{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_19872/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_19872","id":"gutenberg_19872","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19872","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: French Literature","Category: History - European","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","La Bruy\u00e8re, Jean de, 1645-1696","La Rochefoucauld, Fran\u00e7ois, duc de, 1613-1680","Vauvenargues, 1715-1747","World War, 1914-1918 -- France"],"text":"Produced by Thierry Alberto, Don Perry and the Online\nDistributed Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                             THREE FRENCH\n                              MORALISTS\n                     AND THE GALLANTRY OF FRANCE\n\n\n                                 BY\n\n                          EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.\n\n                   OFFICIER DE LA LEGION D'HONNEUR\n\n\n                               LONDON\n                          WILLIAM HEINEMANN\n\n\nTO\n\nLORD RIBBLESDALE\n\n_This little book, long the subject of my meditation, suddenly began\nto take shape one Sunday morning when I was your guest at Gisburne. We\nwere actually starting for church, and the car was at the door, when I\nannounced to you that the spirit moved me to stay behind. \"Very well,\nthen,\" you said, with your habitual good-nature, \"we leave you to your\nfolios.\" My \"folios\" were the three volumes of one of the smallest of\nbooks, the 18mo edition of Vauvenargues published by Plon in 1874. In\nthe midst of a violent thunderstorm, which was like a declaration of\nwar upon your golden Yorkshire summer, I wrote my first pages, and you\nwere so sceptical, when you came back, as to my having done anything\nbut watch the lightning, that I told you you would have to endure the\nresponsibility of being sponsor to a work thus suddenly begun in all\nthe agitation of the elements. So, such as time has proved it, here it\nis._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nTHREE FRENCH MORALISTS--\n\n  LA ROCHEFOUCAULD\n\n  LA BRUYERE\n\n  VAUVENARGUES\n\nTHE GALLANTRY OF FRANCE\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\n\n\n                              INTRODUCTION\n\nThe object of these essays is to trace back to its source, or to some\nof its sources--for the soul of France is far too complex to be\nmeasured by one system--the spirit of gallantry which inspired the\nyoung French officers at the beginning of the war. We cannot examine\ntoo minutely, or with too reverent an enthusiasm, the effort of our\ngreat ally, and in this theme for our admiration there are many\nstrains, some of which present themselves in apparent opposition to\none another. The war has now lasted so long, and has so completely\naltered its character, that what was true of the temper of the\nsoldiers of France in November 1914 is no longer true in April 1918.\nConfidence and determination are still there, there is no diminution\nin domestic intensity or in patriotic fervour, but the long\ncontinuance of the struggle has modified the temper of the French\nofficer, and it will probably never be again what it was in the stress\nand tempest of sacrifice three years and a half ago, when the young\nFrench soldiers, flushed with the idealisms which they had imbibed at\nSt. Cyr, rushed to battle like paladins, \"with a pure heart,\" in the\nrapture of chivalry and duty.\n\nAll that has long been wearied out, and might even be forgotten, if\nthe letters and journals of a great cloud of witnesses were not\nfortunately extant. The record kept by the friends of Paul Lintier and\nthose others whom I am presently to mention, and by innumerable\npersons to whose memory justice cannot here be done, will keep fresh\nin the history of France the idealism of a splendid generation. Now we\nsee, and for a long time past have seen, a different attitude on the\nfields of Champagne and Picardy. There is no feather worn now in the\ncap, no white gloves grasp the sword; the Saint Cyrian elegance is\nover and done with. There is no longer any declamation, any emphasis,\nany attaching of importance to \"form\" or rhetoric. The fervour and the\nemotion are there still, but they are kept in reserve, they are below\nthe surface, \"at the bottom of the heart,\" as La Rochefoucauld puts\nit.\n\nHeroism is now restrained by a sense of the prodigious length and\nbreadth of the contest, by the fact, at last patent to the most\nunthinking, that the war is an octopus which has wound its tentacles\nabout every limb and every organ of the vitality of France. A\nrevelation of the overwhelming violence of enormous masses of men has\nbroken down the tradition of chivalry. War is now accepted with a sort\nof indifference, as a part of the day's work; \"pas de grands mots, pas\nde grands gestes, pas de drame!\" The imperturbable French officer of\n1918 attaches no particular importance to his individual gesture. He\nconcentrates his energy in another kind of action.\n\nBut the French race is by nature bellicose and amorous of adventure,\nand more than all other nations has a tendency to clothe its\npatrimonial ardour of defence in beautiful terms and gallant\nattitudes. This is one of the points on which the British race, with\nits scrupulous reserve, often almost its affectation of\nself-depreciating shyness, differs most widely from the French, and is\nmost in need of sympathetic imagination in dealing with a noble ally\nwhose methods are not necessarily the same as ours. It is difficult to\nfancy a young English lieutenant quoting with rapturous approval, as\nPierre de Rozieres and Henri Lagrange did in August 1914, the counsels\nwhich were given more than a hundred years ago by the Prince de Ligne:\n\"Let your brain swim with enthusiasm! Let honour electrify your heart!\nLet the holy flame of victory shine in your eyes! as you hoist the\nglorious ensigns of renown let your souls be in like measure\nuplifted!\" A perpetual delirium or intoxication is the state of mind\nwhich is recommended by this \"heart of fire,\" as the only one becoming\nin a French officer who has taken up arms to defend his country.\n\nFor the young men who consciously adopted the maxims of the Prince de\nLigne as their guide at the opening of this war, M. Maurice Barres has\nfound the name of \"Traditionalists.\" They are those who followed the\ntradition of the soldierly spirit of France in its three main lines,\nin its individualism, in its intelligence, in its enthusiasm. They\nendeavoured, in those first months of agony and hope, to model their\nconduct on the formulas which their ancestors, the great moralists of\nthe past, had laid down for them. Henri Lagrange, who fell at\nMontereau in October 1915, at the age of twenty, was a type of\nhundreds of others. This is how his temper of mind, as a soldier, is\ndescribed by his friend Maxime Brienne:--\n\n\"The confidence of Lagrange was no less extraordinary than was his\nspirit of sacrifice. He possessed the superhuman severity which comes\nfrom being wholly consecrated to duty.... With a magnificent\ncombination of logic and of violence, with a resolution to which his\nunusually lucid intelligence added a sort of methodical vehemence, he\nexpressed his conviction that resolute sacrifice was necessary if the\nresult was to be a definite success.... He declared that a soldier\nwho, by force of mind and a sentiment of honour and patriotism, was\nable to conquer the instinct of fear, should not merely \"fulfil\" his\nmilitary duty with firmness, but should hurl himself on death, because\nit was only at that price that success could be obtained over a\nnumerical majority.\"\n\nThis is a revelation of that individualism which is characteristic of\nthe trained French character, a quality which, though partly obscured\nby the turn the great struggle has taken, will undoubtedly survive and\nultimately reappear. It is derived from the admonitions of a series of\nmoral teachers, and in the wonderful letters which M. Maurice Barres\nhas brought together with no less tact than passion in his series of\nvolumes issued under the general title of \"L'Ame Francaise et la\nGuerre,\" we have an opportunity of studying it in a great variety of\nsituations. This is but a portion, and it may be but a small portion,\nof the multiform energy of France, and it is capable, of course, of\nbeing subjected to criticism. That, in fact, it has had to endure, but\nit is no part of my business here, nor, if I may venture to say so, is\nit the business of any Englishman to criticise at any time, except in\npathetic admiration, an attitude so beautiful, and marked in its\nself-sacrifice by so delicate an effusion of scrupulous good taste. We\nare in presence of a field of those fluttering tricolor flags which\nfill the eyes of a wanderer over the battle-centres of the Marne with\na passion of tears. We are in presence of the memorials of a chivalry\nthat did not count the price, but died \"joyfully\" for France.[1]\n\n     [Footnote 1: The poet Leon Guillot, in dying, bid his\n     comrades describe him to his father and mother as \"tombe au\n     champ d'honneur et mort _joyeusement_ pour son pays.\"--\"Les\n     Diverses Familles Spirituelles de la France,\" pp. 178, 179.]\n\nThere is not much advantage in searching for the germs of all this\nexalted sentiment earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century.\nThe malady of the Fronde was serious precisely because it revealed the\ncomplete absence, in the nobles, in the clergy, in the common people,\nof patriotic conviction of any kind. Cardinal's men and\nanti-cardinalists, Mazarin and Monsieur, Conde and Plessis-Praslin,--we\nfollow the bewildering turns of their fortune and the senseless\nevolution of their mercenaries, without being able to trace any moral\nline of conduct, any ethical aim on the part of the one or the other.\nIt was anarchy for the sheer fun of anarchy's sake, a struggle which\npervaded the nation without ever contriving to be national, a riot of\nforces directed by no intellectual or ethical purpose whatever. The\ndelirium of it all reached a culminating point in 1652 when the\naristocratic bolshevists of Conde's army routed the victorious king\nand cardinal at the Faubourg St. Antoine. This was the consummation of\ntragical absurdity; what might pass muster for political reason had\nturned inside out; and when Mazarin fled to Sedan he left behind him a\nFrance which was morally, religiously, intellectually, a sucked\norange.\n\nOut of the empty welter of the Fronde there grew with surprising\nrapidity the conception of a central and united polity of France which\nhas gone on advancing and developing, and, in spite of outrageous\nrevolutionary earthquakes, persisting ever since. We find La\nRochefoucauld, as a moral teacher, with his sardonic smile, actually\nescaping out of the senseless conflict, and starting, with the\nstigmata of the scuffle still on his body, a surprising new theory\nthat the things of the soul alone matter, and that love of honour is\nthe first of the moral virtues. We see him, the cynic and sensual\nbrawler of 1640, turned within a few years into a model of regularity,\nthe anarchist changed into a serious citizen with a logical scheme of\nconduct, the atheistical swashbuckler become the companion of saints\nand pitching his tent under the shadow of Port Royal. More than do the\npurely religious teachers, he marks the rapid crystallization of\nsociety in Paris, and the opening of a new age of reflection, of\npolish and of philosophical experiment. Moral psychology, a science in\nwhich Frenchmen have ever since delighted, seems to begin with the\nstern analysis of _amour-propre_ in the \"Maximes.\"\n\nIt is obvious that my choice of three moral maxim-writers to exemplify\nthe sources of modern French sentiment must be in some measure an\narbitrary one. The moralists of the end of the seventeenth century in\nFrance are legion, and I would not have it supposed that I am not\naware of the relative importance of some of them. But although La\nRochefoucauld and La Bruyere were not the inventors of their\nrespective methods of writing, nor positively isolated in their\ntreatment of social themes, I do not think it is claiming too much for\nthem to say that in the crowd of smaller figures they stand out large,\nand with each generation larger, in any survey of their century. In\ntheir own day, Cureau de la Chambre, Coeffeteau and Senault were\nconsidered the first of moral philosophers, but there must be few who\nturn over the pages of the \"Usages des Passions\" now, whereas the\n\"Caracteres\" enjoys a perpetual popularity.\n\nThe writers whom I have just named are dead, at least I presume so,\nfor I must not profess to have done more than touch their\nwinding-sheets in the course of my private reading. But there are two\nmoralists of the period who remain alive, and one of whom burns with\nan incomparable vivacity of life. If I am asked why Pascal and Nicole\nhave not been chosen among my types, I can only answer that Pascal,\nunlike my select three, has been studied so abundantly in England that\nby nothing short of an exhaustive monograph can an English critic now\nhope to add much to public apprehension of his qualities. The case of\nNicole is different. Excessively read in France, particularly during\nthe eighteenth century, and active always in influencing the national\nconscience--since the actual circulation of the \"Essais de Morale\" is\nsaid to have far exceeded that of the \"Pensees\" of Pascal--Nicole has\nnever, in the accepted phrase, \"contrived to cross the Channel,\" and\nhe is scarcely known in England. Books and their writers have these\nfates. Mme de Sevigne was so much in love with the works of Nicole,\nthat she expressed a wish to make \"a soup of them and swallow it\"; but\nI leave her to the enjoyment of the dainty dish. As theologians, too,\nboth Pascal and Nicole stand somewhat outside my circle.\n\nThe three whom I have chosen stand out among the other moralists of\nFrance by their adoption of the maxim as their mode of instruction.\nWhen La Bruyere, distracted with misgivings about his \"Caracteres,\"\nhad made up his mind to get an introduction to Boileau, and to ask the\nadvice of that mighty censor, Boileau wrote to Racine (May 19, 1687),\n\"Maximilian has been out to Auteuil to see me and has read me parts of\nhis Theophrastus.\" Nicknames were the order of the day, and the critic\ncalled his new friend \"Maximilian,\" although his real name was Jean,\nbecause he wrote \"Maximes.\" There is no other country than France\nwhere the maker of maxims has stamped a deep and permanent impression\nupon the conscience and the moral habits of the nation. But this has\nbeen done by La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Vauvenargues, whom, did it\nnot sound frivolous, we might style the three great Maximilians.\n\nThe three portraits were first exhibited as a course of lectures at\nthe Royal Institution in February of this year. They have been revised\nand considerably enlarged. For the English of the passages translated\nor paraphrased I am in every case responsible. The chapter on \"The\nGallantry of France\" appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_, and I thank\nthe editor and publisher of that periodical for their courteous\npermission to include it here.\n\n_April 1918_.\n\n\n\n\n                          LA ROCHEFOUCAULD\n\n\nOne of the most gifted of the young officers who gave their lives for\nFrance at the beginning of the war, Quartermaster Paul Lintier, in the\nadmirable notes which he wrote on his knee at intervals during the\nbattle of the Meuse in August 1914, said--\n\n\"The imperative instinct for making the best you can of life, the\nsentiment of duty, and anxiety for the good opinion of others, in a\nword _honour_--these are the main educators of the soldier under fire.\nThis is not a discovery, it is simply a personal statement.\"\n\nTaken almost at random from the records of the war, this utterance may\nserve us as well as any other to distinguish the attitude of the\nFrenchman in the face of violent and critical action from the equally\nbrave and effective attitude of other races. He has the habit, not\ncommon elsewhere, of analyzing conduct and of stripping off from the\ncontemplation of it those voluntary illusions which drop a curtain\nbetween it and truth.\n\nThe result of this habit of ruthless criticism is to concentrate the\nFrenchman's attention, even to excess, on the motives of conduct, and\nto bring him more and more inevitably to regard self-love,\nself-preservation, personal vanity in its various forms, as the source\nof all our apparent virtues. Even when we appear to be most\ndisinterested, even when we are most clearly actuated by unselfish\ndevotion, by _honour_, we are really the prey, as Lintier saw it, of\nthe wish to save our lives and to preserve the good opinion of others.\nUnderneath the transports of patriotism, underneath the sincerity of\nreligious fervour, the Frenchman digs down and finds _amour-propre_ at\nthe root of everything.