between
the goats and the sheep, do you believe that the majority of all of
us who are here would be set on his right hand? Do you believe
that things would even be equal? Nay, do you believe there
would be found so many as the ten righteous men whom
anciently the Lord could not find in five whole cities? I put the
question to you, but you know not; I know not myself. Thou
only, O my God, knowest those that belong to thee! But if we
know not those who belong to him, at least we know that sinners
do not belong to him. Now, of what classes of persons do the
professing Christians in this assembly consist? Titles and
dignities must be counted for naught; of these you shall be
stripped before Jesus Christ. Who make up this assembly?
Sinners, in great number, who do not wish to be converted; in
still greater number, sinners who would like it, but who put off
their conversion; many others who would be converted, only to
relapse into sin; finally, a multitude who think they have no need
of conversion. You have thus made up the company of the
reprobate. Cut off these four classes of sinners from this sacred
assembly, for they will be cut off from it at the great day! Stand
forth now, ye righteous! where are you? Remnant of Israel, pass
to the right hand! True wheat of Jesus Christ, disengage

yourselves from this chaff, doomed to the fire! O God! where
are thine elect? and what remains there for thy portion?
Brethren, our perdition is well-nigh assured, and we do not
give it a thought. Even if in that dread separation which one day
shall be made, there were to be but a single sinner out of this
assembly found on the side of the reprobate, and if a voice from
heaven should come to give us assurance of the fact in this
sanctuary, without pointing out the person intended, who among
us would not fear that he might himself be the wretch? Who
among us would not at once recoil upon his conscience, to
inquire whether his sins had not deserved that penalty? Who
among us would not, seized with dismay, ask of Jesus Christ, as
did once the apostles, "Lord, is it I?"
What is there wanting in such eloquence as the foregoing? Wherein lies its
deficiency of power to penetrate and subdue? Voltaire avowed that he found
the sermons of Massillon to be among "the most agreeable books we have
in our language. I love," he went on, "to have them read to me at table."
There are things in Massillon that Voltaire should not have delighted to
read, or to hear read,—things that should have made him wince and revolt,
if they did not make him yield and be converted. Was there fault in the
preacher? Did he preach with professional, rather than with personal, zeal?
Did his hearers feel themselves secretly acquitted by the man, at the self-
same moment at which they were openly condemned by the preacher? It is
impossible to say. But Massillon's virtue was not lofty and regal; however it
may have been free from just reproach. He was somewhat too capable of
compliance. He was made bishop of Clermont, and his promotion cost him
the anguish of having to help consecrate a scandalously unfit candidate as
archbishop of Cambray. Massillon's, however, is a fair, if not an absolutely
spotless, fame. Hierarch as he was, and orthodox Catholic, this most elegant
of eloquent orators had a liberal strain in his blood which allied him
politically with the "philosophers" of the time succeeding. He, with
Fénelon, and perhaps with Racine, makes seem less abrupt the transition in
France from the age of absolutism to the age of revolt and final revolution.
There is distinct advance in Massillon, and advance more than is accounted

for by his somewhat later time, toward the easier modern spirit in church
and in state, from the high, unbending austerity of that antique pontiff and
minister, Bossuet.

XIII.
FÉNELON.
1651-1715.
If Bossuet is to Frenchmen a synonym for sublimity, no less to them is
Fénelon a synonym for saintliness. From the French point of view, one
might say, "the sublime Bossuet," "the saintly Fénelon," somewhat as one
says, "the learned Selden," "the judicious Hooker." It is as much a French
delight to idealize Fénelon an archangel Raphael, affable and mild, as it is
to glorify Bossuet a Michael in majesty and power.
But saintliness of character was in Fénelon commended to the world by
equal charm of person and of genius. The words of Milton describing Eve
might be applied, with no change but that of gender, to Fénelon, both the
exterior and the interior man:—

Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

The consent is general among those who saw Fénelon, and have left
behind them their testimony, that alike in person, in character, and in
genius, he was such as we thus describe him.
Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart with a feeling of vocation
to be a missionary. Both times he was thwarted by the intervention of
friends. The second time, he wrote disclosing his half-romantic aspiration in
a glowing letter of confidence and friendship to Bossuet, his senior by many

years, but not yet become famous. Young Fénelon's friend Bossuet was
destined later to prove a bitter antagonist, almost a personal foe.
Until he was forty-two years old, François Fénelon lived in comparative
retirement, nourishing his genius with study, with contemplation, with
choice society. He experimented in writing verse. Not succeeding to his
mind, he turned to prose composition, and leading the way, in a new species
of literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for Lamartine, and for many
others, to follow, went on writing what, in ceasing to be verse, did not cease
to be poetry.
The great world will presently involve Fénelon in the currents of history.
Louis XIV., grown old, and become as selfishly greedy now of personal
salvation as all his life he has been selfishly greedy of personal glory, seeks
that object of his soul by serving the church in the wholesale conversion of
Protestants. He revokes the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious
toleration for the realm, and proceeds to dragoon the Huguenots into
conformity with the Roman-Catholic church. The reaction in public
sentiment against such rigors grew a cry that had to be silenced. Fénelon
was selected to visit the heretic provinces, and win them to willing
submission. He stipulated that every form of coercion should cease, and
went to conquer all with love. His success was remarkable. But not even
Fénelon quite escaped the infection of violent zeal for the Church. It seems
not to be given to any man to rise wholly superior to the spirit of the world
in which he lives.
The lustre of Fénelon's name, luminous from the triumphs of his mission
among the Protestants, was sufficient to justify the choice of this man, a
man both by nature and by culture so ideally formed for the office as was
he, to be tutor to the heir prospective of the French monarchy. The Duke of
Burgundy, grandson to Louis XIV., was accordingly put under the charge of
Fénelon to be trained for future kingship. Never, probably, in the history of
mankind, has there occurred a case in which the victory of a teacher could
be more illustrious than actually was the victory of Fénelon as teacher to
this scion of the house of Bourbon. We shall be giving our readers a
relishable taste of St. Simon, the celebrated memoir-writer of the age of
Louis XIV., if out of the portrait in words, drawn by him from the life, of

Fénelon's princely pupil, we transfer here a few strong lines to our pages.
St. Simon says:—
In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the Duke of
Burgundy had by nature a most formidable disposition. He was
passionate to the extent of wishing to dash to pieces his clocks
when they struck the hour which called him to what he did not
like, and of flying into the utmost rage against the rain if it
interfered with what he wanted to do. Resistance threw him into
paroxysms of fury. I speak of what I have often witnessed in his
early youth. Moreover, an ungovernable impulse drove him into
whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His
sarcasm was so much the more cruel as it was witty and piquant,
and as it seized with precision upon every point open to ridicule.
All this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind that
proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early
days never permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two
things at once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent
avidity, and all this with a pride and a haughtiness impossible to
describe; dangerously wise, moreover, to judge of men and
things, and to detect the weak point in a train of reasoning, and
to reason himself more cogently and more profoundly than his
teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent,
reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged
them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was
rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself
against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy
is, that in a very short time piety and grace made of him a
different being, and transformed faults so numerous and so
formidable into virtues exactly opposite.
St. Simon attributes to Fénelon "every virtue under heaven;" but his way
was to give to God rather than to man the praise of the remarkable change
which, during Fénelon's charge of the Duke of Burgundy, came over the
character of the prince.

The grandfather survived the grandson; and it was never put to the stern
proof of historical experiment, whether Fénelon had indeed turned out one
Bourbon entirely different from all the other members, earlier or later, of
that royal line.
Before, however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus snatched away from the
perilous prospect of a throne, his beloved teacher was parted from him, not
indeed by death, but by what, to the archbishop's susceptible and suffering
spirit, was worse than death,—by "disgrace." The disgrace was such as has
ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the sympathy, and the
admiration, of mankind. Fénelon lost the royal favor. That was all,—for the
present,—but that was much. He was banished from court, and he ceased to
be preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The king, in signal severity, used his
own hand to strike Fénelon's name from the list of the household of his
grandson and heir. The archbishop—for Fénelon had previously been made
archbishop of Cambray—returned into his diocese as into an exile. But his
cup of humiliation was by no means full. Bossuet will stain his own glory
by following his exiled former pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage,
to crush him in his retreat.
The occasion was a woman, a woman with the charm of genius and of
exalted character, a Christian, a saint, but a mystic—it was Madame Guyon.
Madame Guyon taught that it was possible to love God for himself alone,
purely and disinterestedly. Fénelon received the doctrine, and Madame
Guyon was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. Bossuet scented heresy.
He was too much a "natural man" to understand Madame Guyon. The king
was like the prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent incapacity. It
was resolved that Fénelon must condemn Madame Guyon. But Fénelon
would not. He was very gentle, very conciliatory, but in fine he would not.
Controversy ensued, haughty, magisterial, domineering, on the part of
Bossuet; on the part of Fénelon, meek, docile, suasive. The world
wondered, and watched the duel. Fénelon finally did what king James's
translators misleadingly make Job wish that his adversary had done,—he
wrote a book, "The Maxims of the Saints." In this book, he sought to show
that the accepted, and even canonized, teachers of the Church had taught
the doctrine for which, in his own case and in the case of Madame Guyon,

condemnation was now invoked. Bossuet was pope at Paris; and he, in full
presence, denounced to the monarch the heresy of Fénelon. At this moment
of crisis for Fénelon, it happened that news was brought him of the burning
of his mansion at Cambray with all his books and manuscripts. It will
always be remembered that Fénelon only said: "It is better so than if it had
been the cottage of a poor laboring-man."
Madame de Maintenon, till now his friend, with perfectly frigid facility
separated herself from the side of the accused. The controversy was carried
to Rome, where at length Fénelon's book was condemned,—condemned
mildly, but condemned. The pope is said to have made the remark that
Fénelon erred by loving God too much, and Fénelon's antagonists by loving
their fellow-man too little. Fénelon bowed to the authority of the Church,
and meekly in his own cathedral confessed his error. It was a logical thing
for him, as loyal Catholic, to do; and he did it with a beautiful grace of
humility. The Protestant spirit, however, rebels on his behalf, and finds it
difficult even to admire the manner in which was done by him a thing that
seems so unfit to have been done by him at all. Bossuet did not long survive
his inglorious triumph over so much sanctity of personal character, over so
much difficult and beautiful height of doctrinal and practical instruction to
virtue. Fénelon seems to have been reported as preaching a funeral sermon
on the dead prelate. "I have wept and prayed," he wrote to a friend, "for this
old instructor of my youth; but it is not true that I celebrated his obsequies
in my cathedral, and preached his funeral sermon. Such affectation, you
know, is foreign to my nature." The iron must have gone deep, to wring
from that gentle bosom even so much cry as this of wounded feeling.
It is hard to tell what might now have befallen Fénelon, in the way of
good fortune,—he might even have been recalled to court, and re-installed
in his office of tutor to the prince,—had not a sinister incident, not to have
been looked for, at an inopportune moment occurred. The "Telemachus"
appeared in print, and kindled a sudden flame of popular feeling which
instantly spread in universal conflagration over the face of Europe. This
composition of Fénelon's the author had written to convey, under a form of
quasi-poetical fiction, lessons of wisdom in government to the mind of his
royal pupil. The existence of the manuscript book would seem to have been

intended to be a secret from the king,—indeed, from almost every one,
except the pupil himself for whose use it was made. But a copyist proved
false to his trust, and furnished a copy of "Telemachus" to a printer in
Holland, who lost no time in publishing a book so likely to sell. But the sale
of the book surpassed all expectation. Holland not only, but Belgium,
Germany, France, and England multiplied copies, as fast as they could; still,
Europe could not get copies as fast as it wanted them.
The secret of such popularity did not lie simply in the literary merits of
"Telemachus." It lay more in a certain interpretation that the book was
supposed to bear. "Telemachus" was understood to be a covert criticism of
Louis XIV., and of the principle of absolute monarchy embodied in him.
This imputed intention of the book could not fail to become known at
Versailles. The result, of course, was fatal, and finally fatal, to the prospects,
whatever these may have been, of Fénelon's restoration to favor at court.
The archbishop thenceforward was left to do in comparative obscurity the
duties of his episcopal office in his diocese of Cambray. He devoted
himself, with exemplary and touching fidelity, to the interests of his flock,
loving them and loved by them, till he died. It was an entirely worthy and
adequate employment of his powers. The only abatement needful from the
praise to be bestowed upon his behavior in this pastoral relation is, that he
suffered himself sometimes to think of his position as one of "disgrace." His
reputation meantime for holy character and conduct was European. His
palace at Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of suffering need,
indeed almost his whole diocese, lying on the frontier of France, was, by
mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war as a kind of mutual
inviolable ground, invested with privilege of sanctuary. It was an instructive
example of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes divinely
accorded to illustrious personal goodness.
There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair of the
"Telemachus" publication, when it looked as if, after long delay, a complete
worldly triumph for Fénelon was assured, and was near. The father of the
Duke of Burgundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand between
Fénelon's late pupil and the throne,—nothing but the precarious life of an
aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The Duke of Burgundy, through

all changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his affectionate loyalty to
Fénelon. Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and watchful king, his
grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he yet had found means
to send to Fénelon, from time to time, reassuring signals of his trust and his
love. Fénelon was now, in all eyes, the predestined prime minister of a new
reign about to commence. Through devoted friends of his own, near to the
person of the prince at court, Fénelon sent minutes of advice to his pupil,
which outlined a whole beneficent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new
day seemed dawning for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency and
of Louis XV. might, perhaps, have been averted, and, with that spared to
France, the Revolution itself might have been accomplished without the
Revolution. But it was not to be. The Duke of Burgundy first buried his
wife, and then, within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He
died sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from the dread
responsibility of reigning.
"All my ties are broken," mourned Fénelon; "there is no longer any thing
to bind me to the earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but two or
three years. When he died, his sovereign, gloomy with well-grounded
apprehension for the future of his realm, said, with tardy revival of
recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fénelon: "Here was a man
who could have served us well under the disasters by which my kingdom is
about to be assailed!"
Fénelon's literary productions are various; but they all have the common
character of being works written for the sake of life, rather than for the sake
of literature. They were inspired each by a practical purpose, and adapted
each to a particular occasion. His treatise on the "Education of Girls" was
written for the use of a mother who desired instruction on the topic from
Fénelon. His argument on the "Being of a God" was prepared as a duty of
his preceptorship to the prince. But the one book of Fénelon which was an
historical event when it appeared, and which stands an indestructible classic
in literature, is the "Telemachus." It remains for us briefly to give some idea
of this book.
The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who suppose
themselves to have obtained a true idea of "Telemachus" from having partly

read it at school, as an exercise in French. The essence of the work lies
beyond those few opening pages to which the exploration of school-boys
and school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of Fénelon is much
more than a charming piece of romantic and sentimental poetry in prose. It
is a kind of epic, indeed, like the "Odyssey," only written in rhythmical
prose instead of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the "Odyssey," it is an idyllic
epic written with an ulterior purpose of moral and political didactics. It was
designed as a manual of instruction,—instruction made delightful to a
prince,—to inculcate the duties incumbent on a sovereign.
Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the son of Ulysses. Fénelon's
story relates the adventures encountered by Telemachus, in search for his
father, so long delayed on his return from Troy to Ithaca. Telemachus is
imagined by Fénelon to be attended by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom,
masked from his recognition, as well as from the recognition of others,
under the form of an old man. Minerva, of course, constantly imparts the
wisest counsel to young Telemachus, who has his weaknesses, as had the
young Duke of Burgundy, but who is essentially well-disposed, as Fénelon
hoped his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing can exceed the
urbanity and grace with which the delicate business is conducted by
Fénelon, of teaching a bad prince, with a very bad example set him by his
grandfather, to be a good king. The style in which the story is told, and in
which the advice is insinuated, is exquisite, is beyond praise. The "soft
delicious" stream of sound runs on, as from a fountain, and like "linked
sweetness long drawn out." Never had prose a flow of melody more
luscious. It is perpetual ravishment to the ear. The invention, too, of incident
is fruitful, while the landscape and coloring are magical for beauty. We give
a few extracts, to be read with that application to Louis XIV., and the state
of France, in mind, which, when the book was first printed, gave it such an
exciting interest in the eyes of Europe. Telemachus, after the manner of
Æneas to Queen Dido, is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island
he has come, the adventures that have previously befallen him. He says that
he, with Mentor (Minerva in disguise), found himself in Crete. Mentor had
been there before, and was ready to tell Telemachus all about the country.
Telemachus was naturally interested to learn respecting the Cretan
monarchy. Mentor, he says, informed him as follows:—

The king's authority over the subject is absolute, but the
authority of the law is absolute over him. His power to do good
is unlimited, but he is restrained from doing evil. The laws have
put the people into his hands, as the most valuable deposit, upon
condition that he shall treat them as his children. It is the intent
of the law that the wisdom and equity of one man shall be the
happiness of many, and not that the wretchedness and slavery of
many should gratify the pride and luxury of one. The king ought
to possess nothing more than the subject, except what is
necessary to alleviate the fatigue of his station, and impress
upon the minds of the people a reverence of that authority by
which the laws are executed. Moreover, the king should indulge
himself less, as well in ease as in pleasure, and should be less
disposed to the pomp and the pride of life than any other man.
He ought not to be distinguished from the rest of mankind by the
greatness of his wealth, or the vanity of his enjoyments, but by
superior wisdom, more heroic virtue, and more splendid glory.
Abroad he ought to be the defender of his country, by
commanding her armies; and at home the judge of his people,
distributing justice among them, improving their morals, and
increasing their felicity. It is not for himself that the gods have
intrusted him with royalty. He is exalted above individuals, only
that he may be the servant of the people. To the public he owes
all his time, all his attention, and all his love; he deserves dignity
only in proportion as he gives up private enjoyments for the
public good.
Pretty sound doctrine, the foregoing, on the subject of the duties devolving
on a king. The "paternal" idea, to be sure, of government is in it; but there is
the idea, too, of limited or constitutional monarchy. The spirit of just and
liberal political thought had, it seems, not been wholly extinguished, even at
the court, by that oppression of mind—an oppression seldom, if ever, in
human history exceeded—which was enforced under the unmitigated
absolutism of Louis XIV. The literature that, with Montesquieu, Voltaire,
Rousseau, the Encyclopædists, prepared the Revolution, had already begun
virtually to be written when Fénelon wrote his "Telemachus." It is easy to

see why the fame of Fénelon should by exception have been dear even to
the hottest infidel haters of that ecclesiastical hierarchy to which the
archbishop of Cambray himself belonged. This lover of liberty, this gentle
rebuker of kings, was of the free-thinkers, at least in the sympathy of
political thought. Nay, the Revolution itself is foreshown in a remarkable
glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the "Telemachus."
Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by the author to
reprove and instruct, for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To Idomeneus—a
character taken, and not unplausibly taken, to have been suggested to
Fénelon by the example of Louis XIV.—to this imaginary counterpart of the
reigning monarch of France, Mentor holds the following language. How
could the sequel of Bourbon despotism in France—a sequel suspended now
for a time, but two or three generations later to be dreadfully visited on the
heirs of Louis XIV.—have been more truly foreshadowed? The
"Telemachus:"—
Remember, that the sovereign who is most absolute is always
least powerful; he seizes upon all, and his grasp is ruin. He is,
indeed, the sole proprietor of whatever his state contains; but,
for that reason, his state contains nothing of value: the fields are
uncultivated, and almost a desert; the towns lose some of their
few inhabitants every day; and trade every day declines. The
king, who must cease to be a king when he ceases to have
subjects, and who is great only in virtue of his people, is himself
insensibly losing his character and his power, as the number of
his people, from whom alone both are derived, insensibly
diminishes. His dominions are at length exhausted of money and
of men: the loss of men is the greatest and the most irreparable
he can sustain. Absolute power degrades every subject to a
slave. The tyrant is flattered, even to an appearance of adoration,
and every one trembles at the glance of his eye; but, at the least
revolt, this enormous power perishes by its own excess. It
derived no strength from the love of the people; it wearied and
provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every individual
of the state impatient of its continuance. At the first stroke of
opposition, the idol is overturned, broken to pieces, and trodden

under foot. Contempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust, and
every other passion of the soul, unite against so hateful a
despotism. The king who, in his vain prosperity, found no man
bold enough to tell him the truth, in his adversity finds no man
kind enough to excuse his faults, or to defend him against his
enemies.
So much is perhaps enough to indicate the political drift of the
"Telemachus." That drift is, indeed, observable everywhere throughout the
book.
We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting Fénelon appear
more purely now in his character as dreamer and poet. Young Prince
Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and Æneas-like, his descent into Hades. This
incident affords Fénelon opportunity to exercise his best powers of awful
and of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas are, in this episode
of the "Telemachus," superinduced upon pagan, after a manner hard,
perhaps, to reconcile with the verisimilitude required by art, but at least
productive of very noble and very beautiful results. First, one glimpse of
Tartarus as conceived by Fénelon. It is the spectacle of kings who on earth
abused their power, that Telemachus is beholding:—
Telemachus observed the countenance of these criminals to be
pale and ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they
suffered at the heart. They looked inward with a self-abhorrence,
now inseparable from their existence. Their crimes themselves
had become their punishment, and it was not necessary that
greater should be inflicted. They haunted them like hideous
spectres, and continually started up before them in all their
enormity. They wished for a second death, that might separate
them from these ministers of vengeance, as the first had
separated their spirits from the body,—a death that might at once
extinguish all consciousness and sensibility. They called upon
the depths of hell to hide them from the persecuting beams of
truth, in impenetrable darkness; but they are reserved for the cup
of vengeance, which, though they drink of it forever, shall be
ever full. The truth, from which they fled, has overtaken them,

an invincible and unrelenting enemy. The ray which once might
have illuminated them, like the mild radiance of the day, now
pierces them like lightning,—a fierce and fatal fire, that, without
injury to the external parts, infixes a burning torment at the
heart. By truth, now an avenging flame, the very soul is melted
like metal in a furnace; it dissolves all, but destroys nothing; it
disunites the first elements of life, yet the sufferer can never die.
He is, as it were, divided against himself, without rest and
without comfort; animated by no vital principle, but the rage
that kindles at his own misconduct, and the dreadful madness
that results from despair.
If the "perpetual feast of nectared sweets" that the "Telemachus" affords,
is felt at times to be almost cloying, it is not, as our readers have now seen,
for want of occasional contrasts of a bitterness sufficiently mordant and
drastic. But the didactic purpose is never lost sight of by the author. Here is
an aspect of the Elysium found by Telemachus. How could any thing be
more delectably conceived and described? The translator, Dr. Hawkesworth,
is animated to an English style that befits the sweetness of his original. The
"Telemachus:"—
In this place resided all the good kings who had wisely
governed mankind from the beginning of time. They were
separated from the rest of the just; for, as wicked princes suffer
more dreadful punishment than other offenders in Tartarus, so
good kings enjoy infinitely greater felicity than other lovers of
virtue, in the fields of Elysium.
Telemachus advanced towards these kings, whom he found in
groves of delightful fragrance, reclining upon the downy turf,
where the flowers and herbage were perpetually renewed. A
thousand rills wandered through these scenes of delight, and
refreshed the soil with a gentle and unpolluted wave; the song of
innumerable birds echoed in the groves. Spring strewed the
ground with her flowers, while at the same time autumn loaded
the trees with her fruit. In this place the burning heat of the dog-
star was never felt, and the stormy north was forbidden to scatter

over it the frosts of winter. Neither War that thirsts for blood, nor
Envy that bites with an envenomed tooth, like the vipers that are
wreathed around her arms, and fostered in her bosom, nor
Jealousy, nor Distrust, nor Fears, nor vain Desires, invade these
sacred domains of peace. The day is here without end, and the
shades of night are unknown. Here the bodies of the blessed are
clothed with a pure and lambent light, as with a garment. This
light does not resemble that vouchsafed to mortals upon earth,
which is rather darkness visible; it is rather a celestial glory than
a light—an emanation that penetrates the grossest body with
more subtilety than the rays of the sun penetrate the purest
crystal, which rather strengthens than dazzles the sight, and
diffuses through the soul a serenity which no language can
express. By this ethereal essence the blessed are sustained in
everlasting life; it pervades them; it is incorporated with them,
as food with the mortal body; they see it, they feel it, they
breathe it, and it produces in them an inexhaustible source of
serenity and joy. It is a fountain of delight, in which they are
absorbed as fishes are absorbed in the sea; they wish for
nothing, and, having nothing, they possess all things. This
celestial light satiates the hunger of the soul; every desire is
precluded; and they have a fulness of joy which sets them above
all that mortals seek with such restless ardor, to fill the vacuity
that aches forever in their breast. All the delightful objects that
surround them are disregarded; for their felicity springs up
within, and, being perfect, can derive nothing from without. So
the gods, satiated with nectar and ambrosia, disdain, as gross
and impure, all the dainties of the most luxurious table upon
earth. From these seats of tranquillity all evils fly far away;
death, disease, poverty, pain, regret, remorse, fear, even hope,—
which is sometimes not less painful than fear itself,—animosity,
disgust, and resentment can never enter there.
The leaden good sense of Louis XIV. pronounced Fénelon the "most
chimerical" man in France. The Founder of the kingdom of heaven would
have been a dreamer, to this most worldly-minded of "Most Christian"

monarchs. Bossuet, who, about to die, read something of Fénelon's
"Telemachus," said it was a book hardly serious enough for a clergyman to
write. A more serious book, whether its purpose be regarded, or its
undoubted actual influence in moulding the character of a prospective ruler
of France, was not written by any clergyman of Fénelon's or Bossuet's time.
Fénelon was an eloquent preacher as well as an elegant writer. His
influence exerted in both the two functions, that of the writer and that of the
preacher, was powerfully felt in favor of the freedom of nature in style as
against the conventionality of culture and art. He insensibly helped on that
reform from a too rigid classicism which in our day we have seen pushed to
its extreme in the exaggerations of romanticism. Few wiser words have ever
been spoken on the subject of oratory, than are to be found in his
"Dialogues on Eloquence."
French literature, unfortunately, is on the whole such in character as to
need all that it can show, to be cast into the scale of moral elevation and
purity. Fénelon alone is, in quantity as in quality, enough, not indeed to
overcome, but to go far toward overcoming, the perverse inclination of the
balance.