\n\nThis attitude or habit of mind is particularly shocking to all those\nwho live in a state of illusion, and there is probably no aspect of\nFrench character which is more difficult for the average Englishman to\nappreciate than this tendency towards sceptical dissection of the\nmotives of conduct. Yet it is quite certain that it is widely\ndisseminated among those of our neighbours who are most prompt and\neffective in action, and whose vigour is in no degree paralysed by the\nclairvoyance with which they seek for exact truth even in the most\nromantic and illusive spiritual circumstances. To throw light on this\naspect of French character, I propose to call attention to a little\nbook, which is probably well-known to my readers already, but which\nmay be regarded from a point of view, as I venture to think, more\ninstructive than that which is usually chosen.\n\nIn the year 1665 there appeared anonymously in Paris, in all the\ncircumstances of well-advertised secrecy, a thin volume of \"Maximes,\"\nwhich were understood to have exercised for years past the best\nthoughts of a certain illustrious nobleman. Mme de Sable, who was not\nforeign to the facts, immediately wrote a review, intended for the\n_Journal des Scavants_, in the course of which she said that the new\nbook was \"a treatise on movements of the human heart which may be said\nto have remained until now unrecognized.\" The book, as every one\nknows, was the work of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, and the subject\nof it was an unmasking of \"the veritable condition of man.\"\n\nIt would be idle not to admit that La Rochefoucauld has been almost\nexclusively regarded as the chief exponent of egotism among the great\nwriters of Europe. He has become--he became during his own lifetime--\nthe bye-word for bitterness. He is represented as believing that\negotism is the _primum mobile_ of all human action, and that man is\nwholly the victim of his passions, which lead him whither they will.\nHe denies all spirituality and sees a physical cause for everything we\ndo. His own words are quoted against him. It is true that he says,\n\"All the passions are nothing but divers degrees of heat or cold in\nthe blood.\" It is true that he says, \"All men naturally hate one\nanother,\" and again, \"Our virtues are mostly vices in disguise.\" Yet\nagain, he defines the subject of his mordant volume in terms which\nseem to exclude all bountiful theories concerning the disinterested\ninstincts of the human soul, for he says \"_Amour-propre_ is the love\nof one's self and of all things for one's self; it turns men into\ntheir own idolators, and, if fortune gives them the opportunity, makes\nthem the tyrants of others.... It exists in all states of life and in\nall conditions; it lives everywhere and it lives on everything; it\nlives on nothing.\" He does not admit that Christianity itself is\nimmune from the ravages of this essential cankerworm, which adopts all\ndisguises and slips from one Protean shape into another. \"The\nrefinements of self-love surpass those of chemistry,\" and the purpose\nof La Rochefoucauld is to resolve all our virtues in a crucible and to\nshow that nothing remains but a poisonous deposit of egotism.\n\nNo wonder that La Rochefoucauld has been generally regarded as a\nscourge of the human race, a sterile critic of mankind without\nsympathy or pity. It is true that his obstinate insistence on the\nuniversality of egotism produces a depressing and sometimes a\nfatiguing impression on the reader, who is apt to think of him as\nShakespeare's Apemantus, \"that few things loves better than to abhor\nhimself.\" But when the First Lord goes on to add \"He's opposite to\nhumanity,\" we feel that no phrase could less apply to La\nRochefoucauld. We have, therefore, immediately to revise our opinion\nof this severe dissector of the human heart, and to endeavour to find\nout what lay underneath the bitterness of his \"Maximes.\" It is a\ncomplete mistake to look upon La Rochefoucauld as a monster, or even\nas a Timon. Without insisting, at all events for the moment, on the\nplain effect of his career on his intellect, but yet accepting the\nevidence that much of his bitterness was the result of bad health,\nsense of failure, shyness, foiled ambition, we have to ask ourselves\nwhat he gave to French thought in exchange for the illusions which he\nso rudely tore away. In dealing with any savage moralist, we are\nobliged to turn from the abstract question: Why did he say these\nthings? to the realistic one. What did he hope to effect by what he\nsaid? Perhaps we can start no better on this inquiry than to quote the\nDuchess of Schomberg's exclamation when she turned over the pages of\nthe first edition--namely that \"this book contains a vast number of\ntruths which I should have remained ignorant of all my life if it had\nnot taught me to perceive them.\" This may be applied to French energy,\nand we may begin to see what has been the active value of La\nRochefoucauld's apparently negative and repugnant aphorisms.\n\nThe La Rochefoucauld whom we know belongs to a polite and modern age.\nHe is instinct with the spirit of society, \"la bonne compagnie,\" as it\nwas called in the middle of the seventeenth century, when a crowd of\nrefined and well-trained pens competed to make of the delicate\nlanguage of France a vehicle which could transfer from brain to brain\nthe subtlest ingenuities of psychology. He is a typical specimen of the\nFrenchman of letters at the moment when literature had become the ally\nof political power and the instrument of social influence. Into this\nnew world, before it had completely developed, the future author of\nthe \"Maximes\" was introduced at a very early age. He was presented to\nthe wits and _precieuses_ of the Hotel Rambouillet at the age of\neighteen. It is amusing to think that he may have seen Voiture, in the\nBlue Room, seize his lute and sing a Spanish song, or have volunteered\nas a paladin in the train of Hector, King of Georgia. But the\npedantries and affectations of this wonderful society seem to have\nmade no immediate impression upon La Rochefoucauld, whose early years\nwere those of the young nobleman devoid of all apparent intellectual\ncuriosity. It is true that he says of himself that directly he came\nback from Italy (this was in 1629, when he was only sixteen), \"I began\nto notice with some attention whatever I saw,\" but this was, no doubt,\nexternal; he does not exhibit in his writings, and in all probability\ndid not feel, the slightest interest in the pedantic literature of the\nend of Louis XIII.'s reign. He represented, through his youth, the\npurely military and aristocratic element in the society of that age.\nIf he had died when he was thirty, or at the close of the career of\nRichelieu, nothing would have distinguished him from the mob of\nviolent noblemen who made the streets of Paris a pandemonium.\n\nTo understand the influence of La Rochefoucauld it is even more\nneedful than in most similar cases to form a clear idea of his\ncharacter, and this can only be obtained by an outline of his\nremarkable career. Francois VI. Duke of La Rochefoucauld, as a typical\nParisian, was born in the ducal palace in the rue des Petits-Champs,\non September 15, 1613. The family was one of the most noble not merely\nin France but in Europe, and we do not begin to understand the author\nuntil we realize his excessive pride of birth. In a letter he wrote to\nCardinal Mazarin in 1648 he says, \"I am in a position to prove that\nfor three hundred years the monarchs [of France] have not disdained to\ntreat us as members of their family.\" This arrogance of race inspired\nthe early part of his life to the exclusion, so far as we can\nperceive, of any other stimulus to action. He was content to be the\nviolent and fantastic swashbuckler of the half-rebellious court of\nLouis XIII. In late life, he crystallized his past into a maxim,\n\"Youth is a protracted intoxication; it is the fever of the soul.\"\nFighting and love-making, petty politics and scuffle upon\ncounter-scuffle--such was the life of the young French nobleman of whom\nLa Rochefoucauld reveals himself and is revealed by others as the type\nand specimen.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld is the author, not merely of the \"Maximes,\" but of a\nsecond book which is much less often read. This is his \"Memoires,\" a\nvery intelligent and rather solemn contribution to the fragmentary\nhistory of France in the seventeenth century. It is hardly necessary\nto point out that not one of the numerous memoirs of this period must\nbe taken as covering the whole field of which they treat. Each book is\nlike a piece of a dissected map, or of a series of such maps cut to a\ndifferent scale. All are incomplete and most of them overlap, but they\nmake up, when carefully collated, an invaluable picture of the times.\nNo other country of Europe produced anything to compare with these\nauthentic fragments of the social and political history of France\nunder Richelieu and Mazarin. These Memoirs had a very remarkable\ninfluence on the general literature of France. They turned out of\nfavour the chronicles of \"illustrious lives,\" the pompous and false\ntravesties of history, which the sixteenth century had delighted in,\nand in this way they served to prepare for the purification of French\ntaste. The note of the best of them was a happy sincerity even in\negotism, a simplicity even in describing the most monstrous and\ngrotesque events. Among this group of writers, Cardinal de Retz seems\nto me to be beyond question the greatest, but La Rochefoucauld is not\nto be despised in his capacity as the arranger of personal\nrecollections.\n\nWe must not expect from these seventeenth-century autobiographers the\nsort of details which we demand from memoir-writers to-day. La\nRochefoucauld, although he begins in the first person, has nothing\nwhich he chooses to tell us about his own childhood and education. He\nwas married, at the age of fifteen, to a high-born lady, Andree de\nVivonne, but her he scarcely mentions. By the side of those glittering\namatory escapades of his on the grand scale, with which Europe rang,\nhe seems to have pursued a sober married existence, without\nupbraidings from his own conscience, or curtain-lectures from his meek\nduchess, who bore him eight children. La Rochefoucauld's \"Memoires\"\nopen abruptly with these words:--\"I spent the last years of the\nCardinal's administration in indolence,\" and then he begins to\ndiscourse on the audacities of the Duke of Buckingham (pleasingly\nspelled Bouquinquant) and his attacks on the heart of the Queen of\nFrance. We gather that although the English envoy can have had no\npersonal influence on the future moralist--since Buckingham was\nmurdered at Portsmouth in 1628, while La Rochefoucauld did not come to\ncourt till 1630--yet the young Frenchman so immensely admired what he\nheard of the Englishman, and so deliberately set himself to take him\nas a model, that our own knowledge of Buckingham may be of help to us\nin reproducing an impression of La Rochefoucauld, or rather of the\nPrince de Marcillac, as he was styled until his father died.\n\nAfter describing the court as the youth of seventeen had found it, he\nskips five years to tell us how the Queen asked him to run away with\nher to Brussels in 1637. History has not known quite what to make of\nthis amazing story, of which La Rochefoucauld had the complacency to\nwrite more than twenty years afterwards--\n\n\"However difficult and perilous this adventure might seem to me, I may\nsay that never in all my life have I enjoyed anything so much. I was\nat an age (24) at which one loves to do extravagant and startling\nthings, and I felt that nothing could be more startling or more\nextravagant than to snatch at the same time the Queen from the King\nher husband, and from the Cardinal de Richelieu who was jealous, and\nMlle d'Hautefort from the King who was in love with her.\"\n\nHe tells the story with inimitable gusto. But he tells it just as an\nepisode, and he hurries on to the death of Richelieu in 1642, as\nthough he were conscious that up to his thirtieth year his own life\nhad not been of much consequence.\n\nEven in that age of turbulent extravagance, the Prince of Marcillac\nwas known, where he was known at all, merely as a hare-brained youth\nwho carried the intolerance and insolence of amatory youth past the\nconfines of absurdity, and it is amusing to find Balzac, who was\ntwenty years his senior, and who was buried in the country, describing\nhim--surely by repute--as the type of--\n\n\"These gentlemen who chatter so much about the empire and about the\nsovereignty of ladies, and have their heads so stuffed with tales and\nstrange adventures, that they grow to believe that they can do all\nthat was done under the reign of Amadis, and that the least of their\nduties is to reply to a supplicating lady, I, who am only a man, how\nshould I resist the prayer of her to whom the Gods themselves can\nrefuse nothing?\"\n\nWe seem far from the sombre and mordant author of the \"Maximes,\" but\na complete apprehension of the character of La Rochefoucauld requires\nthe story of his adventures to be at least briefly indicated. A chasm\ndivides his early from his late history, and this chasm is bridged\nover in a very shadowy way by such records as we possess of his\nretirement after the Fronde.\n\nBetween the death of Richelieu and this retirement there lies a period\nof ten years, during which the future author of the \"Maximes\" is\nswallowed up in the hurly-burly of the worst moment in the whole\nhistory of France. It is difficult from any point of view to form what\nit would be mere waste of time for us to attempt in this connection, a\nclear conception of the chaos into which that country was plunged by\nthe weakness of Anne of Austria and the criminality of Mazarin. The\nsenseless intrigues of the Fronde affect the bewildered student of\nthose times as though\n\n                              _this frame\n     Of Heav'n were falling and these elements\n     In mutiny had from her axle torn\n     The steadfast earth._\n\nAt first La Rochefoucauld seems to have meant to support the cause of\nthe court, expecting to be rewarded for what he had done, or been\nprepared to do for the Queen. He says in his \"Memoires\" that after the\ndeath of Louis XIII. the Queen-Mother \"gave me many marks of\nfriendship and confidence; she assured me several times that her\nhonour was involved in my being pleased with her, and that nothing in\nthe kingdom was large enough to reward me for what I had done in her\nservice.\" That sounds very well, but what it really illustrates is the\nextraordinary violence of aristocratic frivolity, the fierce levity\nand insatiable frenzied vanity of the noble families. The aims of La\nRochefoucauld, in support of which he was ready to sacrifice his\ncountry, were of a class that must seem to us now petty in the\nextreme. He wanted the _tabouret_, the footstool, for his duchess, in\nother words the right to be seated in presence of the members of the\nroyal family. He wanted the privilege of driving into the courtyard of\nthe Louvre without having to descend from his coach outside and walk\nin. He demanded these honours because they were already possessed by\nthe families of Rohan and of Bouillon. It is extraordinary to consider\nwhat powerful effects such trumpery causes could have, but it is a\nfact that the desolating and cruel wars of the Fronde largely depended\nupon jealousies of the _carrosse_ and the _tabouret_. La\nRochefoucauld's support of the rebellion frankly and openly was based\nupon it.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld brings the first part of his \"Memoires\" down to 1649.\nIn the second part he begins again with 1642, being very anxious to\nshow, to his own advantage of course, what the conditions were at\ncourt after the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and in particular\nto define the position of Mme de Chevreuse, the great intriguer and\nseductress of the French politics of the age. The charm of this lady,\nwho was no longer young, faded before that of the Duchess of\nLongueville, one of the most ambitious and most unscrupulous women who\never lived. She was the sister of the Prince de Conti, and from the\ntime when her celebrated relations with La Rochefoucauld began, her\ninfluence engaged him in all the unplumbed chaos which led to civil\nwar. When this finally broke out, however, in 1648, the Duke is found\nonce more on the side of the young king and his government, that is to\nsay, of Cardinal Mazarin.\n\nThrough the \"universal hubbub wide of stunning sounds and noises all\nconfused,\" we can catch with difficulty the accents of literature, at\nfirst indeed vocal in the midst of the riot, and even stimulated by\nit, as birds are by a heavy shower of rain, but soon stunned and\nsilenced by horrors incompatible with the labour of the Muses. The\nwars of the Fronde made a sharp cut between the heroic age of\nimaginative literature and the classical age which presently succeeded\nit, and offer in this respect a tolerable parallel to the civil wars\nraging in England about the same time. It is specious, but convenient,\nto discover a date at which a change of this kind may be said to\noccur. In England we have such a date marked large for us in 1660;\nFrench letters less obviously but more certainly can be said to start\nafresh in 1652. It is tolerably certain that in that year Pascal, Retz\nand the subject of our inquiry simultaneously and independently began\nto write. Up to that time there is no reason to believe that La\nRochefoucauld had given himself at all to study, and we possess no\nevidence that up to the age of forty he was more interested in the\nexistence of the literature of his country than was the idlest of the\ncut-throat nobility who swaggered in and out of the courtyard of the\nLouvre.\n\nHis \"Memoires\" end with an account of the war in Guienne in 1651 which\nis more solemn and more detached than all the rest. No one would\nsuspect that the historian, who affects the gravity of a Tacitus, was\nacting all through the events he describes with the levity of a\nfull-blooded and unscrupulous schoolboy. The most amazing instance of\nthis is his grotesque attempt to have Cardinal de Retz murdered at the\nPalais de Justice. In the course of a sort of romping fray he caught\nRetz's head between the flaps of a folding door, and shouted to\nColigny to come and stab him from behind. But he himself was shoved\naway, and the Cardinal released. La Rochefoucauld admits the escapade,\nwithout any sign of embarrassment, merely observing that Retz would\nhave done as much by him if he had only had the chance. But now comes\nthe incident which, better than anything else could, illustrates the\nfeverish and incongruous atmosphere of the Fronde, and the difficulty\nof following the caprices of its leading figures. The very next day\nafter this attempt to assassinate Retz in a peculiarly disgraceful\nway, La Rochefoucauld met the Cardinal driving through the streets of\nParis in his coach. Kneeling in the street, he demanded and received\nthe episcopal benediction of the man whom he had tried to murder in an\nundignified scuffle a few hours before. No animosity seems to have\npersisted between these two princes of the realm of France, and this\nmay be the moment to introduce the picture which Cardinal de Retz,\nwhose head was held in the folding door, painted very soon after of\nthe volatile duke who had held him there to be stabbed from behind.\nBoth writers began their memoirs in 1652, and no one has ever decided\nwhich is the more elegant of the two unique conpositions. The\nconjunction between two of the greatest prose-writers of France is\npiquant, and we cannot trace in Retz's sketch of his antagonist the\nsmallest sign of resentment. It was not published until 1717, but it\nhas all the appearance of having been written sixty years earlier, at\nleast, when Mademoiselle was seized with the fortunate inspiration of\nhaving \"portraits\" written of, and often by, the celebrated personages\nof the day. This, then, is how Retz saw La Rochefoucauld--\n\n\"There has always been a certain _je ne sais quoi_ in M. de La\nRochefoucauld. He has always ever since his childhood wanted to be\ntaking part in some plot, and that at a time when he was indifferent\nto small interests, which have never been his weakness, and when he\nhad no experience of great ones, which, in another sense, have never\nbeen his strong point. He has never had any skill in conducting\nbusiness, and I don't know why; for he possessed qualities which in\nany other man would have made up for those which he lacked. He was not\nlongsighted enough, and he did not see as a whole even what was within\nhis range of vision. But his good sense--which in the field of\nspeculation was very good--joined to his gentleness, his insinuating\ncharm, and his admirable ease of manner, ought to have compensated,\nmore than they have done, for his defect of penetration. He has always\nsuffered from an habitual irresoluteness; but I do not know to what\nthis irresoluteness should be attributed. He has never been a warrior,\nthough very much a soldier. He has never, through his own effort,\nsucceeded in being a good courtier, though he has always intended to\nbe one. That air of bashfulness and of shyness which you observe in\nhim in social life has given him in matters of business an apologetic\nair. He has always fancied that he needed to apologize; and this--in\nconjunction with his 'Maximes,' which do not err on the side of too\nmuch faith in virtue, and with his practice, which has always been to\nwind up business as impatiently as he started it--makes me conclude\nthat he would have done much better to know himself, and to be content\nto pass, as he might well have passed, for the most polished courtier\nand the finest gentleman, in private life, which this age has\nproduced.\"\n\nWe are now beginning to see the real author of the \"Maximes,\" when, at\nthe age of forty, he begins to peep forth from the travesty of his\naristocratic violence and idleness. Whether the transformation would\nhave been gradual instead of sudden is what can never be decided, but\nwe date it from July 2, 1652, when he was dangerously wounded in a\nriot in the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Picpus barricade, where he\nwas shot in the forehead and, as it at first appeared, blinded for\nlife. According to the faithful Gourville, when La Rochefoucauld\nthought he would lose his eyesight, he had a picture of Madame de\nLongueville engraved with two lines under it from a fashionable\ntragedy, the \"Alcyonee\" of Duryer--\n\n     _That I might hold her heart and please her lovely eyes\n     I made my war on kings and would have fought the skies._\n\nWith this piece of rodomontade the old Rochefoucauld ceases and makes\nplace for the author of the \"Maximes.\" When he recovered from his\nwound, his spirit of adventure was broken. He submitted to the\ncardinal, he withdrew from Conde, and in 1653, still his head bound\nwith bandages and wearing black spectacles to hide those clear and\nseductive eyes which Petitot had painted, he crept, a broken man, to\nhis country house at Verteuil, in the neighbourhood of Ruffec, now in\nthe Charente. This chateau, built just two hundred years before that\ndate, still exists, a noble relic of feudal France, and a place of\npilgrimage for lovers of the author of the \"Maximes.\"\n\nNo one was ever more suddenly and more completely cured of a whole\nsystem of existence than was La Rochefoucauld by the wound which was\nso nearly fatal. He said, \"It is impossible for any man who has\nescaped from civil war to plunge into it again.\" For him, at all\nevents, it was impossible. His only wish in 1653 was to bury himself\nand his slow convalescence among his woods at Verteuil. In this\nenforced seclusion, at the age of forty, he turned for solace to\nliterature, which he would seem to have neglected hitherto. We know\nnothing of his education, which had probably been as primitive as that\nof any pleasure-seeking and imperious young nobleman of the time. He\nwent to the wars when he was thirteen. In an undated letter he says\nthat he sends some Latin verses composed by a friend for the judgment\nof his unnamed correspondent, but he adds, \"I do not know enough Latin\nto dare to give an opinion.\" M. Henri Regnier, in his invaluable\n\"Lexique de la langue de La Rochefoucauld\" (1883) points out that the\nDuke's evident lack of classical knowledge is a positive advantage to\nhim, as it throws him entirely on the resources of pure French. In\nlike manner we may rejoice that Shakespeare had \"little Latin and less\nGreek.\"\n\nIt is tantalizing for us that we know almost nothing of the years,\nfrom 1653 to 1656, which La Rochefoucauld spent in severe retirement\nat Verteuil. What was happening to France was happening, no doubt, in\nits degree to him; he was chewing the cud of remorse for the follies\nand crimes of the Fronde. \"Only great men should have great failings,\"\nthe exile wrote, and we may be sure that he had by this time\ndiscovered, like the rest of the world, that as a swashbuckler and\nintriguer he was noisy and petulant, but on the whole anything but\ngreat. The Fronde left behind it a sense of littleness, of\npoverty-stricken humanity, and this particular frondeur had seen the\nmask drop from the features of his fellow-men. Now, in the quiet of the\ncountry, in disgrace with fortune and his own conscience, he grasped a\nnew and this time a dignified and suitable ambition. He began to study\nreality and learned to distinguish truth from pretence. This study was\nto make him one of the most eminent of French authors and a great power\nin the purification of French intelligence. He began, doubtless, his\ncareer as an author by composing the \"Memoires,\" in which he embodied\nhis exasperations and his recriminations in language of studied\ndignity. There is little here which betrays the future moralist, except\nthe simplicity and almost colourless transparency of the style.\n\nAs containing nearly the sole certain evidence of La Rochefoucauld's\nstate of mind at the time of transition, it is well, perhaps, to speak\nat this moment of his letters, which were first brought together in\n1881. They extend from 1637 to 1677, and the biographer pores over\nthem in the hope of extracting from them some crumbs of information.\nBut to the general reader they cannot be recommended. They are seldom\nconfidential, the writer never lets himself go. Even to his later\nfriends, such as Mme de Sable, La Rochefoucauld is rarely familiar,\nand the impression of himself in these graceful and sometimes vigorous\nepistles is illusive; the writer seems for ever on his guard. The\ngreat mass of this correspondence, in which politics takes no part\nafter 1653, is singularly literary; it is mainly occupied with the\ninterests, and almost with the jargon, of the professional author. We\nare told that his affectation in society was to appear cold and\nunmoved, and this he certainly contrived to do in those of his letters\nwhich have been preserved.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld told Mme de Sable that he depended on her for his\nknowledge of the inmost windings of the human heart. When he returned\nto Paris, this lady was approaching the age of sixty. Her _salon_\ncompeted with that of the Hotel de Rambouillet and that of Mlle de\nMontpensier at the Luxembourg. The Marquise de Sable had been gay in\nher youth, but when her young lover, Armentieres, was killed in a\nduel, she turned devout. She also turned hypochondriacal and literary.\nAccording to Tallemont des Reaux, who has left a portrait of her which\nis equally ill-natured and entertaining, she built herself a house\nadjoining the choir of the church of Port Royal, in the Faubourg St.\nJacques. Her friend, the Abbe d'Ailly, who edited her works after her\ndeath in 1678, admits that she was \"one of the greatest visionaries in\nthe world on the chapter of death.\" She herself expressed her\nhypochondria otherwise: \"I fear death more than other people do,\nbecause no one has ever formed so clear a conception of nothingness as\nI have.\" Ludicrous stories were told of her excessive fear of illness,\nand in her fits of alarm she found comfort from the ministrations of\nAntoine Singlin, who was the director of Pascal's conscience.[2] She\nbecame intimate with Arnauld d'Andilly, and with the rest of those\nJansenist authors of whom Racine said that their works were \"the\nadmiration of scholars and the consolation of all pious persons.\" But\nshe seems to have had the cleverness to observe that in one respect\nthe literature of Port Royal, as it expressed itself before \"Les\nProvinciales,\" had the fault of being verbose and redundant. Mme. de\nSable deserves more merit than seems to have been given to her for her\nfervent cultivation of precise language.\n\n     [Footnote 2: It was of Singlin that Pascal wrote in 1654,\n     \"Soumission total a J.C. et a mon directeur.\"]\n\nAs La Rochefoucauld's correspondence throws little light on the\ncharacter and person of its author at the time of his intellectual and\nmoral conversion, we turn with satisfaction to a document which owes\nits existence to a social amusement, almost to a \"parlour game.\" We\nhave seen that La Grande Mademoiselle, anxious to amuse the friends\nwhom she gathered round her in her _salon_ at the Luxembourg, hit upon\nthe notion of inducing her guests to produce written portraits of\nthemselves. You might say all the good of yourself you liked, on the\nunderstanding that you put in the shades as well. The collection of\nthese self-portraits was actually printed in 1659, and is a work of\ngreat value and interest to biographer and historian. It marks a new\nmovement of French intelligence, a critical excursion into psychology\nnot hitherto attempted in France, and some of the portraits are\nmarvellously delicate in their conscientious precision. Here, however,\nwe are not concerned with more than one of them, that which is signed\nwith the initials of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld. It is his only\nimportant composition produced between the \"Memoires\" and the\n\"Maximes,\" and it is charmingly written, a portrait drawn in tones of\nrose-colour and dove-grey, like the pastel-portraits of a century\nlater.\n\nHe begins by describing his physical appearance, but passes soon to\nthe moral and social qualities. It would be interesting to quote the\nwhole of this portrait, but we must confine ourselves to some brief\nquotations. How far we seem from the beasts of prey which ranged the\nforests of the Fronde, or tore one another to pieces in the streets of\nParis, when we follow this refined attempt to present the character of\na modern and a complicated man:--\n\n\"There is something,\" says La Rochefoucauld, \"at once peevish and\nproud in my appearance. This makes most people think that I am\ncontemptuous, but I am not so at all. So far as my humour goes, I am\nmelancholy, and I am so to such an extent that, in the last three or\nfour years, I have scarcely been seen to laugh three or four times. It\nseems to me nevertheless that my melancholy would be supportable and\nmild enough if it depended solely on my temperament, but it comes so\nmuch from outside causes, and what so comes fills my imagination to\nsuch a degree, and occupies my thoughts so exclusively, that most of\nthe time I move as in a dream, and scarce listen to what I myself am\nsaying.\"\n\nHere we have the disappointed courtier still brooding over his\ndisgrace, but we pass to an account of the relief which the new-born\nman of letters find in the cultivation of the intellect alone--\n\n\"I am fond of general reading, but that in which I find something to\nfashion the mind and to fortify the soul is what I like best. Above\nall it gives me an extreme satisfaction to read in company with an\nintelligent person, for in this way one is kept constantly reflecting\non what one reads, and the reflections thus exchanged form a species\nof conversation than which no other in the world is so agreeable or so\nuseful. I give a sound opinion about works in verse and prose which\nare submitted to me, but perhaps I allow myself too much freedom in\nexpressing that opinion. Another fault of mine is that I am sometimes\ntoo scrupulously delicate and too severely critical. I do not dislike\nto listen to argument, and sometimes I am glad to take my share in the\ndiscussion, but I usually support my opinion with too much heat, and\nwhen any one pleads an unjust cause in my presence, sometimes, in my\nzeal for logic, I myself become exceedingly illogical. My sentiments\nare virtuous, my inclinations are honest, and I am so intensely\nanxious to act in all things as a gentleman should, that my friends\ncannot do me a greater favour than to warn me sincerely of my faults.\nThose who know me rather intimately, and who have been so kind as to\ngive me their counsels in this direction, are aware that I have ever\nreceived them with all imaginable joy and with all the submission of\nmind which they could possibly desire.\"\n\nAll this, and what remains, show that in the character of La\nRochefoucauld action had abruptly receded in favour of analysis, and\nthe brutality of civil war in the woods had given place to the\nrefinement of endless conversation by the fireside corner. The old\nswashbuckler turned from the illusions of the camp to the most\nexquisite of peaceful associations, and he regarded women from a\ntotally new point of view. It was the age of the _salons_, and La\nRochefoucauld tells us why it was that he became their sedulous\nassociate. He says, \"When women are intelligent, I like their\nconversation better than that of men. There is a certain suavity in\ntheir talk which is lacking in that of our sex, and it seems, in\naddition, that they explain themselves with more precision, and give a\nmore agreeable turn to what they say.\" In other words, La\nRochefoucauld had, by 1658, become a complete, and indeed the most\ncompetent and highly finished example of the new social intelligence\nwhich was to be found in France. We must dwell for one rapid moment on\nwhat that new spirit was.\n\nThe seventeenth century in France, liberated from the weight of\ninternecine wars and political tyrannies, had now thrown itself with\nardour into the civilized arts, and had, in particular, developed a\nlove of moral disquisition. All the talk which presently became\nfashionable about virtue and the higher life was a reaction against\nthe horrors of the Fronde. The advance of social refinement was very\nrapid, and, especially in Paris, there was a determined and\nintelligent movement in the direction of the amelioration of manners\nand a studied elegance of life. M. Rebelliau has pointed out that it\nwas precisely at this moment that a great number of new words, and\namong them _delicate, distinguer, moraliste, menagements, finesse_ and\nmany others, were accepted as part of the French language. These\nserved immediately to enrich the vocabulary of the men and women who\nwere anxious to push further and deeper their investigations into\npsychological analysis. With this social tendency to dissect the human\nheart and to seize its most secret movements, was combined the\nreligious and, as we may put it, protestant fashion of the hour, in\nthe spirit of Port Royal. To be a moralist was almost in itself to be\na Jansenist, and we see the author of the \"Maximes\" presently claiming\nto be, after a fashion, evangelical.