XIV.
MONTESQUIEU.
1689-1755.
To Montesquieu belongs the glory of being the founder, or inventor, of the
philosophy of history. Bossuet might dispute this palm with him; but
Bossuet, in his "Discourse on Universal History," only exemplified the
principle which it was left to Montesquieu afterward more consciously to
develop.
Three books, still living, are associated with the name of Montesquieu,
—"The Persian Letters," "The Greatness and the Decline of the Romans,"
and "The Spirit of Laws." "The Persian Letters" are a series of epistles
purporting to be written by a Persian sojourning in Paris and observing the
manners and morals of the people around him. The idea is ingenious;
though the ingenuity, we suppose, was not original with Montesquieu. Such
letters afford the writer of them an admirable advantage for telling satire on
contemporary follies. This production of Montesquieu became the
suggestive example to Goldsmith for his "Citizen of the World; or, Letters
of a Chinese Philosopher." We shall have here no room for illustrative
citations from Montesquieu's "Persian Letters."
The second work, that on the "Greatness and the Decline of the Romans,"
is less a history than a series of essays on the history of Rome. It is brilliant,
striking, suggestive. It aims to be philosophical rather than historical. It
deals in bold generalizations. The spirit of it is, perhaps, too constantly and
too profoundly hostile to the Romans. Something of the ancient Gallic
enmity—as if a derivation from that last and noblest of the Gauls,
Vercingetorix—seems to animate the Frenchman in discussing the character

and the career of the great conquering nation of antiquity. The critical
element is the element chiefly wanting to make Montesquieu's work equal
to the demands of modern historical scholarship. Montesquieu was,
however, a full worthy forerunner of the philosophical historians of to-day.
We give a single extract in illustration,—an extract condensed from the
chapter in which the author analyzes and expounds the foreign policy of the
Romans. The generalizations are bold and brilliant,—too bold, probably, for
strict critical truth. (We use, for our extract, the recent translation by Mr.
Jehu Baker, who enriches his volume with original notes of no little interest
and value.) Montesquieu:—
This body [the Roman Senate] erected itself into a tribunal for
the judgment of all peoples, and at the end of every war it
decided upon the punishments and the recompenses which it
conceived each to be entitled to. It took away parts of the lands
of the conquered states, in order to bestow them upon the allies
of Rome, thus accomplishing two objects at once,—attaching to
Rome those kings of whom she had little to fear and much to
hope, and weakening those of whom she had little to hope and
all to fear.
Allies were employed to make war upon an enemy, but the
destroyers were at once destroyed in their turn. Philip was
beaten with the half of the Ætolians, who were immediately
afterwards annihilated for having joined themselves to
Antiochus. Antiochus was beaten with the help of the Rhodians,
who, after having received signal rewards, were humiliated
forever, under the pretext that they had requested that peace
might be made with Perseus.
When they had many enemies on hand at the same time, they
accorded a truce to the weakest, which considered itself happy
in obtaining such a respite, counting it for much to be able to
secure a postponement of its ruin.
When they were engaged in a great war, the senate affected to
ignore all sorts of injuries, and silently awaited the arrival of the

proper time for punishment; when, if it saw that only some
individuals were culpable, it refused to punish them, choosing
rather to hold the entire nation as criminal, and thus reserve to
itself a useful vengeance.
As they inflicted inconceivable evils upon their enemies, there
were not many leagues formed against them; for those who were
most distant from danger were not willing to draw nearer to it.
The consequence of this was, that they were rarely attacked;
whilst, on the other hand, they constantly made war at such
time, in such manner, and against such peoples, as suited their
convenience; and, among the many nations which they assailed,
there were very few that would not have submitted to every
species of injury at their hands if they had been willing to leave
them in peace.
It being their custom to speak always as masters, the
ambassadors whom they sent to nations which had not yet felt
their power were certain to be insulted; and this was an infallible
pretext for a new war.
As they never made peace in good faith, and as, with the
design of universal conquest, their treaties were, properly
speaking, only suspensions of war, they always put conditions in
them which began the ruin of the states which accepted them.
They either provided that the garrisons of strong places should
be withdrawn, or that the number of troops should be limited, or
that the horses or the elephants of the vanquished party should
be delivered over to themselves; and if the defeated people was
powerful on sea, they compelled it to burn its vessels, and
sometimes to remove, and occupy a place of habitation farther
inland.
After having destroyed the armies of a prince, they ruined his
finances by excessive taxes, or by the imposition of a tribute
under pretext of requiring him to pay the expenses of the war,—
a new species of tyranny, which forced the vanquished

sovereign to oppress his own subjects, and thus to alienate their
affection.
When they granted peace to a king, they took some of his
brothers or children as hostages. This gave them the means of
troubling his kingdom at their pleasure. If they held the nearest
heir, they intimidated the possessor; if only a prince of a remote
degree, they used him to stir up revolts against the legitimate
ruler.
Whenever any people or prince withdrew their obedience from
their sovereign, they immediately accorded to them the title of
allies of the Roman people, and thus rendered them sacred and
inviolable; so that there was no king, however great he might be,
who could for a moment be sure of his subjects, or even of his
family.
Although the title of Roman ally was a species of servitude, it
was, nevertheless, very much sought after; for the possession of
this title made it certain that the recipients of it would receive
injuries from the Romans only, and there was ground for the
hope that this class of injuries would be rendered less grievous
than they would otherwise be.
Thus, there was no service which nations and kings were not
ready to perform, nor any humiliation which they did not submit
to, in order to obtain this distinction....
These customs were not merely some particular facts which
happened at hazard. They were permanently established
principles, as may be readily seen; for the maxims which the
Romans acted upon against the greatest powers were precisely
those which they had employed in the beginning of their career
against the small cities which surrounded them....
But nothing served Rome more effectually than the respect
which she inspired among all nations. She immediately reduced
kings to silence, and rendered them as dumb. With the latter, it

was not a mere question of the degree of their power: their very
persons were attacked. To risk a war with Rome was to expose
themselves to captivity, to death, and to the infamy of a triumph.
Thus it was that kings, who lived in pomp and luxury, did not
dare to look with steady eyes upon the Roman people, and,
losing courage, they hoped, by their patience and their
obsequiousness, to obtain some postponement of the calamities
with which they were menaced.
The "Spirit of Laws" is probably to be considered the masterpiece of
Montesquieu. It is our duty, however, to say, that this work is quite
differently estimated by different authorities. By some, it is praised in terms
of the highest admiration, as a great achievement in wide and wise political
or juridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very lightly, as the
ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, effort of a superficial man, a showy mere
sciolist. It acquired great contemporary fame, both at home and abroad. It
was promptly translated into English, the translator earning the merited
compliment of the author's own hearty approval of his work. Horace
Walpole, who was something of a Gallomaniac, makes repeated allusion to
Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," in letters of his written at about the time of
the appearance of the book. But Walpole's admiring allusions themselves
contain evidence that admiration equal to his own of the work that he
praised, was by no means universal in England.
The general aspect of the book is that of a composition meant to be
luminously analyzed and arranged. Divisions and titles abound. There are
thirty-one "books"; and each book contains, on the average, perhaps about
the same number of chapters. The library edition, in English, consists of
two volumes, comprising together some eight hundred open pages, in good-
sized type. The books and chapters are therefore not formidably long. The
look of the work is as if it were readable; and its character, on the whole,
corresponds. It would hardly be French, if such were not the case. Except
that Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws" is, as we have indicated, a highly
organized, even an over-organized, book, which, by emphasis, Montaigne's
"Essays" is not, these two works may be said, in their contents, somewhat to
resemble each other. Montesquieu is nearly as discursive as Montaigne. He

wishes to be philosophical, but he is not above supplying his reader with
interesting historical instances.
We shall not do better, in giving our readers a comprehensive idea of
Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws," than to begin by showing them the titles of
a number of the books:—
Book I. Of Laws in General. Book II. Of Laws Directly
Derived from the Nature of Government. Book III. Of the
Principles of the Three Kinds of Government. Book IV. That the
Laws of Education ought to be Relative to the Principles of
Government. Book V. That the Laws given by the Legislator
ought to be Relative to the Principle of Government. Book VI.
Consequences of the Principles of Different Governments with
Respect to the Simplicity of Civil and Criminal Laws, the Form
of Judgments, and the Inflicting of Punishments. Book VII.
Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three
Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the
Condition of Women. Book VIII. Of the Corruption of the
Principles of the Three Governments. Book XIV. Of Laws as
Relative to the Nature of the Climate.
The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once appear in the
inquiry which he institutes for the three several animating principles of the
three several forms of government respectively distinguished by him;
namely, democracy (or republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What
these three principles are, will be seen from the following statement: "As
virtue is necessary in a republic, and in monarchy, honor, so fear is
necessary in a despotic government." The meaning is, that in republics,
virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of national prosperity; that
under a monarchy, the desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is
what quickens men to perform services to the state; that despotism thrives
by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to its sway.
To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, we give the whole
of chapter sixteen—there are chapters still shorter—in Book VII.:—

AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES.
The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and
especially in their situation, must have been productive of
admirable effects. The young people were all convened in one
place, and their conduct was examined. He that was declared the
best of the whole assembly, had leave given him to take which
girl he pleased for his wife; the second best chose after him, and
so on. Admirable institution! The only recommendation that
young men could have on this occasion, was their virtue, and the
service done their country. He who had the greatest share of
these endowments, chose which girl he liked out of the whole
nation. Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth
itself, were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler
and grander recompense, less chargeable to a petty state, and
more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be
imagined.
The Samnites were descended from the Lacedæmonians; and
Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of those of
Lycurgus, enacted nearly the same law.
The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indicated in the title of
the book, is sufficiently obscure and remote, for a work like this purporting
to be philosophical. What relation exists, seems to be found in the fact that
the Samnite custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by which
republics flourish. But the information, at all events, is curious and
interesting.
The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter of Book XIV.,
contain in germ nearly the whole of the philosophy underlying M. Taine's
essays on the history of literature:—
OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT
CLIMATES.
A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of
the body; this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of

the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those
very fibres; consequently it increases also their force. On the
contrary, a warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the
fibres; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity.
People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the
action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the
fibres are better performed, the temperature of the humors is
greater, the blood moves freer towards the heart, and
reciprocally the heart has more power. This superiority of
strength must produce various effects; for instance, a greater
boldness,—that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority,
—that is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security,—
that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy and cunning. In
short, this must be productive of very different tempers. Put a
man into a close, warm place, and, for the reasons above given,
he will feel a great faintness. If under this circumstance you
propose a bold enterprise to him, I believe you will find him
very little disposed towards it; his present weakness will throw
him into a despondency; he will be afraid of every thing, being
in a state of total incapacity. The inhabitants of warm countries
are, like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like
young men, brave.
In the following extract, from chapter five, Book XXIV., the climatic
theory is again applied, this time to the matter of religion, in a style that
makes one think of Buckle's "History of Civilization:"—
When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became
unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the
north embraced the Protestant, and those south adhered still to
the Catholic.
The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will
forever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the
people of the south have not; and therefore, a religion which has

no visible head, is more agreeable to the independency of the
climate, than that which has one.
Climate is a "great matter" with Montesquieu. In treating of the subject of
a state changing its religion, he says:—
The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of the
kingdom, and the new one is not; the former agrees with the
climate, and very often the new one is opposite to it.
For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes profound respect,—
rather as a pagan political philosopher might do, than as one intimately
acquainted with it by a personal experience of his own. His spirit, however,
is humane and liberal. It is the spirit of Montaigne, it is the spirit of Voltaire,
speaking in the idiom of this different man, and of this different man as
influenced by his different circumstances. Montesquieu had had practical
proof of the importance to himself of not offending the dominant hierarchy.
The latter part of "The Spirit of Laws" contains discussions exhibiting no
little research on the part of the author. There is, for one example, a
discussion of the course of commerce in different ages of the world, and of
the influences that have wrought from time to time to bring about the
changes occurring. For another example, there is a discussion of the feudal
system.
Montesquieu was an admirer of the English constitution. His work,
perhaps, contains no extended chapters more likely to instruct the general
reader and to furnish a good idea of the writer's genius and method, than the
two chapters—chapter six, Book XI., and chapter twenty-seven, Book XIX.
—in which the English nation and the English form of government are
sympathetically described. We simply indicate, for we have no room to
exhibit, these chapters. Voltaire, too, expressed Montesquieu's admiration of
English liberty and English law.
On the whole, concerning Montesquieu it may justly be said, that of all
political philosophers, he, if not the profoundest, is at least one of the most
interesting; if not the most accurate and critical, at least one of the most
brilliant and suggestive.

As to Montesquieu the man, it is perhaps sufficient to say that he seems to
have been a very good type of the French gentleman of quality. An
interesting story told by Sainte-Beuve reveals, if true, a side at once
attractive and repellent of his personal character. Montesquieu at Marseilles
employed a young boatman, whose manner and speech indicated more
cultivation than was to have been looked for in one plying his vocation. The
philosopher learned his history. The youth's father was at the time a captive
in one of the Barbary States, and this son of his was now working to earn
money for his ransom. The stranger listened apparently unmoved, and went
his way. Some months later, home came the father, released he knew not
how, to his surprised and overjoyed family. The son guessed the secret, and,
meeting Montesquieu a year or so after in Marseilles, threw himself in
grateful tears at his feet, begged the generous benefactor to reveal his name
and to come and see the family he had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly
expressing himself ignorant of the whole business, actually shook the young
fellow off, and turned away without betraying the least emotion. It was not
till after the cold-blooded philanthropist's death that the fact came out.
A tranquil, happy temperament was Montesquieu's. He would seem to
have come as near as any one ever did to being the natural master of his
part in life. But the world was too much for him, as it is for all—at last.
Witness the contrast of these two different sets of expressions from his pen.
In earlier manhood he says:—
Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the
dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that
an hour's reading would not dissipate. I wake in the morning
with a secret joy to behold the light. I behold the light with a
kind of ravishment, and all the rest of the day I am happy.
Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to
this:—
I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of
my life.
Then further to this:—

I have expected to kill myself for the last three months,
finishing an addition to my work on the origin and changes of
the French civil law. It will take only three hours to read it; but, I
assure you, it has been such a labor to me, that my hair has
turned white under it all.
Finally it touches nadir:—
It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can
work no more.
My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges.
When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian men of letters,
followed him to his tomb.