\n\nThere is so little said about theology, in the direct sense, in the\nwritings of La Rochefoucauld, that his various French critics have\ngiven perhaps too little thought to his religious tendencies. They\nhave treated him as though he were the enemy of a pious life. But if\nwe examine that contention from the standpoint provided for us by our\nown Puritan habit of thought, we must recognize that there was\nsomething positively pious about the bitter philosopher of the\n\"Maximes.\" He was trying, let us never forget, to discover a\nscientific form of morals, and hardly enough attention has been given\nto the prominence which he gave to a searching analysis of conscience.\nHe found little to help him in the court religion of the age, but he\nwas immensely impressed with the Jansenist conception of the frailty\nand worthlessness of the natural man. Hence, his persistency in\ncultivating almost exclusively the society of those men and women of\nPort Royal with whom we might suppose that he had very little in\ncommon. But, quite recently, a discovery has been made, which is not\nonly of special interest to us as Englishmen, but which throws a\nfurther light on the evangelical or puritan tendency of the author of\nthe \"Maximes.\"\n\nA careful scholar, M. Ernest Jouy, was led by a passage in a\nseventeenth-century MS. to make investigations which seem to have\nproved that La Rochefoucauld was acquainted with an English book of\nedification and even that he deigned to make use of it in the\nfashioning of his famous \"Maximes.\" This was \"The Mystery of\nSelf-Deceiving,\" published in 1615 by a semi-nonconformist Puritan\ndivine, Daniel Dyke, minister of Coggeshall in Essex, and translated\nobscurely into French by a certain Vernulius. Of the original work\nFuller wrote, \"It is a book which will be owned for a truth while men\nhave any badness in them, and will be owned as a treasure whilst they\nhave any goodness in them.\" It is, certainly, an amazing thing to find\nthat this clumsy old treatise of English divinity was apparently\npossessed as a treasure by the most elegant and the most sceptical of\nFrenchmen.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld may be conceived as saying to the practical divines\nof Port Royal, \"Your work is confused and thwarted by the vast\nprevalence of rubbish under which morals are concealed. I will help\nyou to force the people who talk so glibly of humanity and pity, of\nrectitude and amiability, to dissect the real bodies of egotism to\nwhich they give those names. I put Man in the pillory of\nself-judgment; it is for you to deal evangelically with what remains\nof his temperament when he comes down out of the ordeal.\"\n\nTo do this, La Rochefoucauld prepared, with infinite patience and with\nthe conscientiousness of a great literary artist, his sheaf of\nMaxim-arrows, ready to shoot them, one by one, into the gross heart of\n_amour-propre_. What, then, were the reflexions which, now settled in\nParis, and secure from the rough world in the recesses of Mme de\nSable's _salon_, the Duke began to fashion and to polish? A maxim is a\nformula, which comprehends the whole truth on a particular subject.\nColeridge says, in his \"Table Talk,\" that a maxim is a conclusion upon\nobservation of matters of fact; we may add that it is final, it goes\nas far as it can possibly go, and contains the maximum of truth in the\nminimum of verbiage. If we take some of the most cynical and savage\nmaxims of La Rochefoucauld we may see that conciseness could proceed\nno further: for instance, \"Virtue is a rouge that women add to their\nbeauty\"; or \"Pride knows no law and self-love no debt\"; or \"The\npleasure of love is loving.\" The ingenuity of man has not devised a\nmode of saying those particular things as exactly in fewer words. They\nreach the maximum of conciseness, and are therefore called maxims.\n\nIt is very unusual in the history of literature to be able to point to\na man of genius as the positive founder of a class of work. When we\nlook closely into the matter, we are sure to find that there was an\nobscure predecessor, a torch-bearer who lighted up the path. Even\nShakespeare has Marlowe in front of him, and in front of Marlowe are\nGreene and Peele. Several poets were inspired by the story of the fall\nof the rebel angels before Milton took up \"Paradise Lost\" and seized\nthat province as his own by conquest. In like manner, La Rochefoucauld\nseems to us in a general view, and seemed indeed to his own Parisian\ncontemporaries, to have invented a new art in the production of his\n\"Maximes.\" But, in truth, he was not the pioneer, and he seems to have\nspent months, and even years, in a sort of apprenticeship to two\nauthors who have not survived in French literature as he has. So far\nas we can make out, the real creator of the maxim in French was\nJacques Esprit (1611-1678), the Abbe Esprit as he was called, although\nhe was never a priest, and had a legitimate wife and family. He was a\nyoung man from Beziers in Provence, who came to Paris under the\nprotection of Chancellor Seguier, soon became a member of the French\nAcademy, and enjoyed a steady social and literary success.\n\nThere seems little doubt that Esprit was known early to La\nRochefoucauld, for he was familiar in the family of the Duke and\nDuchess of Longueville, and later the governor of their children. He\nenjoyed the confidence of the _salons_ from an early date. There is\nsome reason to suppose that Esprit had begun to write maxims before La\nRochefoucauld's return from exile, and certainly before Mme de Sable's\nretreat to Port Royal in 1659. It is very noticeable in La\nRochefoucauld's letters to Esprit--most of which belong to the year\n1660--that he treats the academician--who was of plebeian birth and\nnot many months older than himself--with extreme deference. The Duke\nadopts the style of a pupil to a master, and he submits his sketches\nor experiments in maxim-making to Esprit for a severe criticism, which\nhe accepts, and for advice, which he adopts. The probability seems to\nbe that Esprit introduced the fashion for writing maxims to Mme de\nSable, who was fascinated by it, recommended it to La Rochefoucauld,\nand then pointed Esprit out as the acknowledged master of the art, who\ncould give invaluable technical advice.\n\nThere was a sort of collaboration. We find La Rochefoucauld writing to\nEsprit, \"I shall be much obliged if you will show _our_ last sentences\nto Mme de Sable; it may perhaps induce her to write some of her own.\"\nAnd to the lady he writes, \"Here are all my maxims which you have not\nyet seen, but as nothing is done for nothing, I beg you to send me in\nreturn the receipt for the carrot soup which we had when Commander de\nSouvre dined at your house,\" The three maximists consulted one\nanother, polished up one another's sentences, and suggested subjects\nwhich were first discussed round the dinner-table or in the summer\nparlour and then worked up, sometimes by all three conjointly, to the\nhighest pitch of perfection. It was probably Esprit by whom many of\nthe original suggestions were started, indeed it is he who seems to\nhave first laid down the formula that \"the mind is the servant and\neven the dupe of the instincts,\" which both Pascal and La\nRochefoucauld were presently to expand in such brilliant forms. But it\nis quite an error to presume, as some writers have done, that there\nwas a kind of factory for maxims, out of which sentences were turned\nwhich really belonged to no one in particular. The \"Maximes\" of Mme de\nSable and those of the Abbe Esprit--the latter contained in a\nJansenist volume called \"The Falsity of Human Virtues\"--were published\nindependently, but in the same year, 1678. Any one who has the\npatience to refer to these works may satisfy himself that Mme de\nSable, as an artist, is superior to Esprit, but immeasurably inferior\nto La Rochefoucauld, who is the one unapproachable master of the\nmaxim.[3]\n\n     [Footnote 3: A good deal of the prejudice which successive\n     critics, and (very mischievously) Brunetiere in particular,\n     have shown with regard to the character of La Rochefoucauld,\n     is due, in my opinion, to the influence of Victor Cousin,\n     who published, in 1854, a disjointed and diffuse, but in\n     many ways brilliantly executed volume on Mme de Sable.\n     Cousin, who examined, for the first time, a vast array of\n     MS. sources, deliberately lowered the value of La\n     Rochefoucauld in order to enhance the merit of the lady, of\n     whom the learned academician wrote like a lover. Even Esprit\n     was thrown into the scale to lighten the weight of the\n     Duke's originality. Cousin was borne gaily on the stream of\n     his heroine-worship, and others less profoundly acquainted\n     with the facts have let themselves be carried with him. But\n     it is time that we should cease to imitate them in this.]\n\nFor six or seven years the Duke worked away at the polishing of his\nincomparable epigrams, and it was not until October 27, 1665, that the\nlittle famous book made its anonymous appearance. The importance of\nthe work was perceived immediately in the close circle of the _salons_\nwhich regulated literary opinion in Paris. For half a century past\nFrenchmen had been regarding with jealous attention the causes and\neffects of human passion, culminating, for the moment, in the treatise\nwritten by Descartes for the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia. The\nJansenists and the Jesuits, the playwrights, the novelists, Hobbes and\nSpinoza, all pursued, along widely different paths, those illusive\nsecrets of the human heart which had escaped the notice of earlier\ngenerations. But La Rochefoucauld reduced the desultory psychology of\nhis predecessors to a system, so that for us the moralizing tendencies\nof the seventeenth century in France seem to have found their final\nexpression less in the sob of Pascal's conscience than in the resigned\nironic nonchalance of La Rochefoucauld, who, as Voltaire so admirably\nsays, \"dissolves every virtue in the passions which surround it.\"\nPerhaps what the \"Maximes\" most resembled was the then\nrecently-published analysis of egotism in \"Leviathan.\" But the cool\nand atrocious periods of what Sir Leslie Stephen calls \"the unblushing\negotism\" of Hobbes have really little in common with the sparkling\nrapier-strokes of La Rochefoucauld, except that both these moralists--\nwho may conceivably have met and compared impressions in Paris--\ncombined a resolute pessimism about the corruption of mankind with an\nepicurean pursuit of happiness.\n\nThe Maxims of La Rochefoucauld were atoms of gold sifted through the\nmesh of discussions at the dinner-table, around the fire in winter,\nunder the hawthorns and lilacs which Mme de Sevigne describes, in\nendless talk between two or more trained and intelligent persons,\nalong the course of which thought oscillated from extreme to extreme,\nuntil at last the company dispersed, leaving La Rochefoucauld to\ncapture and to fix the essential result of all that desultory\nconversation. It is not impossible for us to conjecture the general\ncharacter of this brilliant and illusive talk. It had one central aim,\nmore or less clearly perceived, namely the desire to reach a Latin\nstandard of perfection. It sought to exchange for the romantic\nbarbarism which had underlain so much that was picturesque in the\nsixteenth century--a barbarism which had come down from the late\nMiddle Ages, and which was really a dissolution of strong things\noutworn--to exchange for this a preciousness of quality as against\nmere rude bulk. It desired to introduce depth of purpose in the place\nof chaotic moral disorder, originality in place of a frenzied and\nincoherent eccentricity, and to found a solid structure upon a basis\nof intellectual discipline.\n\nBut in order to carry out this fine scheme, and especially in order\nsuccessfully to check that decadence which had alarmed the best minds\nin France, there was a pioneer work to be done. It was necessary to\nintensify and purify the light of criticism. For this purpose the\nconversations of the _salons_ culminated in the lapidary art of La\nRochefoucauld, who was not a creator like Racine and Moliere, like\nBossuet and Fenelon, but who prepared the way for these slightly later\nbuilders of French literature by clearing the ground of shams.\nSegrais, whose recollections of him are among the most precious which\nhave come down to us, says that La Rochefoucauld never argued. He had\nthe Socratic manner, and led others on to expose and expound their\nviews. His custom was, in the course of the endless talks about morals\nand the soul, \"to conceal half of his own opinion, and to show tact\nwith an obstinate opponent, so as to spare him the annoyance of having\nto yield.\" There is something very like this in the \"Pensees\" of\nPascal. La Rochefoucauld blames himself, in his self-portrait, for\narguing too fiercely, and for being testy with an opponent, but these\nfaults were not perceived by other people. Doubtless he was aware of\nan inward impatience, and succeeded in concealing it by means of that\nextreme politeness on which he prided himself.\n\nThe \"Maximes\" are shocking to persons who live in a state of illusion\nabout themselves, and they were so from the hour of their publication.\nThey roll up a bitter pill for human vanity. When Mme de La Fayette,\ndestined to look deeper than any other mortal into the soul of La\nRochefoucauld, read them first in 1663, in company with Mme du Plessis\nat the Chateau de Fresnes, she was terrified and shocked at what she\ncalled the \"corruption\" which they revealed. She wrote to Mme de\nSable, who had lent her the manuscript--\n\n\"Ah, Madame, how corrupt he must be in mind and heart to be capable of\nimagining such things! I am so frightened by it that I should say, if\nthis were not a matter too serious for jest, that such maxims are\nlikely to do more to upset him than all the plates of soup he\nswallowed at your house the other day.\"\n\nAs the \"Maximes\" pass from hand to hand, we see the spiritual Maenads\nof Port Royal clustering \"with a lovely frightened mien\" about the\nsinister author, while he turns \"his beauteous face haughtily another\nway,\" like young Apollo in the Phrygian highlands. The word\n\"pessimism\" was, I believe, unknown until the year 1835, but this is\nwhat Mme de La Fayette and the rest of the Jansenist ladies meant by\n\"corruption.\" Perhaps the most celebrated of all the sayings of her\nterrible friend is that which declares that \"In the misfortunes of our\nfriends there is always something which gives us no displeasure.\" She\nwas about to learn that no one had a nobler practice in friendship\nthan the cynic who wrote this: \"There are good marriages, but no\ndelicious ones\"; Mme de La Fayette's own marriage had been not at all\ndelicious and not even good. \"Gratitude in the majority of men is\nsimply a strong and secret wish to receive still greater benefits.\"\nTerrifying this must have been to a sentimental and exalted bosom, and\nexclusive of all hope until the little word \"majority\" was observed, a\nloophole offered for scared humanity to creep out at.\n\nThe design of La Rochefoucauld was to make people ashamed of their\negotism, and so to help them to modify it. He saw France deadened by a\nuniversal sycophancy, and tyrannized over by a court life which made a\nlie of everything. He insisted upon the value of individual sincerity,\nbut in a voice so harsh and bitter, and in such sardonic phrases--as\nwhen he says: \"Sincerity is met with in very few people, and is\nusually nothing but a delicate dissimulation to attract the confidence\nof others\"--that the more timid of his auditors shrank from him, as if\nhe had been Hamlet or Lear. When he dared to suggest that none of\nthese maxims were intended to refer to the reader himself, but only to\nall other persons, he invited the reaction which led Huet, Bishop of\nAvranches, to appeal against the morality of the \"Maximes,\" as suited\nonly to the vices of wicked persons, \"improborum hominum vitiis,\" and\nto issue a warning against the too-sweeping cynicism of\nRoccapucaldius, as he called the Duke. This was, perhaps, the\nbeginning of the dead-set against La Rochefoucauld. It encouraged\nRousseau, a century later, to talk of \"ce triste livre,\" and to\ndeclare, in the true romantic spirit, that \"Bad maxims are worse than\nbad acts.\" There have always been, and always will be, people who\nexperience a sort of _malaise_, an ill-defined discomfort, as though\nthey sat in an east wind, while they read La Rochefoucauld. This is\nparticularly true of Englishmen, who resent being told that \"Our\nvirtues are often only our vices in disguise,\" and who also, by the\nway, are constitutionally impatient of the French genius for making\nwhat is ugly, and even what is detestable, pleasing by the surface of\nstyle.