XV.
VOLTAIRE.
1694-1778.
By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing brilliancy, of his
production; by his prodigious effectiveness; and by his universal fame,—
Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow, among the
eighteenth-century literary men, not merely of France, but of the world. He
was not a great man,—he produced no single great work,—but he must
nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is hardly any species of
composition to which, in the long course of his activity, he did not turn his
talent. It cannot be said that he succeeded splendidly in all; but in some he
succeeded splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none. There is not a great
thought, and there is not a flat expression, in the whole bulk of his
multitudinous and multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, in the
ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three
hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his
productions,—you may often find him superficial, you may often find him
untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less
certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull.
The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost
preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He
had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God,
to deter him from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a state
ode were required, it should be ready to order at twelve to-morrow; if an
epic poem—to be classed with the "Iliad" and the "Æneid"—the "Henriade"
was promptly forthcoming, to answer the demand. He did not shrink from
flouting a national idol, by freely finding fault with Corneille; and he lightly

undertook to extinguish a venerable form of Christianity, simply with
pricks, innumerably repeated, of his tormenting pen.
A very large part of the volume of Voltaire's production consists of letters,
written by him to correspondents perhaps more numerous, and more various
in rank, from kings on the throne down to scribblers in the garret, than ever,
in any other case, exchanged such communications with a literary man.
Another considerable proportion of his work in literature took the form of
pamphlets, either anonymously or pseudonymously published, in which this
master-spirit of intellectual disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or
advantageous, or safe, to promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of
such publications was incessantly escaping from Voltaire's pen. More
formal and regular, more confessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were
poems in every kind,—heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic,
satiric,—historical and biographical monographs, and tales or novels of a
peculiar class.
Voltaire's poetry does not count for very much now. Still, its first success
was so great that it will always remain an important topic in literary history.
Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire's
epic verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion
that this author is nowhere dull. "The Henriade" comes dangerously near
that mark. It is a tasteless reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little
reproduction of Lucan's virtues. Voltaire's comedies are bright and witty, but
they are not laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and
creative character of Shakspeare's or Molière's work. His tragedies are
better; but they do not avoid that cast of mechanical which seems
necessarily to belong to poetry produced by talent, however consummate,
unaccompanied with genius. Voltaire's histories are luminous and readable
narratives, but they cannot claim either the merit of critical accuracy or of
philosophic breadth and insight. His letters would have to be read in
considerable volume in order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the author.
His tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the whole, likewise, the
best, means of coming shortly and easily at a knowledge of Voltaire.
Among Voltaire's tales, doubtless the one most eligible for use, to serve
our present purpose, is his "Candide." This is a nondescript piece of fiction,

the design of which is, by means of a narrative of travel and adventure,
constructed without much regard to the probability of particular incidents,
to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of Voltaire, the vanity and
misery of mankind. The author's invention is often whimsical enough; but it
is constantly so ready, so reckless, and so abundant, that the reader never
tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly forward from change to change of scene
and circumstance. The play of wit is incessant. The style is limpidity itself.
Your sympathies are never painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience
that ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble
moral sentiment, to relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at
you, and tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of
the book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it
cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the
reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity,—such is the comfortless doctrine of the book. The
apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue
anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of life is a
cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there is no glimpse given
of any compensating future reserved for men, a future to redress the balance
of good and ill experienced here and now. Faith and hope, those two eyes of
the soul, are smilingly quenched in their sockets; and you are left blind, in a
whirling world of darkness, with a whirling world of darkness before you.
Such is "Candide." We select a single passage for specimen. The passage
we select is more nearly free than almost any other passage as long, in this
extraordinary romance, would probably be found, from impure
implications. It is, besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive, than is
the general tenor of the production. Here, however, as elsewhere, the writer
keeps carefully down his mocking-mask. At least, you are left tantalizingly
uncertain all the time how much the grin you face is the grin of the man,
and how much the grin of a visor that he wears.
Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, brought
successively under the lead of several different persons wise in the ways of
the world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the part of "guide,

philosopher, and friend." Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name
Martin, has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks:—
"I have heard great talk of the Senator Pococuranté, who lives
in that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains
foreigners in the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a
perfect stranger to uneasiness."—"I should be glad to see so
extraordinary a being," said Martin. Candide thereupon sent a
messenger to Signor Pococuranté, desiring permission to wait
on him the next day.
Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the
Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococuranté: the
gardens were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with fine
marble statues; his palace was built after the most approved
rules of architecture. The master of the house, who was a man of
sixty, and very rich, received our two travellers with great
politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat
disconcerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to Martin.
As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly
dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well
frothed. Candide could not help making encomiums upon their
beauty and graceful carriage. "The creatures are well enough,"
said the senator. "I make them my companions, for I am heartily
tired of the ladies of the town, their coquetry, their jealousy,
their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their pride, and
their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for
sonnets to be made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin
to grow very indifferent to me."
After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large
gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of
paintings. "Pray," said Candide, "by what master are the two
first of these?"—"They are Raphael's," answered the senator. "I
gave a great deal of money for them seven years ago, purely out
of curiosity, as they were said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but

I cannot say they please me; the coloring is dark and heavy; the
figures do not swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is
very bad. In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished
upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of
nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I behold
Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be
met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no
manner of delight in them."
While dinner was getting ready, Pococuranté ordered a concert.
Candide praised the music to the skies. "This noise," said the
noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to
last above half an hour, it would grow tiresome to everybody,
though perhaps no one would care to own it. Music is become
the art of executing what is difficult; now, whatever is difficult
cannot be long pleasing.
"I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had
not made such a monster of that species of dramatic
entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how
people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music, where
the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it
were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a
favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who
will or can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch
quavering the majestic part of Cæsar or Cato, and strutting in a
foolish manner upon the stage. For my part, I have long ago
renounced these paltry entertainments, which constitute the
glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned
heads." Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a
discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old
senator's opinion.
Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very
hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer
richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's taste. "This,"
said he, "is a book that was once the delight of the great

Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany."—"Homer is no
favorite of mine," answered Pococuranté very coolly. "I was
made to believe once that I took a pleasure in reading him; but
his continual repetitions of battles must have all such a
resemblance with each other; his gods that are forever in a hurry
and bustle, without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that is the
cause of the war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance;
his Troy, that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all
these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I have
asked some learned men whether they are not in reality as much
tired as myself with reading this poet. Those who spoke
ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall asleep, and
yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place in their
libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or
those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of
no manner of use in commerce."
"But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of
Virgil?" said Candide. "Why, I grant," replied Pococuranté, "that
the second, third, fourth, and sixth books of his 'Æneid' are
excellent; but as for his pious Æneas, his strong Cloanthus, his
friendly Achates, his boy Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his
ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, and some other characters
much in the same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any
thing more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso
far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto."
"May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great
pleasure from reading Horace?" said Candide. "There are
maxims in this writer," replied Pococuranté, "from whence a
man of the world may reap some benefit; and the short measure
of the verse makes them more easily to be retained in the
memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his journey to
Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his dirty,
low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses
it, were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was

dipped in vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and
witches have frequently given me great offence; nor can I
discover the great merit of his telling his friend Mæcenas, that,
if he will but rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head
shall touch the stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance every
thing by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my part, I read
only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes for my
purpose." Candide, who had been brought up with a notion of
never making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what
he heard; but Martin found there was a good deal of reason in
the senator's remarks.
"Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; "this great man, I fancy,
you are never tired of reading."—"Indeed, I never read him at
all," replied Pococuranté. "What a deuce is it to me whether he
pleads for Rabirius or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I
had once some liking to his philosophical works; but when I
found he doubted of every thing, I thought I knew as much as
himself, and had no need of a guide to learn ignorance."
"Ha!" cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the
'Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences;' perhaps there may be
something curious and valuable in this collection."—"Yes,"
answered Pococuranté; "so there might, if any one of these
compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art of pin-
making. But all these volumes are filled with mere chimerical
systems, without one single article conducive to real utility."
"I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, "in Italian,
Spanish, and French."—"Yes," replied the Venetian; "there are, I
think, three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for any
thing. As to those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous
collections of sermons, they are not all together worth one single
page of Seneca; and I fancy you will readily believe that neither
myself nor any one else ever looks into them."

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books,
said to the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be highly
delighted with those books, which are most of them written with
a noble spirit of freedom."—"It is noble to write as we think,"
said Pococuranté; "it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout
Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present
inhabitants of the country of the Cæsars and Antoninuses dare
not acquire a single idea without the permission of a father
Dominican. I should be enamoured of the spirit of the English
nation did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would
produce by passion and the spirit of party."
Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think
that author a great man. "Who!" said Pococuranté sharply. "That
barbarian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of
rambling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly
imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation by making
the Messiah take a pair of compasses from heaven's armory to
plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as
producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have
any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the
devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at
others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over
again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-
divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto's
comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils and angels
cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any other
Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries.
But the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the
womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is
not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and
disagreeable poem met with the neglect that it deserved at its
first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was
treated in his own country by his contemporaries."

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great
respect for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. "Alas!" said he
softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man holds our German poets
in great contempt."—"There would be no such great harm in
that," said Martin.—"Oh, what a surprising man!" said Candide
to himself. "What a prodigious genius is this Pococuranté!
Nothing can please him."
After finishing their survey of the library they went down into
the garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that
offered themselves to his view. "I know nothing upon earth laid
out in such bad taste," said Pococuranté; "every thing about it is
childish and trifling; but I shall have another laid out to-morrow
upon a nobler plan."
As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excellency,
"Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will own that this
man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is above every thing he
possesses."—"But do you not see," answered Martin, "that he
likewise dislikes every thing he possesses? It was an observation
of Plato long since, that those are not the best stomachs that
reject, without distinction, all sorts of aliments."—"True," said
Candide; "but still, there must certainly be a pleasure in
criticising every thing, and in perceiving faults where others
think they see beauties."—"That is," replied Martin, "there is a
pleasure in having no pleasure."—"Well, well," said Candide, "I
find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am
blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund."—"It is good to
hope," said Martin.
The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at their best, though
at their worst, not, the style and the spirit of Voltaire's "Candide;" as his
"Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and the spirit of the most
characteristic of Voltaire's writings in general. "Pococurantism" is a word,
now not uncommon in English, contributed by Voltaire to the vocabulary of
literature. To readers of the foregoing extract, the sense of the term will not
need to be explained. We respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, that

the fact stated of its origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be interesting
and instructive to many. Voltaire coined the name, to suit the character of
his Venetian gentleman, from two Italian words which mean together "little-
caring." Signor Pococuranté is the immortal type of men that have worn out
their capacity of fresh sensation and enjoyment.
It was a happy editorial thought of Mr. Henry Morley, in his cheap library,
now issuing, of standard books for the people, to bind up Johnson's
"Rasselas" in one volume with Voltaire's "Candide." The two stories, nearly
contemporaneous in their production, offer a stimulating contrast in
treatment, at the hands of two sharply contrasted writers, of much the same
subject,—the unsatisfactoriness of the world.
Mr. John Morley, a very different writer and a very different man from his
namesake just mentioned, has an elaborate monograph on Voltaire in a
volume perhaps twice as large as the present. This work claims the attention
of all students desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its subject. Mr.
John Morley writes in sympathy with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an
enemy of the Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Voltaire
fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, limited by a similar
antipathy, is observable in the same author's still more extended monograph
on Rousseau. It is only in his two volumes on "Diderot and the
Encyclopædists," that Mr. Morley finds himself able to write without
reserve in full moral accord with the men whom he describes. Of course, in
all these books the biographer and critic feels, as Englishman, obliged to
concede much to his English audience, in the way of condemning
impurities in his authors. The concession thus made is made with great
adroitness of manner, the writer's aim evidently being to imply that his
infidels and atheists, if they are somewhat vicious in taste, had the
countenance of good Christian example or parallel for all the lapses they
show. Mr. Morley wishes to be fair, but his atheist zeal overcomes him. This
is especially evident in his work on "Diderot and the Encyclopædists,"
where his propagandist desire to clear the character of his hero bribes him
once and again to unconscious false dealing. In his "Voltaire," and in his
"Rousseau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing himself against the
moral obliquities of the men with whom he is dealing, that often you feel

the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, almost beyond the
standard of biblical and Christian. But in his "Diderot and the
Encyclopædists," such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. Morley is
so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all most need just now, that
when he has—not halting mere infidels, like Voltaire and Rousseau—but
good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot and his fellows, to exhibit, he
can hardly bring himself to injure their exemplary influence with his
readers, by allowing to exist any damaging flaws in their character.
Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Voltaire, Mr. Morley,
though his sympathy with these writers is, as we have said, not complete,
finds far more to praise than to blame. To this eager apostle of atheism,
Voltaire was at least on the right road, although he did, unfortunately, stop
short of the goal. His influence was potent against Christianity, and potent it
certainly was not against atheism. Voltaire might freely be lauded as on the
whole a mighty and a beneficent liberalizer of thought.
And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists—let us not deny to Voltaire
his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base alloy of that
character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against the hideous
doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle says of Voltaire,
that he "spent his best efforts, and as many still think, successfully, in
assaulting the Christian religion." This, true though it be, is liable to be
falsely understood. It was not against the Christian religion, as the Christian
religion really is, but rather against the Christian religion as the Roman
hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts.
"You are right," wrote he to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, "in
assuming that I speak of superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I
respect it and love it, as you do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with
whatever degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought to be
remembered in his favor, when his memorable motto, "Écrasez l'Infâme," is
interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by l'Infâme; he did
not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the Christian
Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass obscurantism
of the Roman-Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he would have said
that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say that he meant, when

incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his watchword, "Écrasez
l'Infâme," "Écrasons l'Infâme,"—"Crush the wretch!" "Let us crush the
wretch!" His blows were aimed, perhaps, at "superstition;" but they really
fell, in the full half of their effect, on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire
regretted this, whether he would in his heart have had it otherwise, may
well, in spite of any protestation from him of love for Christianity, be
doubted. Still, it is never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the
organized Christianity which he confronted, was in large part a system
justly hateful to the true and wise lover whether of God or of man. That
system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with which
he fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the
whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to the cause
of final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its excesses and its
horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the necessary, fruit of
resistance such as was Voltaire's, in fundamental spirit, to the evils in
church and in state against which he conducted so gallantly his life-long
campaign.
But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the
purity of its motive, and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our
sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose us blind
to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering
and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of his, the most
dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to take on himself the
championship of the forlornest of causes. There is the historic case of Jean
Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of near seventy, broken on the
wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and against accumulated
impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young man of about thirty, by
hanging him. Voltaire took up the case, and pleaded it to the common sense,
and to the human feeling, of France, with immense effectiveness. It is, in
truth, Voltaire's advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of incredible
wrong, that has made the instance itself immortal. His part in the case of
Calas, though the most signal, is not the only, example of Voltaire's literary
knighthood. He hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for
all men, with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which
nature had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was

fundamentally liberty as against God no less than as against men, and if the
oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of being put
under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was
something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear consciousness.
We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal
character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was
vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was
voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he
licked the dust on which they stood. "Trajan, est-il content?" ("Is Trajan
satisfied?")—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous self-
abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in character—is
monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of Voltaire's
written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous Madame de
Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony
Bourbon stare.
But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in the
world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not happy.
He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his
false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed with
exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate coup de théâtre, a
felicity of finish to such a life, quite beyond the reach of art. He came back
to Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed with a triumph
transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, a
feast of flattery, in the theatre. The old man was drunk with delight. The
delight was too much for him. It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite
actress should be quite smothered to death on the stage, under flowers
thrown in excessive profusion at her feet.
Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:—

"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in
swimming than by lightness in floating."

XVI.
ROUSSEAU.
1712-1778.
There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least, there was a first,
until the second effaced him, and became the only.
We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is
still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau,
without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is
meant.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of
the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs
chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's. There is hardly
another example in the world's literature of a union so striking of these
opposites.
Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most
imperishable, of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to which
the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word.
The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of
the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the
much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most
offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know.
The "Confessions" begin as follows:—
I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and
whose execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to

my fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man—
myself.
Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with
men. I am made unlike any one I have ever seen,—I dare
believe unlike any living being. If no better than, I am at least
different from, others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking
the mould wherein I was cast, can be determined only after
having read me.
Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this
book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign
Judge. I will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I
thought, such was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the
good and the evil. I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing
good; and if I have happened to make use of some unimportant
ornament, it has, in every case, been simply for the purpose of
filling up a void occasioned by my lack of memory. I may have
taken for granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what
I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself,—
despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, when
so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, Eternal
Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless
throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions,
let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my
miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay
bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one
tell thee, if he dare, I was better than that man.
Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for
the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at
least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do
what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than
Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and then
treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him ever used
about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly
succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager,

that it is probably even inventive of things disgraceful to himself.
Montaigne makes great pretence of telling his own faults, but you observe
that he generally chooses rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's
morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself, of character or of
behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your
contempt of the man. And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than
for the man who is guilty, that you feel the contempt.
The "Confessions" proceed:—
I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and
Susannah Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and
sickly. I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of
my misfortunes.
I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know
that he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say
to me, "Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual
reply was, "Well, father, we'll cry, then," a reply which would
instantly bring the tears to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim
with agitation, "give me her back, console me for her loss, fill
up the void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert
thou but my son?" Forty years after having lost her he expired in
the arms of a second wife, but with the name of the first on his
lips, and her image engraven on his heart.
Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had
allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited.
While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it
became the spring of all my misfortunes.
"A feeling heart!" That expression tells the literary secret of Rousseau. It
is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first French writer to write
with his heart; but heart's blood was the ink in which almost every word of
Rousseau's was written. This was the spring of his marvellous power.
Rousseau:—

My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I
betook us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object
was, by means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading;
but, ere long, the charm became so potent, that we read turn
about without intermission, and passed whole nights in this
employment. Never could we break up till the end of the
volume. At times my father, hearing the swallows of a morning,
would exclaim, quite ashamed of himself, "Come, let's to bed;
I'm more of a child than you are!"
The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would
almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged
tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The
"Confessions" go on:—
I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme
facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite
unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the
slightest conception of things themselves, at a time when the
whole round of sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me.
I had apprehended nothing—I had felt all.
Some hint now of other books read by the boy:—
With the summer of 1719 the romance-reading terminated....
"The History of the Church and Empire" by Lesueur, Bossuet's
"Dissertation on Universal History," Plutarch's "Lives," Nani's
"History of Venice," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "La Bruyère,"
Fontenelle's "Worlds," his "Dialogues of the Dead," and a few
volumes of Molière, were transported into my father's shop; and
I read them to him every day during his work. For this
employment I acquired a rare, and, for my age, perhaps
unprecedented, taste. Plutarch especially became my favorite
reading. The pleasure which I found in incessantly reperusing
him, cured me in some measure of the romance madness; and I
soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus, and Aristides, to
Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these interesting studies,

joined to the conversations to which they gave rise with my
father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that haughty and
untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection, which has
tormented me my life long, and that in situations the least
suitable for giving it play. Incessantly occupied with Rome and
Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself
the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son of a father with whom
patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught the flame from him
—I imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and became the
personage whose life I was reading.
On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau's imagination and
sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and
died within him. Unconsciously thus in part was formed the dreamer of the
"Émile" and of "The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the home-life—if
home-life such experience can be called—of this half-orphan, homeless
Genevan boy:—
I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the
ways of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really
a libertine.... I remember once when my father was chastising
him severely and in anger, that I impetuously threw myself
between them, clasping him tightly. I thus covered him with my
body, receiving the blows that were aimed at him; and I held out
so persistently in this position, that whether softened by my
cries and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of it, my
father was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned
out so bad that he ran away and disappeared altogether.
It is pathetic—Rousseau's attempted contrast following, between the
paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of himself:
—
If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite
otherwise with his brother.... My desires were so little excited,
and so little crossed, that it never came into my head to have

any. I can solemnly aver, that, till the time when I was bound to
a master, I never knew what it was to have a whim.
Poor lad! "Never knew what it was to have a whim!" It well might be,
however—his boy's life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast of
saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone! The
"Confessions" truly say:—
Thus commenced the formation or the manifestation in me of
that heart at once so haughty and so tender, of that effeminate
and yet unconquerable character which, ever vacillating between
courage and weakness, between virtue and yielding to
temptation, has all along set me in contradiction to myself, and
has resulted in my failing both of abstinence and enjoyment,
both of prudence and pleasure.
The half-orphan becomes orphan entire, not by the death, but by the
withdrawing, of the father. That father, having been accused of a
misdemeanor, "preferred," Rousseau somewhat vaguely says, "to quit
Geneva for the remainder of his life, rather than give up a point wherein
honor and liberty appeared to him compromised." Jean Jacques was sent to
board with a parson, who taught him Latin, and, along with Latin, supplied,
Rousseau scornfully says, "all the accompanying mass of paltry rubbish
styled education." He adds:—
The country was so entirely new to me, that I could never grow
weary in my enjoyment of it; and I acquired so strong a liking
for it, that it has never become extinguished.
Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He
describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the contrast
upon his own character and career:—
I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie,
and at last to steal,—a propensity for which I had never hitherto
had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never since
been able quite to cure myself....

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the
door to others which had not so laudable a motive.
My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it
into his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus
and sell it, converting the proceeds into some extra good
breakfasts. As he did not wish to expose himself, and not being
very nimble, he selected me for this expedition.... Long did I
stickle, but he persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I
consented. I went every morning to the garden, gathered the best
of the asparagus, and took it to "the Molard," where some good
creature, perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would
insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I
took whatever she chose to give me, and carried it to M. Verrat.
This little domestic arrangement continued for several days
before it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M.
Verrat for the proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to
steal was, after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had
conceived; and ere long I turned this discovery to so good an
account, that nothing I had an inclination for could safely be left
within my reach....
And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my
destiny, let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally
have been my lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master.
Nothing was more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated
to render me happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a
good artisan, more especially in certain lines, such as that of an
engraver at Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my
religion, of my family, and my friends, I should have led a life
gentle and uncheckered as became my character, in the
uniformity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear
to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen,
a good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good man in
every respect. I should have loved my station; it may be I should
have been an honor to it: and after having passed an obscure and

simple, though even and happy, life, I should peacefully have
departed in the bosom of my kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten,
I should at least have been regretted as long as the remembrance
of me survived.
Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw!
Thus ends the first book of the "Confessions."
The picture Rousseau is "about to draw" has in it a certain Madame de
Warens for a principal figure. (Apprentice Jean Jacques has left his master,
and entered on a vagabond life.) This lady is a character very difficult for us
Protestant Americans in our contrasted society to conceive as real or as
possible. She kept a house of, what shall we call it? detention, for souls
doubtfully in the way of being reclaimed from Protestant error into the
bosom of the Roman-Catholic Church. She was herself a Roman-Catholic
convert from Protestantism. She had forsaken a husband, not loved, and
was living on a bounty from King Victor Amadeus of Sardinia. For Annecy,
the home of Madame de Warens, our young Jean Jacques, sent thither by a
Roman-Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The distance was but one day's
walk; which one day's walk, however, the humor of the wanderer stretched
into a saunter of three days. The man of fifty-four, become the biographer
of his own youth, finds no loathness of self-respect to prevent his detailing
the absurd adventures with which he diverted himself on the way. For
example:—
Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left,
without going after the adventure which I was certain awaited
me. I could not muster courage to enter the mansion, nor even to
knock, for I was excessively timid; but I sang beneath the most
inviting window, very much astonished to find, after wasting my
breath, that neither lady nor miss made her appearance, attracted
by the beauty of my voice, or the spice of my songs,—seeing
that I knew some capital ones that my comrades had taught me,
and which I sang in the most admirable manner.

Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced in his first meeting with
Madame de Warens:—
I had pictured to myself a grim old devotee—M. de Pontverre's
"worthy lady" could, in my opinion, be none other. But lo, a
countenance beaming with charms, beautiful, mild blue eyes, a
complexion of dazzling fairness, the outline of an enchanting
neck! Nothing escaped the rapid glance of the young proselyte;
for that instant I was hers, sure that a religion preached by such
missionaries could not fail to lead to paradise!
This abnormally susceptible youth had remarkable experiences, all within
his own soul, during his sojourn, of a few days only, on the present
occasion, under Madame de Warens's hospitable roof. These experiences,
the autobiographer, old enough to call himself "old dotard," has,
nevertheless, not grown wise enough to be ashamed to be very detailed and
psychological in recounting. It was a case of precocious love at first sight.
One could afford to laugh at it as ridiculous, but that it had a sequel full of
sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become
inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The
very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached
Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have
overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on
behalf of his father as follows:—
My father was not only an honorable man, but a person of the
most reliable probity, and endowed with one of those powerful
minds that perform deeds of loftiest heroism. I may add, he was
a good father, especially to me. Tenderly did he love me, but he
loved his pleasures also; and, since our living apart, other ties
had, in a measure, weakened his paternal affection. He had
married again, at Nyon; and though his wife was no longer of an
age to present me with brothers, yet she had connections;
another family-circle was thus formed, other objects engrossed
his attention, and the new domestic relations no longer so
frequently brought back the remembrance of me. My father was
growing old, and had nothing on which to rely for the support of

his declining years. My brother and I had something coming to
us from my mother's fortune; the interest of this my father was
to receive during our absence. This consideration did not present
itself to him directly, nor did it stand in the way of his doing his
duty; it had, however, a silent, and to himself imperceptible,
influence, and at times slackened his zeal, which, unacted upon
by this, would have been carried much farther. This, I think, was
the reason, that, having traced me as far as Annecy, he did not
follow me to Chamberi, where he was morally certain of
overtaking me. This will also explain why, in visiting him many
times after my flight, I received from him on every occasion a
father's kindness, though unaccompanied by any very pressing
efforts to retain me.
Rousseau's filial regard for his father was peculiar. It did not lead him to
hide, it only led him to account for, his father's sordidness. The son
generalized and inferred a moral maxim for the conduct of life from this
behavior of the father's,—a maxim, which, as he thought, had done him
great good. He says:—
This conduct on the part of a father of whose affection and
virtue I have had so many proofs, has given rise within me to
reflections on my own character which have not a little
contributed to maintain my heart uncorrupted. I have derived
therefrom this great maxim of morality, perhaps the only one of
any use in practice; namely, to avoid such situations as put our
duty in antagonism with our interest, or disclose our own
advantage in the misfortunes of another, certain that in such
circumstances, however sincere the love of virtue we bring with
us, it will sooner or later, and whether we perceive it or not,
become weakened, and we shall come to be unjust and culpable
in our acts without having ceased to be upright and blameless in
our intentions.
The fruitful maxim thus deduced by Rousseau, he thinks he tried faithfully
to put in practice. With apparent perfect assurance concerning himself, he
says:—