\n\nThere is an element of unmercifulness in the candour of La\nRochefoucauld which is distressing to sentimentalists. But this was\ncharacteristic of the age, which looked upon compassion as a frailty,\nas a break-down of noble personal reserve. He shall speak on this\nmatter for himself--\n\n\"I am little sensible of pity, and if I had my way, I would avoid it\naltogether. At the same time, there is nothing I would not do to\nrelieve an afflicted person: and I believe as a matter of fact that\none ought to go so far as to express compassion for the misfortunes of\nsuch a man, since the unhappy are so stupid that compassion does them\nmore good than anything else in the world. But I also hold that one\nshould confine one's self to professions of pity and be very careful\nnot to feel any. Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a\nwell-constituted mind; it can but weaken the heart, and it ought to be\nleft to people who, carrying nothing out in a logical manner, require\npassion to constrain them to do things.\"\n\nHe seems to paint himself in tones of Prussian blue, but we must\nreally think of him as of a man timid, and at the same time\npreternaturally wide-awake, who was determined at all risks not to be\ntaken at a disadvantage. When he was an old man, when much communing\nwith Mme de La Fayette had allayed his suspicion of mankind, La\nRochefoucauld said to Mlle de Scudery, \"I hope that clemency will come\ninto fashion, and that we shall see no more men unhappy.\" [4] He\nprofessed to found politeness on extreme _amour-propre_, but perhaps\nin a still closer analysis he would have discovered its basis in\nkindness of heart. He resists the temptation to weaken his own\npessimism, just as in his biting sarcasms about love we may trace a\ntender soul still bleeding from the wounds which Mme de Longueville's\nlevity had inflicted on it.[5]\n\n     [Footnote 4: Mme de Sevigne told her daughter that she was\n     sure that if one could peep at the Duke and Mme de La\n     Fayette \"when they were alone with the cat,\" one would find\n     all the restraints of society flung aside, and see them\n     without the mask, their cynicism forgotten, mingling cries\n     and tears over the sorrows of the world. But neither she nor\n     any third person would ever see their social discretion thus\n     betrayed, and she concludes, in her droll way, \"C'est une\n     vision!\" In another letter to Mme de Grignan (June 6, 1672)\n     she says of the Duke, \"Il connait quasi aussi bien que moi\n     la tendresse maternelle.\"]\n\n     [Footnote 5: There was unquestionably a strong vein of\n     tenderness running through the stoical character of the\n     Duke, and if we were more intimately acquainted with his\n     private life we should probably see many traces of it. Such\n     traces exist as it is. We have Mme de Sevigne's account of\n     his reception of the news of the Passage of the Rhine. It\n     was announced to him, on the 17th of June, 1672, at the\n     house of Mme de La Fayette, in the presence of Mme de\n     Sevigne, that in that terrible disaster his eldest son had\n     been dangerously wounded and his fourth son, the Chevalier,\n     killed. The tears seemed to start out of the depth of his\n     heart, and they brimmed his eyes, although his self-command\n     prevented an outbreak of grief. But there was a further\n     complication. The young Duke of Longueville was also killed\n     at the Rhine, and he, as a select circle of intimate friends\n     were perfectly aware, was really the love-child of La\n     Rochefoucauld. Mme de Sevigne, having given a superficial\n     account of the incident, characteristically goes on to say,\n     \"Alas! I am telling a lie; between ourselves, my dear, he\n     does not feel the loss of the Chevalier so much; it is that\n     of the young man whom all the world regrets which leaves him\n     so inconsolable.\" And again she says: \"I saw the secrets of\n     his heart revealed under this cruel blow; and no one that I\n     have ever seen surpasses him in courage, in honour, in\n     tenderness, in balance of mind.\" This is a tribute not to be\n     overlooked.]\n\nTo understand the wholesome influence which La Rochefoucauld has\nexercised on French character, we must keep constantly in sight his\nhatred of falsehood. If he is angry and sardonic, it is because he\nsees, or thinks he sees, falsehood everywhere masquerading as virtue.\nHis foremost duty was to pluck the mask from the false virtues which\nstrutted everywhere through the society and literature of France.\nVoltaire recognized nothing else in La Rochefoucauld but this sardonic\nmisanthropy, this determination to prove that man is guided solely by\nself-interest. This Voltaire thought was the _seule verite_ contained\nin the \"Maximes,\" and in a measure he was right. The moralist saw\n_amour-propre_ as an Apollyon straddling right across the pathway of\nmankind; he saw lies flourish everywhere, and proclaim themselves to\nbe the truth. The conscience of mankind was seduced or browbeaten by\nthe impudency of self-love. Thus--\n\n\"We have not the courage to say broadly that we ourselves have no\ndefects, and that our enemies have no good qualities; but as a matter\nof fact that is not far from being what we think.\"\n\nHe believed not at all, or very faintly, in altruism. He had to sweep\naway affected and therefore erroneous suppositions with regard to\nmorality, and particularly with regard to social motives. He had come\nback to Paris, after his long and irksome exile, with a terrible\nclear-sightedness, and he saw that society had gone to pieces and that\ntruth was essential to its rebuilding. He was convinced--and this must\nbe asserted in the face of his own apparent cynicism--he was convinced\nof the existence of pure virtue, but he thought that _amour-propre_ in\nthe individual, and conventionality (what was then meant by _la\ncoutume_) in the social order, had made it almost as rare as the dodo.\nHe wished, by his stringent exposure of the arts of lying, to save\nvirtue before it was absolutely extinct. He had the instinct of\nrace-preservation.[6]\n\n     [Footnote 6: It is possible that the conversation of Mme de\n     Sable concentrated his thoughts on self-love. A contemporary\n     MS. says of that lady, \"Elle flatte fort l'amour propre\n     quand elle parle aux gens.\" But egotism was a new discovery\n     which fascinated everybody in the third quarter of the\n     century.]\n\nLet us turn to the few, but profoundly beautiful reflections which\nform the constructive element in La Rochefoucauld's teaching. His aim\nin edification is to train us to dig through the crust of social sham\nto the limpid truth which exists in the dark centre of our souls--\n\n\"If there is a pure love, he says, exempt from all admixture with\nother passions, it is that which lies hidden at the bottom of the\nheart, and of which we ourselves are ignorant.\"\n\nUnlike Mandeville, our own great cynic of the eighteenth century, La\nRochefoucauld, while calling in question the reality of almost all\nbenevolent impulses, stopped short of denying the existence of virtue\nitself. He would not have said, as the author of the \"Fable of the\nBees\" (1714) did, that the \"hunting after this _pulchrum et honestum_\nis not much better than a wild-goose chase.\" But he had a strong\ncontempt for the humbugs of the world, and among them he placed\nunflinching optimists. One of the main forms of humbug in his day was\nthe legend that everybody acted nobly for the sake of other people.\nThis La Rochefoucauld stoutly denied, but he was not so excessive as\nhis commentators in his condemnation of that self-love which he\ndeclares to be the source of all our moral actions. He insinuates the\npossibility of an innocent and even a beneficial egotism. He says,\n\"The praise which is given us serves to fix us in the practice of\nvirtue,\" and if that is true, _amour-propre_ must be practically\nuseful. Helvetius, who made some very valuable comments on the\n\"Maximes\" a hundred years later, pointed out that _amour-propre_ is\nnot in itself an evil thing, but is a sentiment implanted in us all by\nnature, and that this sentiment is transformed in every human being\ninto either vice or virtue, so that although we are all egoists, some\nare good and some are bad.\n\nLa Rochefoucauld, therefore, while he takes a very dark view of the\nselfishness of the human race, softens the shades of his picture by\nadmitting that egotism may be, and often must be, advantageous not\nmerely to the individual but to the race. And here we find the key to\none of the oddest passages in his works, that in which he attributes\nhis inspiration to two saints, St. Augustine and St. Epicurus! He\nsays--\n\nEverybody wishes to be happy; that is the aim of all the acts of\nlife. Spurious men of the world and spurious men of piety only seek\nfor the appearance of virtue, and I believe that in matters of\nmorality, Seneca was a hypocrite and Epicurus was a saint. I know of\nnothing in the world so beautiful as nobility of heart and loftiness\nof mind: from these proceeds that perfect integrity which I set above\nall other qualities, and which seems to me, at my present stage of\nlife, to be of more price than a royal crown. But I am not sure\nwhether, in order to live happily and as a man of the highest sense of\nhonour, it is not better to be Alcibiades and Phaedo than to be\nAristides and Socrates.\n\nIt would take us too far out of our path to comment on the relation of\nthis epicureanism to the religion of La Rochefoucauld's day, but a few\nwords seem necessary on this subject. He says extremely little about\nreligion, although he makes the necessary and perhaps not wholly\nperfunctory, statement that he was orthodox. But the position of a\nvotary of St. Epicurus had grown difficult. Since the Duke's exile,\nthe enmity between the church and the world had become violent, so\nviolent that a man of prominent social and intellectual position was\nbound to take one side or another. We may note that the years during\nwhich the \"Maximes\" were being composed were precisely those during\nwhich Bossuet was thundering from the pulpit his anathemas against\nworldly luxury and the pride of life. The period marked at one\nextremity by \"L'Amour des Passions\" (1660) and at the other by the\n\"Grandeurs Humains\" (1663) is precisely that in which the lapidary art\nof La Rochefoucauld was most assiduous. The church was advocating\nasceticism and humility with all its authority, and was leading up\ntowards the later phase of the fanatical despotism of Louis XIV.'s old\nage, with all its attendant hypocrisy. For the moment, in the\nstruggle, La Rochefoucauld, though no _devot_, would seem a friend of\nthe church rather than a foe, and in fact he retained the intimacy of\nBossuet, in whose arms he died. We may be sure that he guarded himself\nwith delicate care from the charge of being what was then called a\n\"libertine,\" that is a man openly at war with the theory and practice\nof the theologians.\n\nIt is said that La Rochefoucauld invented[7] the word \"vraie,\" \"true,\"\nto describe the character of Mme de La Fayette. His intimacy with this\nillustrious lady is one of the most beautiful episodes in the history\nof literature, and perhaps its purest example of true friendship\nbetween the sexes. The phrase we have already quoted shows that in\n1663 the two great writers were acquainted but not yet intimate. Marie\nde la Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette, was in her thirtieth year, La\nRochefoucauld had completed his fiftieth when some cause which remains\nobscure drew them together with a tie which death alone, after\nseventeen wonderful years of almost unbroken association, was to\nsever. There was no scandal about it, even in that scandal-mongering\nage. The astute Mile de Scudery, writing to her gossip Bussy Rabutin\n(December 6, 1675), says, \"Nothing could be happier for her, or more\ndignified for him; the fear of God on either side, and perhaps\nprudence as well, have clipped the wings of love.\" Twelve years\nbefore, when Menage had repeated to her some critical remarks about\nher novel, \"La Princesse de Montpensier,\" Mme de La Fayette had\nreplied, \"I am greatly obliged to M. de la Rochefoucauld for his\nexpressions. They are the result of our similarity of experience, 'de\nla belle sympathie qui est entre nous.'\"\n\n     [Footnote 7: Mme de Sevigne seems not to have known this\n     when, in writing to her daughter (July 19, 1671), she claims\n     to have been the first to say _vraie_ when she meant\n     sincere, loyal. \"Il y a longtemps que je dis que vous etes\n     _vraie_\"]\n\nThe famous friends were excluded by their physical conditions from the\nactivities of life. Mme de La Fayette, who was perhaps something of a\nhypochondriac, tossed all day among the pillows of that golden bed\nwith the extravagance of which the austerity of Mme de Maintenon\nupbraided her. La Rochefoucauld, tormented by the gout, lay stretched\nat her side in his long chair, and the days went by in endless\ndiscussion, endless balancing of right and wrong, much gossip, much\nreading of books new and old, and not a little consultation of artist\nwith artist. They kept their secrets well, and no curiosity of\nsuccessive critics has been able to discover how much of La\nRochefoucauld is hidden in the pages of \"La Princesse de Cleves\", the\nearliest of the modern novels of the world, nor how much of Mme de La\nFayette in the revised and re-revised text of the \"Maximes.\" [8] But we\nknow that she was no less sagacious and no less an enemy to illusion\nthan he was, and those are probably not far wrong who have detected a\nsoftening influence from her conversation on the late genius of La\nRochefoucauld.\n\nIn 1675 Mme de Thiange presented to the Duke du Maine a toy which has\nlong ago disappeared, and for the recovery of which I would gladly\nexchange many a grand composition of painting and sculpture. It was a\nsort of gilded doll's house, representing the interior of a _salon_.\nOver the door was written, \"Chambre des Sublimes.\" Inside were wax\nportrait-figures of living celebrities, the Duke du Maine in one\narm-chair; in another La Rochefoucauld, who was handing him some\nmanuscript. By the arm-chairs were standing Bossuet, then Bishop of\nCondom, and La Rochefoucauld's eldest son, M. de Marcillac. At the\nother end of the alcove Mme de La Fayette and Mme de Thiange were\nreading verses together. Outside the balustrade, Boileau with a\npitchfork was preventing seven or eight bad poets from entering, to\nthe amusement and approval of Racine, who was already inside, and of\nLa Fontaine, who was invited to come forward. The likeness of these\nlittle waxen images is said to have been perfect, and there can hardly\nbe fancied a relic of that fine society which would be more valuable\nto us in re-establishing its social character. We know not what became\nof it in the next generation. No doubt, the wax grew dusty, and the\nfigures lost their heads and hands, and some petulant chatelaine\ndoomed the ruined treasure to the dustbin.\n\n     [Footnote 8: Bussy Rabutin writes to Mme de Sevigne that he\n     hears that La Rochefoucauld and Mme de La Fayette are\n     preparing \"quelque chose de fort joli.\" This shows that\n     before \"La Princess de Cleves\" was finished the Duke's name\n     was identified with its composition.]\n\nNo mention of Mme de Sevigne is made in the inventory of the \"Chambre\ndes Sublimes,\" and yet there is no one to whom we owe an exacter\nportraiture of its inmates, nor one who was more worthy to animate its\ngolden recesses. For the last ten years of La Rochefoucauld's life she\nwas one of the closest observers of the famous sedentary friendship.\nUnfortunately she tells us nothing about the original publication of\nthe \"Maximes,\" for his name does not occur in her correspondence\nbefore 1668, and does not abound there until 1670. Then we find her\nfor ever at the Duke's house, or meeting him at Mme de La Fayette's\nbedside. He gratified her by warm and constant praise of Mme de\nGrignan, whose letters were regularly read to the friends by her\ninfatuated mother. It is vexing that Mme de Sevigne, who might have\nspared us two or three of her immortal pages, although she incessantly\nmentions and even quotes La Rochefoucauld, generally refrains from\ndescribing him. She and Mme de La Fayette were his guests in the\ncountry on May 15, and the three wonderful companions walked in the\nharmony of \"nightingales, hawthorns, lilacs, fountains and fine\nweather,\" or played with his pet white mouse. Such touches are rare,\nand Paris seems best to suit what Mme de Sevigne admirably calls \"the\ngrey-brown\" thought of La Rochefoucauld.\n\nIn 1671 he had a terrible attack of the gout, accompanied by agonies\nmoral and physical which filled the ladies with alarm and pity. Better\nin 1672, he was able to entertain company to hear Corneille read his\nnew tragedy of \"Pulcherie\" in January, and Moliere his new comedy,\n\"Les Femmes Savantes,\" in March. He was now, in premature old age, the\nvenerable figure in the group, the benevolent Nestor of the salons.\nLet his detractors remember that Mme de Sevigne, who knew what she was\ntalking about, wrote that \"he is the most lovable man I have ever\nknown,\" His sufferings, his disenchantments and disappointments, only\nseemed to accentuate his beautiful patience. Just before his fatal\nillness (January 31, 1680) Mme de Sevigne writes again: \"I have never\nseen a man so obliging, nor more amiable in his wish to give pleasure\nby what he says.\" [9] Her detailed and pathetic account of his last\nhours, which closed on the night of March 16, 1680, testifies to her\ndeep attachment and to Mme de La Fayette's despair.\n\n     [Footnote 9: Two of La Fontaine's fables, \"L'Homme et son\n     Image\" and \"Les Lapins,\" were dedicated to La Rochefoucauld\n     in 1668. In the former we read:--\n\n           _On voit bien ou je veux venir.\n     Je parle a tous, et cette erreur extreme\n     Est un mal que chacun se plait d'entretenir\n     Notre ame, c'est cet homme amoureux de lui-meme;\n     Tant de miroirs, ce sont les sottises d'autrui,\n     Miroirs, de nos defauts les peintres legitimes;\n           Et quant au canal, c'est celui,\n       Que chacun sait: le livre des Maximes._]\n\nWhen Mme de Sevigne, in 1675, received the third edition of the Duke's\nbook, which contained more than seventy new maxims, she wrote, \"Some of\nthem are divine; some of them, I am ashamed to say, I don't understand.\"\nProbably she would have partly agreed with some one's criticism of them,\n\"De l'esprit, encore de l'esprit, et toujours de l'esprit--trop\nd'esprit!\" [10] No doubt, La Rochefoucauld has done his own reputation\nwrong by the bluster of his scepticism and also by the fact that he\nsometimes wraps his thoughts up in such a blaze of epigram that we are\ndisconcerted to find, when we analyze them, that they are commonplaces.\nContemporaries seemed to have smiled at the excessive subtlety into\nwhich their long conversations led Mme de La Fayette and her sublime\ncompanion. Mme de Sevigne describes such talks with her delicate irony,\nand says, \"We plunged into subtleties which were beyond our\nintelligence.\" An example is the dispute whether \"Grace is to the body\nwhat good sense is to the mind,\" or \"Grace is to the body what delicacy\nis to the mind\" should be the ultimate form of a maxim. They sometimes\ndrew the spider's thread so fine that it became invisible.[11]\n\n     [Footnote 10: The practice of making \"maxims,\" _axiomata_,\n     encouraged the enlivenment of conversation by the\n     introduction of topsy-turvy statements, such as \"Constancy\n     is merely inconstancy arrested,\" in the manner of Oscar\n     Wilde and Mr. Chesterton.]\n\n     [Footnote 11: La Rochefoucauld was not without affectations. He\n     spoke airily about his _maniere negligee_ of writing, whereas\n     no one ever took more pains. Segrais gives very interesting\n     information on this point: he says that the Duke\n     \"sent me from time to time what he had been working\n     on, and he wished me to keep these note-books of his for\n     five or six weeks, so as to be able to give them my\n     closest attention, particularly with regard to the turn of\n     the thoughts and the arrangement of the words. Some of\n     his maxims he altered as many as thirty times.\" But\n     when he wrote to Esprit, in 1660, La Rochefoucauld\n     affected to regard his own writings as trifles thrown off\n     \"au coin de mon feu\" The great of the earth have these\n     amiable and amusing weaknesses.]\n\nBut his clearness of insight was immense, and he was too profoundly\nintelligent to be a merely destructive or sterile force. He builded\nbetter than he knew. For instance, courage, it has been alleged, he\ndenies, and indeed he is so savage in his exposure of braggadocio that\nit might well be believed that he refused to admit that men could be\nbrave. Yet what does he say?--\n\n\"Intrepidity is an extraordinary force of the soul which lifts it\nabove those troubles, disorders and emotions which the aspect of great\nperil would otherwise excite; it is by this force that heroes maintain\nthemselves in a state of equanimity, preserving the free use of their\nreason through the most surprising and the most terrible accidents.\"\n\nThis must include the most moving of all accidents, those which call\nforth moral and physical courage in the face of national danger, and\nare rewarded by _gloire_, by public and lasting fame. And we are led\non to a consideration of the lengthy reflection on the spirit in which\nthe approach of death should be faced, with which he closed the latest\nedition of the \"Maximes,\" declaring that \"the splendour of dying with\na firm spirit, the hope of being regretted, the desire to leave a fair\nreputation behind us, the assurance of being released from the\ndrudgery of life and of depending no more on the caprices of fortune,\"\nare remedies which would medicine our pain in approaching the dreaded\ngoal of our existence.\n\nWe must read La Rochefoucauld closely to perceive why a book so\nsearching, and even so cruel as his, has exercised on the genius of\nFrance a salutary and a lasting influence. His savage pessimism is not\nuseless, it is not a mere scorn of humanity and a sneer at its\nweaknesses. It tends, by stripping off all the shams of conduct and\ndigging to the root of action, to make people upright, candid and\nmagnanimous on a new basis of truth. So we come at last to see the\nsignificance of Voltaire's dark saying of the \"Maximes\": \"This book is\none of those which have contributed most to form the taste of the\nFrench nation, and to give it the spirit of accuracy and precision.\"\n\n\n\n\n                               LA BRUYERE\n\n\nLa Bruyere was thirty-five years of age when La Rochefoucauld died,\nand twenty when the \"Maximes\" were published. We have no evidence that\nhe ever met the former, but he certainly read the latter, and in spite\nof his eager denial that Pascal or La Rochefoucauld suggested his\nmethod to him--\"I have followed neither of these paths,\" he says--it\nis impossible to doubt that the example of the \"Maximes\" had a great\ndeal to do with the form of the \"Caracteres.\" His own disciple,\nBrillon, tells us of La Bruyere that, \"the author of the work which\nthis age has most admired was at least ten years writing it, and about\nas long hesitating whether he would write it or not.\" The \"Caracteres\"\nwas finished in 1687; Brillon's estimate takes us back to 1667 or\nearlier, and the brilliant success of the \"Maximes\" dates from 1665.\nEvery author imagines that he loses some dignity by being supposed to\nfollow the lead of another author, although the entire history of\nliterature is before him to show that the lamp of genius has always\nbeen handed on from hand to hand. La Bruyere, in particular, was not\nexempt from this amiable weakness, but his ghost needs feel no\ndispleasure if we insist on connecting him with the effort of La\nRochefoucauld.\n\nIt is very amusing to see how anxious La Bruyere is not to seem to owe\nanything to La Rochefoucauld. He speaks of his own writings as \"less\ndelicate\" than those of the Duke, and in his own opening words he\ndeclares that he has had no wish to write maxims, \"which are laws in\nmorals,\" as he has no legislative authority. I suppose that in\ndescribing the tone of La Rochefoucauld as \"delicate\" La Bruyere\nreally meant supercilious, and deprecated any idea that he, the\ntypical bourgeois, should seem to lay down the law like the architype\nof intellectual aristocracy. He scoffs at the Duke for making his\nreflections \"like oracles,\" so short are they and so concise; and he\nis quite correct when he boasts of the extreme variety and versatility\nof his own manner. He accuses La Rochefoucauld of browbeating his\nreaders into subjection to his thought; while, La Bruyere says, \"for\nmy part I am quite willing that my reader should say sometimes that I\nhave not observed correctly, provided that he himself will observe\nbetter.\" The reader, on the other hand, must not be taken in by all\nthis, which is very characteristic of La Bruyere's timid\nself-confidence. His reputation loses nothing by our discovering that\nhe owes much to Montaigne and still more to La Rochefoucauld.\n\nThe link is clear, in spite of the foliage with which La Bruyere seeks\nto conceal it. It could only be from La Rochefoucauld that the author\nof \"Les Caracteres\" derived that sad disillusionment, lighted up by\nflashes of savage wit, with which he expresses his sense of the\ndefects of human character. It may often be noted that when La Bruyere\nspeaks of egotism, of the prevalence of _amour-propre_, his pungent\nphrases have the very sound of those of his precursor. The truth is\nthat a strong new book is not read by a young man whose genius is\nprepared for its teaching, without its image being stamped upon his\nmind. La Bruyere's own experience had already offered to him a banquet\nof the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil when he\nmet with the \"Maximes\" of 1665. His conscience and his memory were\nprepared, and the truth is that a great deal of La Rochefoucauld's\nteaching passed into his veins without his knowing it. This does not\nin the least undermine the reputation which justly belongs to La\nBruyere as one of the most original writers of France, or even of\nEurope, but it links him for our intelligence with the other great\nmoralist of his century.\n\nThe author of the \"Maximes\" was the head of one of the great princely\nhouses of France. The author of the \"Caracteres\" was the type of the\nplebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the\nquintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the\nmiddle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his\nown joke about his ancestry. He wrote, \"I warn everybody whom it may\nconcern, in order that the world may be prepared and nobody be\nsurprised, that if ever it should happen that one of the mighty of the\nearth should deem me worthy of his care, in other words if I should\never come into an immense fortune, there is a Godefroi de La Bruyere\nwhom all the chroniclers place in the list of the greatest nobles of\nFrance who followed Godefroi de Bouillon to the conquest of the Holy\nLand. When that happens, I shall descend from him in the direct line.\"\nOne would think that a child could perceive this to be a satire at the\nprofiteers of the age, who invented ancestors, and so a child would\nto-day, but in the seventeenth and even the eighteenth century it was\nnot safe to be funny. In particular, nonsense--the divine charm of\nwhich we now admit--had not been acclimatized, and was looked upon\nwith grave displeasure. It wrings the heart that when Goldsmith, in a\npurple coat, pretended to think himself more attractive than the\nJessamy Bride, his contemporaries severely censured this as an\ninstance of his \"vanity.\"\n\nSo the fools and fops of La Bruyere's time thought or pretended to\nthink that he was seriously claiming to be of noble birth. Nothing was\nfurther from his intention; no La Bruyere had taken part in the\nCrusades, any more than any member of Charles Lamb's family had been\nPope of Rome. The moralist's father, Louis de La Bruyere, was\nComptroller-General of Rents of the Hotel de Ville of Paris; his\nmother was an attorney's daughter. The eldest of five, he was born on\nAugust 17, 1645, in the centre of old Paris, close to the church of St.\nChristopher. It is only of late years that this fact has been\ndiscovered, and there are still immense blanks in the life of La\nBruyere during which he disappears from us altogether, engulfed in the\nlanes of the Cite, not because of any adventurous mystery, but simply\nbecause of his total lack of adventure. There has scarcely lived a\ngreat man of letters in comparatively recent times about whose life\nthere is so little to relate as about that of La Bruyere. He is\nbelieved to have gone to school to the Fathers of the Oratory, but\neven that is not certain. His knowledge of Greek is thought to prove\nit, but, though the Oratorians were admirable Hellenists, surely Greek\ncould be learned elsewhere.\n\nWhen he was twenty, he passed his examination in law in Orleans, and,\ncoming back to Paris, practised as a lawyer for eight or nine years.\nHe was concerned in no famous case, it is supposed, since his name is\nnever mentioned in the gossip of the time. He inherited a competence\nfrom his father, and probably lived an idle life, diversified by a\nlittle legal business of a very mediocre nature. As his biographer\nsays, he grew more and more \"inclined by his temperament to a\nmeditative existence.\" When he was in his thirtieth year, a crisis\ncame. By some means or other, he secured a lucrative sinecure, that of\ntreasurer of finances at Caen in Normandy. He hated the country and\nwent down to Caen on the rarest occasions possible. La Bruyere, a\nParisian to the marrow of his bones, says, \"Provincials and fools are\nalways ready to lose their temper and believe that one is laughing at\nthem or despising them. You must never venture on a joke, even the\nmildest, except with well-bred, witty people.\" Perhaps he had been\ntrying Godefroi de La Bruyere off on the stolid inhabitants of Caen.\nHe received a salary, however, which was far from being all paid away\nto a substitute, and he rose, in the curious social scale of those\ndays, from Mister (_roturier_) into Esquire (_ecuyer_). The court in\nNormandy was extremely angry with him at periodical intervals, but\napparently could do nothing to assert itself. When it raged, La\nBruyere was like the East in Matthew Arnold's poem, he \"bow'd low\nbefore the blast in patient, deep disdain.\"\n\nHe lived through these quiet years in one apartment after another in\nthe heart of Paris. Vigneul de Marville saw him \"nearer heaven than\nearth\" in a room which a light curtain divided into two. \"The wind,\nalways at the service of philosophers, running ahead of visitors,\nwould lift this curtain adroitly, and reveal the philosopher, smiling\nwith pleasure at the opportunity of distilling the elixir of his\nmeditations into the brain and the heart of a listener.\" He was always\nat work, but his work was confined to meditation, talk and study.\nSometimes he left his garret, and studied \"the court and the town\"\nfrom the benches of the public gardens, the Luxembourg and the\nTuileries. There has been an enormous amount of speculation and\nconjecture about the central period of the life of La Bruyere, but we\nreally have only one positive document to go upon. During the illness\nof his own footman, he borrowed the services of his brother's man, who\nrobbed him of money and clothes. La Bruyere put the case in the hands\nof the police, who failed to catch the thief. This is the only\ndefinite fact which has rewarded the patience of the investigators,\nand we must build round it what we can. We build round it his own\nglimpse of self-portraiture (in \"Des Biens de Fortune\") and find the\nphilosopher bending over the volume where Plato discusses the\nspirituality of the soul, or measuring, with a rapt expression, the\ninfinite distance between Saturn and Jupiter.[12]\n\n     [Footnote 12: \"Vigneul de Marville,\" to whom we owe some\n     picturesque impressions of La Bruyere at this time of social\n     obscurity, was one of the pseudonyms of Bonaventure\n     d'Argonne, whose real name appears to have been Noel\n     Argonne. He was a Carthusian who dabbled in literature, and\n     who towards the close of his career compiled a volume of\n     \"Melanges,\" containing anecdotes which are often spiteful,\n     but sometimes useful to the historian of literature. He\n     seems to have visited La Bruyere in the days of his\n     comparative poverty, when his mother kept home for the whole\n     family, first in the Rue Chapon, and later in the Rue des\n     Grands Augustins.]\n\nWhen he is on the point of entering his fortieth year, La Bruyere\nsuddenly breaks out of the cloud which encompasses him, and is\nrevealed as professor of history to the Duke of Bourbon, and resident\nin the household of the great Prince de Conde. There is no evidence to\nshow how Bossuet, then Bishop of Meaux, and the most influential man\nof intellect in France, became acquainted with the discreet and\nobscure treasurer of finances; but it is evident that he was struck by\nthe vast learning and intelligence of this silent, smiling anchorite.\nFontenelle tells us that Bossuet, who had been tutor to the Dauphin,\n\"made a practice of supplying to the princes such persons, meritorious\nin letters, as they had need of.\" In 1684, then, we know not why nor\nhow, Bossuet recommended La Bruyere as tutor to the House of Conde. It\nis a matter of ceaseless wonderment, however, that the philosopher\naccepted and retained the post. He possessed a sufficient though a\nmodest competence already, and he exchanged a life of complete\nindependence for a most painful and trying servitude, hung up between\nthe insolence of those above and the impertinence of those below him.\nThe situation of La Bruyere in the Maison de Conde was like that of\nFanny Burney at the court of George III., only worse. Commentators\nhave expended endless ingenuity in conjecturing what were the reasons\nwhich induced him to enslave himself.\n\nA careful study of his great book must add to our amazement. No one\never locked himself up in prison with an exacter appreciation of the\ndiscomforts of captivity. La Bruyere has some remarks about freedom,\nwhich plunge us in bewilderment. \"Liberty,\" he says, \"is not laziness:\nit is a free use of one's time; it is having the choice of one's own\nwork and exercise. To be free, in a word, is not to do nothing, but to\nbe sole judge of what one shall do or not do. In this sense, what a\nboon is liberty!