I have sincerely desired to do what was right. I have, with all
the energy of my character, shunned situations which set my
interest in opposition to the interest of another, thus inspiring me
with a secret though involuntary desire prejudicial to that man.
Jean Jacques at Turin made speed to convert himself, by the abjurations
required, into a pretty good Catholic. He was hereon free to seek his fortune
in the Sardinian capital. This he did by getting successively various
situations in service. In one of these he stole, so he tells us, a piece of
ribbon, which was soon found in his possession. He said a maid-servant,
naming her, gave it to him. The two were confronted with each other. In
spite of the poor girl's solemn appeal, Jean Jacques persisted in his lie
against her. Both servants were discharged. The autobiographer protests that
he has suffered much remorse for this lie of his to the harm of the innocent
maid. He expresses confident hope that his suffering sorrow, already
experienced on this behalf, will stand him in stead of punishment that might
be his due in a future state. Remorse is a note in Rousseau that distinguishes
him from Montaigne. Montaigne reviews his own life to live over his sins,
not to repent of them.
The end of several vicissitudes is, that young Rousseau gets back to
Madame de Warens. She welcomes him kindly. He says:—
From the first day, the most affectionate familiarity sprang up
between us, and that to the same degree in which it continued
during all the rest of her life. Petit—Child—was my name,
Maman—Mamma—hers; and Petit and Maman we remained,
even when the course of time had all but effaced the difference
of our ages. These two names seem to me marvellously well to
express our tone towards each other, the simplicity of our
manners, and, more than all, the relation of our hearts. She was
to me the tenderest of mothers, never seeking her own pleasure,
but ever my welfare; and if the senses had any thing to do with
my attachment for her, it was not to change its nature, but only
to render it more exquisite, and intoxicate me with the charm of
having a young and pretty mamma whom it was delightful for
me to caress. I say quite literally, to caress; for it never entered

into her head to deny me the tenderest maternal kisses and
endearments, nor into my heart to abuse them. Some may say
that, in the end, quite other relations subsisted between us. I
grant it; but have patience,—I cannot tell every thing at once.
With Madame de Warens, Rousseau's relations, as is intimated above,
became licentious. This continued until, after an interval of years (nine
years, with breaks), in a fit of jealousy he forsook her. Rousseau's whole life
was a series of self-indulgences, grovelling, sometimes, beyond what is
conceivable to any one not learning of it all in detail from the man's own
pen. The reader is fain at last to seek the only relief possible from the
sickening story, by flying to the conclusion that Jean Jacques Rousseau,
with all his genius, was wanting in that mental sanity which is a condition
of complete moral responsibility.
We shall, of course, not follow the "Confessions" through their disgusting
recitals of sin and shame. We should do wrong, however, to the literary, and
even to the moral, character of the work, were we not to point out that there
are frequent oases of sweetness and beauty set in the wastes of incredible
foulness which overspread so widely the pages of Rousseau's
"Confessions." Here, for example, is an idyll of vagabondage that might
almost make one willing to play tramp one's self, if one by so doing might
have such an experience:—
I remember, particularly, having passed a delicious night
without the city on a road that skirted the Rhone or the Saône,
for I cannot remember which. On the other side were terraced
gardens. It had been a very warm day; the evening was
charming; the dew moistened the faded grass; a calm night,
without a breeze; the air was cool without being cold; the sun in
setting had left crimson vapors in the sky, which tinged the
water with its roseate hue, while the trees along the terrace were
filled with nightingales gushing out melodious answers to each
other's song. I walked along in a species of ecstasy, giving up
heart and senses to the enjoyment of the scene, only slightly
sighing with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my sweet
reverie, I prolonged my walk far into the night, without

perceiving that I was wearied out. At length I discovered it. I lay
voluptuously down on the tablet of a sort of niche or false door
sunk in the terrace wall. The canopy of my couch was formed by
the over-arching boughs of the trees; a nightingale sat exactly
above me; its song lulled me to sleep; my slumber was sweet,
and my awaking still more so. It was broad day; my eyes, on
opening, fell on the water, the verdure, and the admirable
landscape spread out before me. I arose and shook off dull sleep;
and, growing hungry, I gayly directed my steps towards the city,
bent on transforming two pièces de six blancs that I had left,
into a good breakfast. I was so cheerful that I went singing along
the whole way.
This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, this sentimentalist of
genius, had now and then different experiences,—experiences to which the
reflection of the man grown old attributes important influence on the
formation of his most controlling beliefs:—
One day, among others, having purposely turned aside to get a
closer view of a spot that appeared worthy of all admiration, I
grew so delighted with it, and wandered round it so often, that I
at length lost myself completely. After several hours of useless
walking, weary and faint with hunger and thirst, I entered a
peasant's hut which did not present a very promising
appearance, but it was the only one I saw around. I conceived it
to be here as at Geneva and throughout Switzerland, where all
the inhabitants in easy circumstances are in the situation to
exercise hospitality. I entreated the man to get me some dinner,
offering to pay for it. He presented me with some skimmed milk
and coarse barley bread, observing that that was all he had. I
drank the milk with delight, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but
this was not very restorative to a man exhausted with fatigue.
The peasant, who was watching me narrowly, judged of the truth
of my story by the sincerity of my appetite. All of a sudden,
after having said that he saw perfectly well that I was a good
and true young fellow that did not come to betray him, he

opened a little trap-door by the side of his kitchen, went down
and returned a moment afterwards with a good brown loaf of
pure wheat, the remains of a toothsome ham, and a bottle of
wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart more than all the rest.
To these he added a good thick omelette, and I made such a
dinner as none but a walker ever enjoyed. When it came to pay,
lo! his disquietude and fears again seized him; he would none of
my money, and rejected it with extraordinary manifestations of
disquiet. The funniest part of the matter was, that I could not
conceive what he was afraid of. At length, with fear and
trembling, he pronounced those terrible words, Commissioners
and Cellar-rats. He gave me to understand that he concealed his
wine because of the excise, and his bread on account of the tax,
and that he was a lost man if they got the slightest inkling that
he was not dying of hunger. Every thing he said to me touching
this matter, whereof, indeed, I had not the slightest idea,
produced an impression on me that can never be effaced. It
became the germ of that inextinguishable hatred that afterwards
sprang up in my heart against the vexations to which these poor
people are subject, and against their oppressors. This man,
though in easy circumstances, dared not eat the bread he had
gained by the sweat of his brow, and could escape ruin only by
presenting the appearance of the same misery that reigned
around him.
A hideously false world, that world of French society was, in Rousseau's
time. The falseness was full ripe to be laid bare by some one; and
Rousseau's experience of life, as well as his temperament and his genius,
fitted him to do the work of exposure that he did. What we emphatically
call character was sadly wanting in Rousseau—how sadly, witness such an
acted piece of mad folly as the following:—
I, without knowing aught of the matter,... gave myself out for a
[musical] composer. Nor was this all: having been presented to
M. de Freytorens, law-professor, who loved music, and gave
concerts at his house, nothing would do but I must give him a

sample of my talent; so I set about composing a piece for his
concert quite as boldly as though I had really been an adept in
the science. I had the constancy to work for fifteen days on this
fine affair, to copy it fair, write out the different parts, and
distribute them with as much assurance as though it had been a
masterpiece of harmony. Then, what will scarcely be believed,
but which yet is gospel truth, worthily to crown this sublime
production, I tacked to the end thereof a pretty minuet which
was then having a run on the streets.... I gave it as my own just
as resolutely as though I had been speaking to inhabitants of the
moon.
They assembled to perform my piece. I explain to each the
nature of the movement, the style of execution, and the relations
of the parts—I was very full of business. For five or six minutes
they were tuning; to me each minute seemed an age. At length,
all being ready, I rap with a handsome paper bâton on the
leader's desk the five or six beats of the "Make ready." Silence is
made—I gravely set to beating time—they commence! No,
never since French operas began, was there such a charivari
heard. Whatever they might have thought of my pretended
talent, the effect was worse than they could possibly have
imagined. The musicians choked with laughter; the auditors
opened their eyes, and would fain have closed their ears. But
that was an impossibility. My tormenting set of symphonists,
who seemed rather to enjoy the fun, scraped away with a din
sufficient to crack the tympanum of one born deaf. I had the
firmness to go right ahead, however, sweating, it is true, at every
pore, but held back by shame; not daring to retreat, and glued to
the spot. For my consolation I heard the company whispering to
each other, quite loud enough for it to reach my ear: "It is not
bearable!" said one. "What music gone mad!" cried another.
"What a devilish din!" added a third. Poor Jean Jacques, little
dreamed you, in that cruel moment, that one day before the King
of France and all the court, thy sounds would excite murmurs of
surprise and applause, and that in all the boxes around thee the

loveliest ladies would burst forth with, "What charming sounds!
what enchanting music! every strain reaches the heart!"
But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet.
Scarcely had they played a few measures than I heard bursts of
laughter break out on all hands. Every one congratulated me on
my fine musical taste; they assured me that this minuet would
make me spoken about, and that I merited the loudest praises. I
need not attempt depicting my agony, nor own that I well
deserved it.
Readers have now had an opportunity to judge for themselves, by
specimen, of the style, both of the writer and of the man Jean Jacques
Rousseau. The writer's style they must have felt, even through the medium
of imperfect anonymous translation, to be a charming one. If they have felt
the style of the man to be contrasted, as squalor is contrasted with splendor,
that they must not suppose to be a contrast of which Jean Jacques himself,
the confessor, was in the least displacently conscious. Far from it. In a later
part of his "Confessions," a part that deals with the author as one already
now acknowledged a power in the world of letters, though with all his chief
works still to write, Rousseau speaks thus of himself (he was considering at
the time the ways and means available to him of obtaining a livelihood):—
I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my
genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen
than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and
noble manner of thinking.... It is too difficult to think nobly
when we think for a livelihood.
Is not that finely said? And one need not doubt that it was said with
perfect sincerity. For our own part, paradoxical though it be to declare it, we
are wholly willing to insist that Rousseau did think on a lofty plane. The
trouble with him was, not that he thus thought with his heart, rather than
with his head,—which, however, he did,—but that he thought with his heart
alone, and not at all with his conscience and his will. In a word, his thought
was sentiment rather than thought. He was a sentimentalist instead of a
thinker. One illustration of the divorce that he decreed for himself, or rather

—for we have used too positive a form of expression—that he allowed to
subsist, between sentiment and conduct, will suffice. It was presently to be
his fortune, as author of a tract on education (the "Émile"), to change the
habit of a nation in the matter of nurture for babes. French mothers of the
higher social class in Rousseau's time almost universally gave up their
infants to be nursed at alien bosoms. Rousseau so eloquently denounced the
unnaturalness of this, that from his time it became the fashion for French
mothers to suckle their children themselves. Meantime, the preacher
himself of this beautiful humanity, living in unwedded union with a woman
(not Madame de Warens, but a woman of the laboring class, found after
Madame de Warens was abandoned), sent his illegitimate children, against
the mother's remonstrance, one after another, to the number of five, to be
brought up unknown at the hospital for foundlings! He tells the story
himself in his "Confessions." This course on his own part he subsequently
laments with many tears and many self-upbraidings. But these, alas, he
intermingles with self-justifications, nearly as many,—so that at last it is
hard to say whether the balance of his judgment inclines for or against
himself in the matter. A paradox of inconsistencies and self-contradictions,
this man,—a problem in human character, of which the supposition of
partial insanity in him, long working subtly in the blood, seems the only
solution. The occupation finally adopted by Rousseau for obtaining
subsistence, was the copying of music. It extorts from one a measure of
involuntary respect for Rousseau, to see patiently toiling at this slavish
work, to earn its owner bread, the same pen that had lately set all Europe in
ferment with the "Émile" and "The Social Contract."
From Rousseau's "Confessions," we have not room to purvey further. It is
a melancholy book,—written under monomaniac suspicion on the part of
the author that he was the object of a wide-spread conspiracy against his
reputation, his peace of mind, and even his life. The poor, shattered, self-
consumed sensualist and sentimentalist paid dear in the agonies of his
closing years for the indulgences of an unregulated life. The tender-hearted,
really affectionate and loyal, friend came at length to live in a world of his
own imagination, full of treachery to himself. David Hume, the Scotchman,
tried to befriend him; but the monomaniac was incapable of being
befriended. Nothing could be more pitiful than were the decline and the

extinction that occurred of so much brilliant genius, and so much lovable
character. It is even doubtful whether Rousseau did not at last take his own
life. The voice of accusation is silenced, in the presence of an earthly
retribution so dreadful. One may not indeed approve, but one may at least
be free to pity, more than he blames, in judging Rousseau.
Accompanying, and in some sort complementing, the "Confessions," are
often published several detached pieces called "Reveries," or "Walks."
These are very peculiar compositions, and very characteristic of the author.
They are dreamy meditations or reveries, sad, even sombre, in spirit, but
"beautiful exceedingly," in form of expression. Such works as the "Réné" of
Chateaubriand, works but too abundant since in French literature, must all
trace their pedigree to Rousseau's "Walks." We introduce two specimen
extracts. The shadow of Rousseau's monomania will be felt thick upon
them:—
It is now fifteen years since I have been in this strange
situation, which yet appears to me like a dream; ever imagining
that, disturbed by indigestion, I sleep uneasily, but shall soon
awake, freed from my troubles, but surrounded by my friends....
How could I possibly foresee the destiny that awaited me?...
Could I, if in my right senses, suppose that one day, the man I
was, and yet remain, should be taken, without any kind of doubt,
for a monster, a poisoner, an assassin, the horror of the human
race, the sport of the rabble, my only salutation to be spit upon,
and that a whole generation would unanimously amuse
themselves in burying me alive? When this strange revolution
first happened, taken by unawares, I was overwhelmed with
astonishment; my agitation, my indignation, plunged me into a
delirium, which ten years have scarcely been able to calm:
during this interval, falling from error to error, from fault to
fault, and folly to folly, I have, by my imprudence, furnished the
contrivers of my fate with instruments, which they have artfully
employed to fix it without resource....