\" This practical freedom he possessed to the full,\nwhen in August 1684 he accepted bondage to a spiteful monkey of a boy,\na dwarf with a huge head and a dreadful face, to whom he was to\nimpart, with tears of disappointment and humiliation, the rudiments of\nnational history. He was immediately responsible to the father of this\ninfant phenomenon, to Henry Jules, Duke d'Enghien, of whose \"useless\ntalents, wasted genius, imagination which was a torment to himself and\nothers,\" Saint-Simon gives so copious an account. We have to think of\nour delicate and timid La Bruyere now for years the powerless\nplaything of this \"unnatural son, cruel father, terrible husband,\ndetestable master, pernicious neighbour, without affection, without\nfriends.\"\n\nBut after two centuries of canonization of the Condes, it has now\nbecome the fashion to denigrate them to an equal excess. The\ntraditional figure of the Grand Conde, Olympian and sublime, has been\nexposed by pitiless documentary evidence. La Bruyere's latest and most\nlearned editor, M. Emile Magne, gives a terrible picture of the\nPrince's meanness and dirtiness; Harpagon in an ostler's jacket, he\ncalls him, _en souquenille_. But to dwell on all this is to forget\nthat the great Conde, even in his ugly old age, was haloed by the\nglory of having been the first soldier of the world. It was a\nprivilege, even at the end, to be admitted to his intimacy, and I\nbelieve that we pity La Bruyere more than he pitied himself. It\nscandalizes the biographers that the Prince, on one occasion, made La\nBruyere dance a _pas seul_ before him, twanging a tune on the guitar.\nI suppose De Quincey would have been complaisant if the Duke of\nWellington had asked him to whistle \"Home, Sweet Home\" to him. There\nis a limit, after all, to the modern theory of the Dignity of Letters.\n\nValincourt says that \"All the time La Bruyere lived in the House of\nConde, everybody was always making fun of him.\" Possibly the fear of\nappearing pedantic among all these people of fashion and these\ntinselled flunkeys made him lend himself to ridicule. They all teased\nand mocked him, I suppose, but not, I think, so as seriously to hurt\nhim, and now, with his book in our hands, the laugh is on his side.\nFor when we examine carefully we see that his position in the House of\nConde improved as time went on. He got rid of his rivals, the other\ntutors; when the Grand Conde died, La Bruyere got rid of his dreadful\npupil as well. We find him no longer \"precepteur,\" but \"gentilhomme de\nM. le Duc,\"--no longer, that is, a mere scholastic drudge, but a sort\nof lord-in-waiting. He had probably a large increase of salary, since\nin 1687 he seems to have resigned his \"charge\" at Caen. Instead of\nbeing pinned to the dark apartment in the recesses of the Cite, he now\nrevolved in ceaseless movement between Chantilly and Fontainebleau,\nParis and Versailles. He became a sort of confidential reader to the\nDuke and Duchess, an essential part of the suite. After the first\nyears, he had a great deal of leisure. He could retire to the security\nof a handsomely furnished apartment--upholstered in green--on the\nsecond floor of the Hotel de Conde, opposite the Luxembourg, and he\nhad another set of rooms at Versailles. The bondage became, I expect,\nno real bondage at all.\n\nBut why had he, so long completely his own master, consented to become\nthe servant even of famous Royal princes? I think that as mothers\naccept irksome situations for the support of their children, so La\nBruyere became the serf of the Condes for the sake of his book. For it\nis now time to reveal the fact that in this apparently listless, empty\nlife there was one absorbing secret interest. This was the collection\nof the maxims, reflections, pictures, and what not which he had been\nquietly absorbing and turning into the honey of more and more\nexquisite prose ever since his early youth. I think that La Bruyere\ndeliberately accepted all that might prove irksome in the captivity to\nthe House of Conde for the sole sake of his book. He needed to see\nmore types, and types of a more brilliant and effective kind than he\ncould become familiar with in his mediocre condition. He knew all that\nwas to be known about the artizans and the shopkeepers of the Cite; he\nwanted to examine the rulers of society, and while he watched them\nlike a naturalist, they might make what contortions they pleased. How\ndid one of his contemporaries describe him? \"When Menippe leaves his\nhome, it is for the purpose of studying the attitudes of the whole\nhuman race and of painting them from the life. But he is not merely a\nportrait-painter, he is an anatomist as well. Do you see that vain and\narrogant fellow in the midst of his good fortune? He is enchanted to\nthink Menippe is admiring him. What a mistake! At this very moment\nMenippe is dissecting him and preparing him as a specimen for a public\nlecture in the schools. Not a vein, not a fibre will escape him, and\nfrom that man's heart he will draw the inmost springs of passion and\nexpose the circulation of every vice.\"\n\nIt is time, however, to present the famous book in which all these\ninvestigations were noted, the cabinet where all these butterflies and\nless beautiful insect-forms were exhibited. The final title of it is\n\"Characters; or, the Manners of this Age.\" It was published in January\n1688, but, as is believed, had been begun nearly thirty years earlier,\nand slowly finished, the final revision and arrangement dating from\n1686 and 1687. The book, like so many of the world's masterpieces, is\nshort, and a fashionable novelist of to-day could scribble in a\nfortnight as many words as it contains. But there is not a careless\nphrase nor a hurried line in the whole of it. I do not know in the\nrange of literature a book more deliberately exquisite than the\n\"Caracteres.\" It started, probably, with the jotting down of social\nremarks at long intervals. Then, I think, La Bruyere, always extremely\nfastidious, observed that the form of his writing was growing to\nresemble too much that of La Rochefoucauld, and so he began to\ndiversify it with \"portraits.\" These had been in fashion in Paris for\nmore than a generation, but La Bruyere invented a new kind of\nportrait. He says, on the very first page of the \"Caracteres,\" \"you\nmake a book as you make a clock\"; he ought to have said, \"I make _my_\nbook,\" for no other work is quite so clock-like in its variety of\nparts, its elaborate mechanism, and its air of having been constructed\nat different times, in polished fragments, which have needed the most\nworkmanlike ingenuity to fit them together into an instrument that\nmoves and, rings.\n\nWhat perhaps strikes us most, when we put down the \"Caracteres\" after\na close re-perusal of one of the most readable books in all\nliterature, is its extraordinary sustained vitality. It hums and\nbuzzes in our memory long after we have turned the last page. We may\nexpand the author's own mage, and compare it, not with a clock, but\nwith a watchmaker's shop; it is all alive with the tick-tick of a\ndozen chronometers. La Bruyere's observations are noted in a manner\nthat is disjointed, apparently even disordered, but it was no part of\nhis scheme to present his maxims in a system. We shall find that he\nwas incessantly improving his work, revising, extending and weighing\nit. He was one of those timid men who surprise us by their crafty\nintrepidity. It was dangerous to publish sarcastic \"portraits\" of\nwell-known influential people, and there are few of these in the first\nedition, but when the success of the book was once confirmed these\nwere made more and more prominent. It was not until the eighth\nedition, of 1694, that La Bruyere ventured to print the following\nstudy of one of the most influential men of letters of that day.\nFontenelle--\n\nTHE PORTRAIT OF CYDIAS\n\n\"Ascange is a sculptor, Hegion a bronze-founder; AEschine a fuller, and\nCydias a wit--that is his profession. He has a signboard, a workshop,\nfinished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot\ndeliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you,\nunless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who has ordered an elegy from\nhim. He has an idyl on the loom; it is for Crantor, who is hurrying\nhim, and from whom he expects a handsome price. Prose, verse, which do\nyou want? He is equally successful with either. Ask him for letters to\nsympathize with a bereavement or to explain an absence, and he will\nundertake them. If you want them ready-made, you have only to enter\nhis shop, and to choose what you like. He has a friend whose only duty\nupon this earth is to promise Cydias a long time ahead to a certain\nset of people, and then to present him at last in their houses as a\nman of rare and exquisite conversation; and, there, just as a musician\nsings or a lute-player touches his lute before the people who have\nengaged him, Cydias, after having coughed, and lifted the ruffle from\nhis wrist, stretched out his hand and opened his fingers, begins to\nretail his quintessential thoughts and his sophistical arguments....\nHe opens his mouth only to contradict. 'It seems to me,' he gracefully\nsays, 'that the truth is exactly the contrary of what you say,' or 'I\ncannot agree with your opinion,' or even 'that used to be my\nprepossession, as it is yours, but now----!'\"\n\nThe idol of the gossips, \"the prettiest pedant in the world,\" was thus\npaid out for his intrigues against La Bruyere in the French\nAcademy.[13]\n\n     [Footnote 13: The contemporary \"keys,\" which were generally\n     ill-informed and ill-forming, said that Cydias was\n     Perrault. But it is almost certain that Fontenelle was\n     meant. M.A. Chassang has brought together a formidable list\n     of Fontenelle's activity. He wrote for Thomas Corneille part\n     of \"Psyche\" (1678) and of \"Bellerophon\" (1679); for Donneau\n     le Vise the comedy of \"La Comete\" (1681); for Beauval the\n     \"Eloge\" on Perrault (1688); for Catherine Bernard part of\n     her tragedy of \"Brutus\" (1691), a discourse for the prize of\n     eloquence given by the French Academy, and signed by Brunel\n     (1695); and part of \"L'Analyse des infiniments petits\" for\n     the Marquis de l'Hopital (1696). This is merely part of the\n     work turned out of Fontenelle's factory before the death of\n     La Bruyere. Another candidate for the type of Cydias is\n     Fontenelle's uncle, Thomas Corneille (1625-1709).]\n\nThere was great danger, or so it would seem to a timid man like La\nBruyere, in affronting public opinion with a book so full of sarcasm\nand reproof, so unflinching in its way of dealing with success, as the\n\"Caracteres.\" He adopted a singular mode of self-protection. That was\nthe day of the mighty dispute between the Ancients and the Moderns,\nand La Bruyere, at all events ostensibly, took the highly respectable\nside of the Greeks and Romans. There had lived a philosopher in the\nfourth century B.C., Theophrastus, the successor and elucidator of\nAristotle, who left a book of \"Ethical Characters\" (_[Greek: HThikoi\ncharakteres]_), which had been introduced to the Western world by\nCasaubon at the end of the sixteenth century. For some reason or\nother, the greatest impression had been made by Theophrastus in\nEngland, where there appeared a large number of successive imitations\nor paraphrases of his \"Characters.\" In France, on the other hand,\nTheophrastus was still unknown to the vulgar, when La Bruyere took him\nup. It seems likely that his own collection of portraits and maxims\nwas practically finished, when, as M. Paul Morillot has put it, he\ndetermined to hoist the Greek flag as a safeguard. He made a French\ntranslation of the sketches of Theophrastus, and he put this at the\nhead of his book, waving it to keep off the public, as a lady unfurls\nher parasol at a cow whose intentions are uncertain.\n\nThe evidences of La Bruyere's extreme caution are amusing. He\nhesitated long, but in 1687 he submitted his MS. to Boileau, who was\nhighly encouraging, and to the poet-mathematician, Malizian, who said,\n\"This will bring you plenty of readers and plenty of enemies.\" Finally\nhe determined to risk the dive, and he took the book to Michallet, the\npublisher, saying as he did so, \"If it is successful, the result shall\nbe your daughter's dowry,\" the said daughter being a little child who\nwas then seated on La Bruyere's knee. The ultimate success of the book\nbeing prodigious, Mlle Michallet must, by the time she was\nmarriageable, have become a remarkable _parti_, but the story is not\none which commends itself to the Incorporated Society of Authors. \"Les\nCaracteres\" was published in January 1688, and the critics, with the\nveteran Bussy-Rabutin at their head, welcomed it with shouts of\napplause. Bussy frankly said, \"It must be admitted that having proved\nthe merit of Theophrastus by his translation, he has obscured the fame\nof that writer by what he has done next, for he has penetrated, in his\nown portraits, deeper into the heart of man than Theophrastus did, and\nhas penetrated with even greater delicacy and by means of more\nexquisite language.\" This must have been very gratifying from the\nsurvivor of the great school of Malherbe and Balzac.\n\nAt the age of forty-three, then, previously unknown in the world of\nletters, this shy and obscure gentleman-in-waiting to the Princes of\nConde, rose into fame, and enjoyed the admiration or the envy of\nwhatever was most prominent in Paris. The public which he addressed\nwas one which we may pause a moment to contemplate. The authority of\nthe Academic and noble _salons_ was practically at an end, and\nintellectual culture had spread to a somewhat wider circle. Those who\ngoverned taste had thrown off many affectations of a previous\ngeneration, and in particular the curious disease of \"preciousness.\"\nThey were healthier, soberer and slightly less amusing than their\nforerunners. But they formed, in the heart of Paris, the most compact\nbody of general intelligence to be met with at that time in any part\nof the world. They were certain, in their little sphere, of their\naesthetic and logical aims. They were the flower of an intense\ncivilization, very limited, in a way very simple; so far as the\nadoption of outer impulses went, very inactive, and yet within its own\nrange energetic, elegant and audacious. To this world the \"Caracteres\"\nwas now offered, modestly, as though it were a summing up of the\nmoralizations of the last fifty years. The author begins by\ndeprecating the idea that he has anything new to impart. His trick is\nrather subtle; he concentrates our attention on the sayings of an\nancient Aristotelian philosopher, and then, as if to fill up the time,\nhe ventures to repeat a few reflexions of his own. These he introduces\nwith the words: \"Everything has been said, and we arrive too late into\na world of men who have been thinking for more than seven thousand\nyears. In the field of morals, all that is fairest and best has been\nreaped already; we can but glean among the ancients and among the\ncleverest of the moderns.\" In this insinuating manner, he leads the\nreader on to the perusal of his own part of the book, and soon we\nbecome aware how cold and dry and pale the Greek translation seems\nbeside the rich and palpitating world of the new French morality.\n\nWhether he perceived it or not--and I for one am convinced that he did\nperceive it--La Bruyere introduced a new thing into French literature;\nhe opened out, we may almost say, a new world. The classical attitude\nof the great age had produced splendid manifestations of thought and\nform. However revolutionary it pleases us of 1918 to be, we cannot get\naway from the perfection of the age of Bossuet and Racine and La\nFontaine and Fenelon. We come back to these solid and passionate\nwriters after each one of our romantic excursions, not entirely\nsatisfied with them, as our forefathers were, but with a sense of\ntheir solid glory, with a confidence in their permanent value in\nstimulating and supporting human effort. They may not give us all that\nthey were once presumed to give, but they offer us a firm basis; they\nare always there for the imagination to start from. We must not\nforget, of course, that in 1688 in Paris these classics of the hour\nrepresented a great deal more than that; their prestige was\nuntarnished. They so completely outshone, in cultivated opinion, all\nelse that had been produced since the Christian era, that the Italy of\nDante, the Spain of Cervantes, and the England of Shakespeare did not\nso much as exist. If the intelligence was not satisfied by Descartes,\nwell! there was nothing for it but to go back to Plato, and if Racine\ndid not sufficiently rouse the passions, they must be worked upon by\nSophocles. In all this, the divines took a particularly prominent\nplace because they alone presented something for which no definite\nparallel could be found in antiquity. It was the great theologians of\nthe age with whom La Bruyere chiefly competed.