Every future occurrence will be immaterial to me; I have in the
world neither relative, friend, nor brother; I am on the earth as if
I had fallen into some unknown planet; if I contemplate any
thing around me, it is only distressing, heart-rending objects;
every thing I cast my eyes on conveys some new subject either
of indignation or affliction; I will endeavor henceforward to
banish from my mind all painful ideas which unavailingly
distress me. Alone for the rest of my life, I must only look for
consolation, hope, or peace in my own breast; and neither ought
nor will, henceforward, think of any thing but myself. It is in
this state that I return to the continuation of that severe and just
examination which formerly I called my Confessions; I
consecrate my latter days to the study of myself, and to the
preparation of that account which I must shortly render up of my
actions. I resign my thoughts entirely to the pleasure of
conversing with my own soul; that being the only consolation
that man cannot deprive me of. If by dint of reflection on my
internal propensities, I can attain to putting them in better order,
and correcting the evil that remains in me, these meditations will
not be utterly useless; and though I am accounted worthless on
earth, shall not cast away my latter days. The leisure of my daily
walks has frequently been filled with charming contemplations,
which I regret having forgot; but I will write down those that
occur in future; then, every time I read them over, I shall forget
my misfortunes, disgraces, and persecutors, in recollecting and
contemplating the integrity of my own heart.
Rousseau's books in general are now little read. They worked their work,
and ceased. But there are in some of them passages that continue to live. Of
these, perhaps quite the most famous is the "Savoyard Curate's Confession
of Faith," a document of some length, incorporated into the "Émile." This,
taken as a whole, is the most seductively eloquent argument against
Christianity that perhaps ever was written. It contains, however,
concessions to the sublime elevation of Scripture and to the unique virtue
and majesty of Jesus, which are often quoted, and which will bear quoting

here. The Savoyard Curate is represented speaking to a young friend as
follows:—
I will confess to you further, that the majesty of the Scriptures
strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its
influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers
with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible, are
they, compared with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book at
once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?
Is it possible that the Sacred Personage, whose history it
contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he
assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What
sweetness, what purity, in his manners! What an affecting
gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims!
What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of
mind, what subtilety, what truth, in his replies! How great the
command over his passions! Where is the man, where the
philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness and
without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good
man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest
reward of virtue, he described exactly the character of Jesus
Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all the Fathers
perceived it.
What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare the
son of Sophroniscus to the Son of Mary! What an infinite
disproportion there is between them! Socrates, dying without
pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and
if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might
have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was
any thing more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the
theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them in
practice; he had only to say what they had done, and reduce
their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before
Socrates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his
country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the

Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended
sobriety; before he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in
virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his
compatriots, that pure and sublime morality of which he only
has given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom
was made known amidst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the
simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest
people on the earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably
philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that
could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of
agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a whole nation, is
the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the
cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who
administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures,
prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of
Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those
of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction?
Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the
contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to
doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a
supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without removing
it; it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should
agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish
the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the
diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the
marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable that the
inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.
So far in eloquent ascription of incomparable excellence to the Bible and
to the Founder of Christianity. But then immediately Rousseau's Curate
proceeds:—
And yet, with all this, the same gospel abounds with incredible
relations, with circumstances repugnant to reason, and which it
is impossible for a man of sense either to conceive or admit.

The compliment to Christianity almost convinces you,—until suddenly
you are apprised that the author of the compliment was not convinced
himself!
Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the preface to his "Confessions," appealed from
the judgment of men to the judgment of God. This judgment it was his
habit, to the end of his days, thanks to the effect of his early Genevan
education, always to think of as certainly impending. Let us adjourn our
final sentence upon him, until we hear that Omniscient award.

XVII.
THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS.
A cenotaph is a monument erected to the memory of one dead, but not
marking the spot in which his remains rest. The present chapter is a
cenotaph to the French Encyclopædists. It is in the nature of a memorial of
their literary work, but it will be found to contain no specimen extracts from
their writings.
Everybody has heard of the Encyclopædists of France. Who are they?
They are a group of men who, during the eighteenth century, associated
themselves together for the production of a great work to be the repository
of all human knowledge,—in one word, of an encyclopædia. The project
was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable—in part. For there
was mixture of motive in the case. In part, the motive was simple desire to
advance the cause of human enlightenment; in part, however, the motive
was desire to undermine Christianity. This latter end the encyclopædist
collaborators may have thought to be an indispensable means subsidiary to
the former end. They probably did think so—with such imperfect sincerity
as is possible to those who set themselves, consciously or unconsciously,
against God. The fact is, that the Encyclopædists came at length to be
nearly as much occupied in extinguishing Christianity, as in promoting
public enlightenment. They went about this their task of destroying, in a
way as effective as has ever been devised for accomplishing a similar work.
They gave a vicious turn of insinuation against Christianity to as many
articles as possible. In the most unexpected places, throughout the entire
work, pitfalls were laid of anti-Christian implication, awaiting the unwary
feet of the reader. You were nowhere sure of your ground. The world has
never before seen, it has never seen since, an example of propagandism

altogether so adroit and so alert. It is not too much to say further, that
history can supply few instances of propagandism so successful. The
Encyclopædists might almost be said to have given the human mind a fresh
start and a new orbit. The fresh start is, perhaps, spent; the new orbit has at
length, to a great extent, returned upon the old; but it holds true,
nevertheless, that the Encyclopædists of France were for a time, and that
not a short time, a prodigious force of impulsion and direction to the
Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the aim of the Encyclopædists
was political also, not less than religious. In truth, religion and politics,
Church and State, in their day, and in France, were much the same thing.
The "Encyclopædia" was as revolutionary in politics as it was atheistic in
religion.
The leader in this movement of insurrectionary thought was Denis
Diderot. Diderot (1713-1784) was born to be an encyclopædist, and a
captain of encyclopædists. Force inexhaustible, and inexhaustible
willingness to give out force; unappeasable curiosity to know; irresistible
impulse to impart knowledge; versatile capacity to do every thing, carried
to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, of incapacity to do any thing
thoroughly well; quenchless zeal and quenchless hope; levity enough of
temper to keep its subject free from those depressions of spirit and those
cares of conscience which weigh and wear on the over-earnest man;
abundant physical health,—gifts such as these made up the manifold
equipment of Diderot for rowing and steering the gigantic enterprise of the
"Encyclopædia" triumphantly to the port of final completion, through many
and many a zone of stormy adverse wind and sea, traversed on the way.
Diderot produced no signal independent and original work of his own;
probably he could not have produced such a work. On the other hand, it is
simply just to say that hardly anybody but Diderot could have achieved the
"Encyclopædia." That, indeed, may be considered an achievement not more
to the glory, than to the shame, of its author; but whatever its true moral
character, in whatever proportion shameful or glorious, it is inalienably and
peculiarly Diderot's achievement; at least in this sense, that without Diderot
the "Encyclopædia" would never have been achieved.

We have already, in discussing Voltaire, adverted sufficiently to Mr. John
Morley's volumes in honor of Diderot and his compeers. Diderot is therein
ably presented in the best possible light to the reader; and we are bound to
say, that, despite Mr. Morley's friendly endeavors, Diderot therein appears
very ill. He married a young woman, whose simple and touching self-
sacrifice on her husband's behalf, he presently requited by giving himself
away, body and soul, to a rival. In his writings, he is so easily insincere, that
not unfrequently it is a problem, even for his biographer, to decide when he
is expressing his sentiments truly and when not; insomuch that, once and
again, Mr. Morley himself is obliged to say, "This is probably hypocritical
on Diderot's part," or something to that effect. As for filthy communication
out of his mouth and from his pen,—not, of course, habitual, but occasional,
—the subject will not bear more than this mention. These be thy gods, O
Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley on Diderot, is tempted again and again
to exclaim. To offset such lowness of character in the man, it must in justice
be added that Diderot was, notwithstanding, of a generous, uncalculating
turn of mind, not grudging, especially in intellectual relations, to give of his
best to others, expecting nothing again. Diderot, too, as well as Voltaire, had
his royal or imperial friends, in the notorious Empress Catherine of Russia,
and in King Stanislaus of Poland. He visited Catherine once in her capital,
and was there munificently entertained by her. She was regally pleased to
humor this gentleman of France, permitting him to bring down his fist in
gesture violently on the redoubtable royal knee, according to a pleasant way
Diderot had of emphasizing a point in familiar conversation. His truest
claim to praise for intellectual superiority is, perhaps, that he was a prolific
begetter of wit in other men.
D'Alembert (Jean le Rond, 1717-1783) was an eminent mathematician. He
wrote especially, though not at first exclusively, on mathematical subjects,
for the "Encyclopædia." He was, indeed, at the outset, published as
mathematical editor of the work. His European reputation in science made
his name a tower of strength to the "Encyclopædia,"—even after he ceased
to be an editorial coadjutor in the enterprise. For there came a time when
D'Alembert abdicated responsibility as editor, and left the undertaking to
fall heavily on the single shoulder, Atlantean shoulder it proved to be, of
Diderot. The celebrated "Preliminary Discourse," prefixed to the

"Encyclopædia," proceeded from the hand of D'Alembert. This has always
been esteemed a masterpiece of comprehensive grasp and lucid exposition.
A less creditable contribution of D'Alembert's to the "Encyclopædia" was
his article on "Geneva," in the course of which, at the instance of Voltaire,
who wanted a chance to have his plays represented in that city, he went out
of his way to recommend to the Genevans that they establish for themselves
a theatre. This brought out Rousseau in an eloquent harangue against the
theatre as exerting influence to debauch public morals. D'Alembert, in the
contest, did not carry off the honors of the day. D'Alembert's "Éloges," so
called, a series of characterizations and appreciations written by the author
in his old age, of members of the French Academy, enjoy deserved
reputation for sagacious intellectual estimate, and for clear, though not
supremely elegant, style of composition.
Diderot and D'Alembert are the only men whose names appear on the
title-page of the "Encyclopædia;" but Voltaire, Rousseau, Turgot, Helvétius,
Duclos, Condillac, Buffon, Grimm, D'Holbach, with many others whom we
must not stay even to mention, contributed to the work.
The influence of the "Encyclopædia," great during its day, is by no means
yet exhausted. But it is an influence indirectly exerted, for the
"Encyclopædia" itself has long been an obsolete work.
There is a legal maxim that the laws are silent, when a state of war exists.
Certainly, amid the madness of a Revolution such as, during the closing
years of the eighteenth century, the influence of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the
Encyclopædists, with Beaumarchais, reacting against the accumulated
political and ecclesiastical oppressions of ages, precipitated upon France, it
might safely be assumed that letters would be silent. But the nation
meantime was portentously preparing material for a literature which many
wondering centuries to follow would occupy themselves with writing.

XVIII.
EPILOGUE.
In looking backward over the preceding pages, we think of many things
which we should like still to say. Of these many things, we limit ourselves
to saying here, as briefly as we can, some four or five only.
To begin with, in nearly every successive case, we have found ourselves
lamenting afresh that, from the authors to be represented, the representative
extracts must needs be so few and so short. We have, therefore, sincerely
begrudged to ourselves every line of room that we felt obliged to occupy
with matter, preparatory, explanatory, or critical, of our own. Whatever
success we may have achieved in fulfilling our purpose, our purpose has
been to say ourselves barely so much as was indispensable in order finally
to convey, upon the whole, to our readers, within the allotted space, the
justest and the fullest impression of the selected authors, through the
medium of their own quoted words.
In the second place, it was with great regret that we yielded to the
necessity of omitting entirely, or dismissing with scant mention, such
literary names, for example, as Boileau, of the age of Louis Quatorze, and,
a little later than he, Fontenelle, spanning with his century of years the
space from 1657 to 1757,—these, and, belonging to the period that ushered
in the Revolution, Bernardin St. Pierre, the teller of the tale of "Paul and
Virginia," with also that hero of a hundred romantic adventures,
Beaumarchais, half Themistocles, half Alcibiades, the author of "The
Barber of Seville." The line had to be drawn somewhere; and, whether
wisely or not, at least thoughtfully, we drew it to run as it does.

A third, and a yet graver, occasion of regret was that we must stop short on
the threshold, without crossing it, of the nineteenth-century literature of
France. With so many shining names seen just ahead of us, beacon-like, to
invite our advance, we felt it as a real self-denial to stay our steps at that
point. We hope still to deal with Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël,
Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, and perhaps
others, in a future volume.
Our eye is caught with the antithetical terms, "classicism" and
"romanticism," occurring here and there; and the observation is forced upon
us, that these terms, in their mutual relation, are nowhere by us defined. The
truth is, they scarcely, as thus used, admit of hard and fast definition. It is in
a somewhat loose conventional sense of each term, that, in late literary
language, they are set off, one over against the other. They name two
different, but by no means necessarily antagonistic, forces or tendencies in
literature. Classicism stands for what you might call the established order,
against which romanticism is a revolt. Paradoxical though it be to say so,
both the established order, and the revolt against it, are good things. The
established order, which was never really any thing more or less than the
dominance in literature of rules and standards derived through criticism
from the acknowledged best models, especially the ancient, tended at last to
cramp and stifle the life which it should, of course, only serve to shape and
conform. The mould, always too narrow perhaps, but at any rate grown too
rigid, needed itself to be fashioned anew. Fresh life, a full measure, would
do this. Such is the true mission of romanticism,—not to break the mould
that classicism sought to impose on literary production, but to expand that
mould, make it more pliant, more free. A mould, for things living and
growing, should be plastic in the passive, as well as in the active, sense of
that word,—should accept form, as well as give form. Romanticism will
accordingly have won its legitimate victory, not when it shall have
destroyed classicism and replaced it, but when it shall have made classicism
over, after the law of a larger life. To risk a concrete illustration—among
our American poets, Bryant, in the perfectly self-consistent unity of his
whole intellectual development, may be said to represent classicism; while
in Lowell, as Lowell appears in the later, more protracted, phase of his
genius, romanticism is represented. The "Thanatopsis" of Bryant and the

"Cathedral" of Lowell may stand for individual examples respectively of
the classic and the romantic styles in poetry. Compare these two
productions, and in the difference between the chaste, well-pruned severity
of the one, and the indulged, perhaps stimulated, luxuriance of the other,
you will feel the difference between classicism and romanticism. But Victor
Hugo is the great recent romanticist; and when, hereafter, we come to speak
somewhat at large of him, it will be seasonable to enter more fully into the
question of these two tendencies in literature.
We cannot consent to have said here our very last word, without
emphasizing once again our sense of the really extraordinary pervasiveness
in French literature of that element in it which one does not like to name,
even to condemn it,—we mean its impurity. The influence of French
literary models, very strong among us just now, must not be permitted
insensibly to pervert our own cleaner and sweeter national habit and taste in
this matter. But we, all of us together, need to be both vigilant and firm; for
the beginnings of corruption here are very insidious. Let us never grow
ashamed of our saving Saxon shamefacedness. They may nickname it
prudery, if they will; but let us, American and English, for our part, always
take pride in such prudery.

INDEX.
[The merest approximation only can be attempted, in hinting here the pronunciation of French
names. In general, the French distribute the accent pretty evenly among all the syllables of their
words. We mark an accent on the final syllable, chiefly in order to correct a natural English tendency
to slight that syllable in pronunciation. In a few cases, we let a well-established English
pronunciation stand. N notes a peculiar nasal sound, ü, a peculiar vowel sound, having no equivalent
in English.]

Ab'é-lard (1079-1142), 6.
Academy, French, 10, 12, 75, 156, 287.
Æs'chy-lus, 94, 152, 166, 168.
Æ'sop, 85.
Al-ci-bi'a-des, 289.
Alembert. See D'Alembert.
Al-ex-an'der (the Great), 5, 131.
Al-ex-an'drine, 5, 86, 153.
Am-y-ot' (ä-me-o´), Jacques (1513-1593), 8.
An'ge-lo, Michel, 156.
Ariosto, 245, 247.
Ar'is-tot-le, 50.
Ar-nauld' (ar-nō´), Antoine (1612-1694), 119.

Ar'thur (King), 5.
Au'gus-tīne, St., Latin Christian Father, 83.
Au'gus'tus (the Emperor), 131.
Ba'con, Francis, 48, 63.
Ba'ker, Jehu, 226.
Bā´laam, 154.
Băl´zac, Jean Louis Guez de (1594-1654), 10, 11.
Beau-mar-chais´, de (bō-mar-shā´), Pierre Augustin Caron (1732-1799),
287, 289.
Benedictines, 29.
Boi-leau´-Des-pré-aux´ (bwä-lō´-dā-prā-o´), Nicolas (1636-1711), 9, 12,
14, 83, 84, 167, 168, 171, 289.
Bolton, A. S., 69.
BOS-SU-ET´(bo-sü-ā´), Jacques Bénigne (1627-1704), 11, 12, 77, 127,
166, 170, 182-188, 205, 206, 224, 225.
BOUR-DA-LOUE´, Louis (1632-1704), 3, 12, 77, 143, 148, 182, 185,
188, 189-197, 198, 201, 202.
Brook Farm, 38.
Bry´ant, William Cullen, 290, 291.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 234.
Buffon (büf-foN´), Georges Louis Leclerc de (1707-1788), 287.
Bur´gun-dy, Duke of (1682-1712), 177, 207, 208, 209, 214, 216.
Burke, Edmund, 48, 75.
Bussy (büs-se´), Count, 135.

By´ron, Lord, 48.
Cæsar, Julius, 56, 131.
Calas (cä-lä´), Jean, 253.
Calvin, John (1509-1564), 7.
Carlyle, Thomas, 251, 255.
Catherine (Empress of Russia), 285.
Cham-fort´ (shäN-for´), Sébastien Roch Nicolas (1741-1794), 85.
Chanson (shäN-soN´), 5.
Char-le-magne´ (shar-le-mān´), 5.
Charles I. (of England), 170, 185.
Charles IX. (of France), 63.
Cha-teau-bri-and´ (shä-tō-bre-äN´), François Auguste de (1768-1848), 3,
13, 14, 206, 277, 289.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 5, 20.
"Classicism," 10, 14, 224, 289, 290.
Claude, Jean (1619-1687), 182.
Coleridge, S. T., 7, 34, 43.
Comines (kō-meen´), Philippe de (1445-1509), 7, 25, 28.
Condé (koN-dā´), Prince of, "The Great Condé" (1621-1686), 144.
Condillac (koNde-yäk´), Étienne Bonnot de (1715-1780), 287.
Condorcet (koN-dor-sā´), Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de (1743-
1794), 128.

CORNEILLE (kor-nāl´), Pierre (1606-1684), 2, 11, 12, 16, 78, 79, 80,
151-166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 182, 183, 239.
Cotin (ko-tăN´), Abbé, 100.
Cotton, Charles (1630-1687), 44, 48.
Cousin (koo-zăN´), Victor (1792-1867), 128.
D'Alembert (dä-läN-bêr´), Jean le Rond (1717-1783), 13, 251, 286, 287.
Dante, 50, 93, 94, 114.
David (King), 198.
Descartes (dā-kärt´), René (1596-1650), 11, 12, 104, 115.
D'Holbach (dōl-bäk´), Paul Henri Thyry (1723-1789), 287.
Dickens, Charles, 35, 149.
Diderot (de-drō´), Denis (1713-1784), 13, 237, 250, 284, 285, 286, 287.
Dryden, John, 48, 166.
Duclos (dü-klō´), Charles Pineau (1704-1772), 287.
"Écrasez l'Infâme," 252.
Edinburgh Review, 140.
Edward (the Black Prince), 21-25.
Edwards, President, 194.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 49, 51, 52, 61.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 18.
ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, 13, 218, 249, 250, 282-288.
Epictetus, 65.

Epicurus, 50.
Erasmus, 43, 126.
Euripides, 153, 166, 171.
Fabliaux (fab´le-ō´), 6.
Faugère (fō-zhêr´), Arnaud Prosper (1810- ), 128.
FÉNELON (fān-loN´), François de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715),
12, 85, 177, 178, 181, 205-224.
Fléchier (flā-she-ā´), Esprit (1632-1710), 182.
Foix (fwä), Count de, 26, 27.
Fontenelle (foNt-nĕl´), Bernard le Bovier (1657-1757), 289.
Franciscans, 29.
Frederick (the Great), 254.
Friar John, 40.
FROISSART (frwä-sar´), Jean (1337-1410?), 7, 18-28.
Gaillard (gă-yar´), Gabriel Henri (1726-1806), 155.
Gar-gant´ua, 29, 36, 37, 39.
Gibbon, Edward, 153.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 83, 225.
Grignan (green-yäN´), Madame de, 138.
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723-1807), 287.
Gulliver's Travels, 37.
Guyon (ğe-yoN´), Madame (1648-1717), 210.

Hallam, Henry, 18, 34.
Havet (ä-va´) (editor of Pascal's works), 128, 129.
Hawkesworth, Dr., 222.
Hazlitt, W. Carew, 48.
Helvétius (ēl-vā-se-üss´), Claude Adrien (1715-1771), 287.
Henriette, Princess, 170.
Henry of Navarre, 63.
Herod (King), 198.
Herodotus, 7, 18.
Holbach. See D'Holbach.
Homer, 244.
Hooker ("The judicious"), 205.
Horace, 245.
Hugo (ü-go´), Victor. See Victor Hugo.
Hume, David, 48, 276.
Isaiah (the prophet), 94.
Israel, 154.
James (King), 210.
Job, 94, 210.
John (the Baptist), 198.
John (King), 21, 22.
Johnes, Thomas, 19.

Johnson, Samuel, 160, 249.
Joinville (zhwăN-vel´), Jean de (1224?-1319?), 7.
Julian (the Apostate), 178.
Kant, Emmanuel, 42.
Knox, John, 198.
La Boëtie (lä bō-ă-tē´), Étienne (1530-1563), 58, 59.
LA BRUYÈRE (lä brü-e-y êr´), Jean (1646?-1696), 12, 75-81, 153.
LA FONTAINE (lä foN-tān´), Jean de (1621-1695), 12, 81-92.
Lamartine (lä-mar-tēn´), Alphonse Marie Louis de (1780-1869), 14, 206,
289.
Langue d'oc, 4.
Langue d'oïl, 4.
Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881), 25.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (lä rōsh-foo-kō´), François, Duc de (1613-
1680), 12, 48, 66-75, 131, 147, 148.
Longfellow, Henry W., 50.
Louis IX. (1215-1270) (St. Louis), 6, 7.
Louis XI. (1423-1483), 7.
Louis XIII. (1601-1643), 10, 95.
Louis XIV. (1638-1715) (Quatorze), 10, 12, 113, 135, 136, 169, 172, 176,
181, 184, 189, 190, 198, 199, 200, 207, 208, 213, 217-219, 223, 255.
Louis XV. (1710-1774), 199, 214, 254.
Louvois (loo-vwä´), Marquis de, 142.

Lowell, James Russell, 291.
Lucan, 151, 153, 240.
Lucretius, 94, 166.
Luther, Martin, 7, 40.
Maintenon (măN-teh-noN´), Madame de (1635-1719), 172, 181, 210,
211.
Malherbe (mäl-êrb´), François (1555-1628), 9, 10, 14.
Martin (mar-tăN´), Henri (1810- ), 183.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 8, 198.
MASSILLON (mäs-se-yoN´), Jean Baptiste (1663-1742), 3, 12, 148,
182, 185, 188, 197-205.
M'Crie, Thomas, 119.
Michael (the Archangel), 205.
Milton, John, 92, 182, 206, 247.
MOLIÈRE (mo-le-êr´) (real name, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673),
12, 16, 83, 92-114, 127, 154, 165, 167, 169, 240.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 151.
MONTAIGNE (mon-tān´), Michel Eyquem de (1533-1592), 2, 7, 8, 44-
65, 67, 75, 131, 230, 234, 257, 268.
Montespan (moN-tĕss-päN´), Madame de (1641-1707), 138, 139, 140.
MONTESQUIEU, de (moN-tĕs-kê-uh´), Charles de Secondat (1689-
1755), 13, 218, 225-237.
Morley, Henry, 249.
Morley, John, 249, 251, 285.

Motteux, Peter Anthony (1660-1718), 30.
Musset (mü-sā´) (1810-1857), Alfred de, 289.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 13, 166.
Nathan (the prophet), 198.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 115.
Nicole (ne-kŏl´), Pierre (1625-1695), 3, 143, 147, 168.
"Obscurantism" (disposition, in the sphere of the intellect, to love
darkness rather than light), 252.
Pan-tag´-ru-el, 29, 40, 41, 42.
Panurge (pä-nürzh´), 40, 41, 42.
PASCAL, Blaise (1623-1662), 3, 12, 48, 62, 65, 80, 115-133, 193.
Pascal, Jacqueline, 116.
Pelisson (pĕl-ē-soN´), 149.
Petrarch, Francesco, 20.
Phædrus, 85.
Plato, 50, 51, 59.
Pleiades (plē´ya-dēz), 8, 10, 13.
Plutarch, 8, 48, 56.
Po-co-cu´rant-ism, 248.
Pompadour, Madame de, 254.
Pompey, 56.
Pope, Alexander, 48, 166.

Poquelin (po-ke-lăN´). See Molière, 94, 95.
Port Royal, 119, 127, 128, 147, 168.
Pradon (prä-doN´), 171.
Provençal (pro-väN-sal), 4.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 8.
Quentin Durward, 7.
RABELAIS (ră-blā´), François (1495?-1553?), 3, 7, 28-43, 60, 65, 83,
146.
RACINE (rä-seen´), Jean (1639-1699), 12, 78, 79, 80, 83, 151, 152, 153,
166-181, 205.
Rambouillet (räN-boo-yā´), Hôtel de, 10, 11, 12, 100, 105, 155, 156, 183.
Raphael (archangel), 205.
Récamier (rā-kä-me-ā´), Madame (1777-1849), 11.
Richard, the Lion-hearted, 117.
Richelieu (rēsh-le-uh´), Cardinal, 10, 12, 95, 154, 156.
Roman (ro-mäN´), 5.
"Romanticism," 224, 289, 290.
"Romanticists," 14.
Ronsard (roN-sar´), Pierre de (1524-1585), 8, 9.
Ronsardism, 14.
Rousseau (roo-sō´), Jean Baptiste (1670-1741), 255.
ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques (1712-1778), 3, 13, 14, 48, 206, 218, 249,
250, 251, 255-281, 287.

Ruskin, John, 73.
Rutebeuf (rü-te-buf´) (b. 1230), trouvère, 6.
Sablíère (sä-blï-êr´), Madame de la, 83, 84.
Saci (sä-se´), M. de, 65.
Saintsbury, George, 17, 58.
Sainte-Beuve (săNt-buv´), Charles Augustin (1804-1869), 9, 14, 189,
193, 199, 235, 289.
Sal´a-din (Saracen antagonist of Richard the Lion-hearted), 117.
Salon (sä-loN´), 11.
Sand (säNd), George (Madame Dudevant, 1804-1876), 3, 14.
Saurin (sō-răN´), Jacques (1677-1730), 182.
"Savoyard Curate's Confession," 279.
Scott, Sir Walter, 7, 19, 25, 105.
Selden, John ("The learned"), 205.
Seneca, 48, 50.
SÉVIGNÉ (sā-vēn-yā´), Madame de, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (1626-
1696), 11, 105, 134-151, 170.
Shakspeare, 16, 48, 63, 92, 94, 114, 160, 240.
Socrates (contrasted by Rousseau with Jesus), 280, 281.
Sophocles, 153, 166, 168.
Staël-Holstein (stä-ĕl´ ol-stăN´), Anne Louise Grermanie de (1766-1817),
13, 289.
Stanislaus (King of Poland), 285.