\n\nThese theologians were themselves artists to a degree which we have\nnow a difficulty in realizing, although in the seventeenth century the\nChurch of England also had some great artists in her pulpits. If\nJeremy Taylor had been a Frenchman, the work of La Bruyere might have\nbeen different. But the French orators lacked the splendour and oddity\nof the author of \"The Great Exemplar,\" and we can feel that La\nBruyere, who was instinct with the need for colour, was dissatisfied\nwith the broad outlines and masses of character for which the French\ndivines were famous; indeed, even Bossuet, to an English reader fresh\nfrom Fuller and Taylor, seems with all his magnificence too abstract\nand too rhetorical. La Bruyere determined to be less exacting and yet\nmore exact; he would sink to describing emotions less tremendous and\nto designing figures of more trifling value, but he would paint them\nwith a vivid detail hitherto unsolicited. The consequence was that the\npublic instantly responded to his appeal, and we have continued to\ncontemplate with reverence Bossuet's huge historical outlines, but to\nturn for sheer pleasure to La Bruyere's finished etchings of the\ntulipomaniac and the collector of engravings.\n\nEveryone who approaches an analysis of the \"Caracteres\" is obliged to\npause to commend the style of La Bruyere. It is indeed exquisite. At\nthe time his book was published our own John Locke was putting\ntogether his famous \"Thoughts on Education,\" and he remarked on the\n\"policy\" of the French, who were not thinking it \"beneath the public\ncare to promote and reward the improvement of their own language.\nPolishing and enriching their tongue,\" so Locke proceeds, \"is no small\nbusiness amongst them.\" It is perhaps not extravagant to believe that\nin writing these words the English philosopher was thinking of the new\nParisian moralist. For La Bruyere was a great artist, who understood\nthe moral value of form in a degree which would peculiarly commend\nitself to the lucid mind of Locke. He says, early in his book, \"Among\nall the different expressions which can render a single one of our\nthoughts, there is only one which is right. We do not always hit upon\nit in speaking or composing; nevertheless it is a fact that somewhere\nit exists, and everything else is feeble and does not satisfy a man of\nintelligence who desires to be understood.\" This search for the one\nand only perfect expression was an unfailing passion with La Bruyere.\nIn another place he says: \"The author who only considers the taste of\nhis own age is thinking more of himself than of his writings. We ought\nalways to be striving after perfection, and then posterity will render\nus that justice which is sometimes refused to us by our\ncontemporaries.\" This is an ideal to which Locke, anxious to make\ndisciples by his regular and sometimes racy use of language, never\nattained. La Bruyere, who did not address the passing age, so polished\nhis periods that all successive generations have hailed him as one of\nthe greatest masters of prose.\n\nVoltaire's definition of the style of La Bruyere is well known, but\ncannot too often be repeated. He calls it \"a rapid, concise, nervous\nstyle, with picturesque expressions, a wholly novel use of the French\nlanguage, yet with no infringement of its rules.\" Fortunately, with\nall his admiration of others--and his great chapter \"Des Ouvrages de\nl'Esprit\" is one of the most generous and catholic examples of current\ncriticism which we possess in all literature--with his modest and\nglowing appreciation of his famous predecessors, he did not attempt to\nimitate them in the grand manner. We are able to perceive that\nBossuet, who was nearly twenty years his senior, to whom he owed his\nadvancement in life, whose majestic genius and princely prestige were\nso well adapted to dazzle La Bruyere, remained his indefatigable\npatron and probably his closest friend. But we do not find in La\nBruyere a trace of imitation of the great preacher whom he loved and\nhonoured. If we think what the authority of Bossuet had come to be at\nthe time when the \"Caracteres\" was published, how hardly its\nevangelical science pressed upon the convictions of all Frenchmen, and\nparticularly upon those of men who accepted it as unquestionably as\ndid the author of that book, that there should be no trace of Bossuet\non his style is a great tribute to the originality of La Bruyere.\n\n\"There is no pleasure without variety,\" this same mighty Bossuet had\nwritten in 1670, and his young friend had taken the axiom to heart. We\nfind him pursuing almost beyond the bounds of good taste the search\nfor variety of manner. He has strange sudden turns of thought,\nstartling addresses, inversions which we should blame as violent, if\nthey were not so eminently successful that we adopt them at once, as\nwe do Shakespeare's. La Bruyere passes from mysterious ironies to bold\nand coarse invective, from ornate and sublime reflections to phrases\nof a roguish simplicity. He suddenly drops his voice to a shuddering\nwhisper, and the next moment is fluting like a blackbird. The gaiety\nwith which he mocks the ambitions of the rich is suddenly relieved by\nthe dreadful calm with which he reveals the horror of their\ndisappointments. He is never in the same mood, or adopting the same\ntone, for two pages running. It is difficult in a translation to give\nan idea of the surprising element in his style, but something of its\noddity may be preserved in such an attempt as this--\n\n\"There are creatures of God whom we call men, who have a soul which is\nintelligence, and whose whole life is spent and whose whole attention\nis centred in the sawing of marble. This is a very simple, a very\nlittle thing. There are others who are amazed at this, but who\nthemselves are utterly useless, and who spend their days in doing\nnothing at all. This is a still smaller thing than sawing marble.\"\n\nEnglish prose, which a century earlier had limped so far behind French\nin clearness and conciseness, was rapidly catching its rival up, and\nin the next generation was to run abreast with it. But if we wish to\nsee how far behind the best French writers our own best still were, we\nneed but compare the exquisite speed and elasticity of the\n\"Caracteres\" with the comparative heaviness and slowness of a famous\nTheophrastian essay published in the same year, 1688, namely the\n\"Character of a Trimmer.\" In the characteristics of a lively prose\nartist, we shall have to confess La Bruyere nearer to Robert Louis\nStevenson than to his own immediate contemporary, Lord Halifax.\n\nThe surface of La Bruyere's writing is crisp and parched, but it is\neasy by careful reading to crack it, and to discover the coolness, the\nsoftness, the salutary humidity which lie beneath the satirical crust\nof his irony. He is primarily a satirist, dealing as he says with the\nvices of the human mind and the subterfuges of human self-deception.\nHe lays bare \"the sentiments and the movements of men, exposing the\nprinciples which actuate their malice and their frailty\"; he aims at\nshowing that such is the native evil implanted in their souls that \"no\none should any longer be surprised at the thousands of vicious or\nfrivolous actions with which their lives are crowded.\" We note him at\nfirst as entirely devoted to these painful investigations, and we are\napt to confound his attitude with that of La Rochefoucauld, the weary\nTitan, who sighs contemptuously as he holds up to censure the globe of\nhuman _amour-propre_. But we do not begin to understand the attitude\nof La Bruyere until we notice that there always is, in the popular\nphrase, \"more in him than meets the eye.\" He is indeed a satirist, but\nnot of the profound order of the Timons of the mind; his satire is\nsuperficial, and under it there flows a lenient curiosity mingled with\na sympathy that fears to be detected.\n\nThere is a note of sadness, a mysterious melancholy, which frequently\nrecurs in the \"Caracteres,\" and this produces a constant variety in\nits appeal to the feelings. We find the author amusing himself by\ndetailing the weaknesses of his fellow-beings, but the entertainment\nthey offer him soon leaves him dissatisfied and sad. He is overheard\nto sigh, he is seen to shake his head, as he turns his clear eyes away\nfrom the self-humiliation of men. There is nothing of this in the hard\nsuperiority of La Rochefoucauld, and one of the most important things\nwhich we have to note is the advance in feeling which the later\nmoralist makes, in spite of his extremely unpretentious attitude. La\nBruyere attains to a reasoned tolerance which neither his immediate\npredecessor nor Pascal nor Bossuet reached or had the least wish to\nreach. In him we meet, not commonly nor prominently presented, but\nquite plainly enough, the modern virtue of indulgence, of tolerance.\nHere is a passage which could scarcely have been written by any other\nmoralist of the seventeenth century:--\n\n\"It is useless to fly into a passion with human beings because of\ntheir harshness, their injustice, their pride, their self-love and\ntheir forgetfulness of others. They are made so, it is their nature,\nand to be angry about it is to be angry with the stone for falling or\nwith the flame for rising.\"\n\nHere is the voice of the man who had lived and who was still living in\nthe house of that Prince de Conde of whom Saint Simon said that, \"A\npernicious neighbour, he made everybody miserable with whom he had to\ndo.\" I like to imagine La Bruyere escaping from some dreadful scene\nwhere Henry Jules had injured his dependants and insulted his\nfamiliars, or had drawn out in public the worst qualities of his son,\n\"incapable of affection and only too capable of hatred.\" I imagine him\nescaping from the violence and meanness of those intolerable tyrants\nup into the asylum of his own hushed apartment at Versailles; there\nflinging himself down for a moment in the alcove, on the painted\nbedstead, then presently rising, with a smile on his lips and the\nfright and anger gone out of his eyes, and advancing to the great\noaken bureau which displayed his faience and his guitar. He would\nglance, for encouragement, at the framed portrait of Bossuet which was\nthe principal ornament of the wall above it, and then, listening a\nmoment to be sure that he was safe from disturbance, he would unlock\none of the three drawers, and take out the little portfolio in which\nfor years and years he had been storing up his observations upon\nsociety and his consolations in affliction. Presently, with infinite\ndeliberation and most fastidious choice of the faultless phrase and\nsingle available word, he would paint the Holbein portrait of one of\nthe prodigious creatures whom he had just seen in action, some\nerratic, brilliant and hateful \"ornament of society\" such as the Duke\nde Lauzun, and the picture of Straton would be added to his gallery:--\n\n\"Straton was born under two stars; unlucky, lucky in the same degree.\nHis life is a romance: no, for it lacks probability. He has had\nbeautiful dreams, he has bad ones: what am I saying? people don't\ndream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more\nthan he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar\nto him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum\nexistence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that\ncan probably be never solved.\"\n\nLa Bruyere aimed at the improvement of human nature. La Rochefoucauld\nhad said, \"Don't be ridiculous--a blatant love of self is the only\nspring of your being.\" Pascal, less haughty but more overwhelming, had\nsaid, \"Insect that you are, doomed to damnation, cease to strive\nagainst your own miserable impotence.\" La Bruyere's teaching was not\nso definite, partly because his intellect was not so systematic as\ntheirs, but partly because he was more human than either, human with\nmore than a touch of the modern democratic humanity. His attitude was\nthe easier one implied in the sense that \"there is so much that's good\nin the worst of us, and so much that's bad in the best of us\" that\nthere is room, even among moralists, for an infinite indulgence. His\nwas, on the whole, and accounting for some fluttering of the nerves, a\nvery tranquil spirit. He is much less formal and mechanical than La\nRochefoucauld, and he seems to study men with less dependence on a\ntheory. His own statement should not be overlooked; he says, very\nplainly, that he desired above all things to make men live better\nlives.\n\nBoileau said that the style of La Bruyere was \"prophetic,\" and I do\nnot know that any one has attempted to explain this rather curious\nphrase. But we may adopt it in the light of more than two centuries\nwhich were unknown to Boileau. More than any other writer of the end\nof the seventeenth century La Bruyere prophesied of a good time\ncoming. He did not speak out very plainly, but it is the privilege of\nprophets to be obscure, and their predictions are commonly not\ncomprehensible until after the event. But we may claim for La Bruyere\nthe praise of being a great civilizer of French thought; more than\nthat, he widened human social intelligence throughout Europe. He is\nthe direct ancestor of the Frenchman of to-day who observes closely\nand clearly, who has the power to define what he sees, and who retains\nthe colour and movement of it. To this day, as may be amply seen in\nthe records and episodes of the war, in the correspondence of officers\nat the front, in the general intellectual conduct of the contest,\nFrenchmen rarely experience a difficulty in finding the exact word\nthey want. These men who arrest for our pleasure an impression, who\nrebuild before us the fabric of their experience, descend in direct\nline from La Bruyere. It was he who taught their nation to seize the\nattitude and to photograph the gesture.\n\nLa Bruyere's express aim is to clarify our minds, to make us think\nlucidly and in consequence speak with precision. We have already seen\nwhat value he sets on the right word in the right place. He is the\nenemy of all those who shamble along in the supposition that an\ninaccurate phrase will \"do well enough,\" and that any slipshod\ndefinition is excused by our saying, \"Oh, you know what I mean!\" His\nown style is finished up to the highest point, and it is brightened\nand varied with such skill that the author never ceases to hold the\nattention of the reader. He reaches the very ideal of that elegant\nwandering art of writing which the Latins called _sermo pedestris_.\nIndeed, he gives so much attention to the perfect mode of saying\nthings that some critics have brought it as a charge against him that\nhe overdoes it, that in fact his style is more weighty than his\nsubject. This, I think, is a very hasty judgment, founded a little, no\ndoubt, upon a certain dread on La Bruyere's part of being commonplace.\nHe was dealing, as every moralist is bound to deal, with ideas of a\nmore or less primitive character, to which sparkle and force must be\ngiven by illustrative examples. These examples gave him his great\nchance, and he built them up, those exemplary \"portraits\" of his, with\ninfinite labour, accumulating details to make a type, and sometimes,\nit is possible, accumulating too many. The result is that the\n\"Caracteres\" are sometimes a little laboured; I do not know any other\nfault that can be laid to their charge.\n\nOne of the most important qualities of La Bruyere was that he prepared\nthe popular mind for liberty. He is democratic in many ways, in his\nlanguage, where he often borrows words from the _patois_ of the common\npeople; in his exposure of the errors of the _ancien regime_, its\ntyranny, its selfishness, its want of humanity and imagination; in his\nhatred of wealth, the scandalous triumph of which had already reached\na pitch which the next generation was to see outdone. In all this, as\ncannot be too often insisted upon, it was essential for a reformer to\nbe prudent. The People had no voice, and that their interests should\nbe defended was inconceivable.[14] In the next century, after the reign\nof Louis XV. was over and speech had, in a great measure, become free,\nit was not understood how difficult it was under Louis XIV. to express\nany criticism of the feudal order. For instance, there is a long\npassage at the end of the chapter \"De la Ville,\" which scandalized the\npolitical reformers of the eighteenth century. It is that which\nbegins, \"The emperors never triumphed in Rome so softly, so\nconveniently, or even so successfully, against wind and rain, dust and\nsunshine, as the citizen of Paris knows how to do as he crosses the\ncity to-day in every direction. How far have we advanced beyond the\nmule of our ancestors!\" La Bruyere was charged, and even by Voltaire,\nwith attacking the progress of civilization, and with preferring the\nrude subterfuges of Carlovingian times to the comforts of 1688. But he\nwas really making an appeal for thrift and modesty of expenditure on\nthe part of those bourgeois who had suddenly become rich, as a\nsatirist of our own day might denounce the pomp of a too successful\nshopkeeper, without being accused of denying the convenience of\nmotor-cars or desiring to stop the progress of scientific invention.\n\n     [Footnote 14: Perhaps the earliest Frenchman to have his full\n     attention called to the miseries of the poor, was Vauban,\n     whose benevolence was an object of amazement to his own\n     contemporaries. Saint-Simon notes that \"Patriote comme il\n     l'etait, il avait toute sa vie ete touche de la misere du\n     peuple et de toutes les vexations qu'il souffrait.\" This\n     would be particularly the case when Vauban was writing the\n     \"Projet d'une dixieme royale,\" finished in 1698.]\n\nLa Bruyere was the first effective moralist who realized what a\nmonstrous disproportion existed between the fortune of the rich and of\nthe poor.[15] If we read the chapter \"Des Biens de Fortune\" we may be\nastonished at his courage, and we may see in him a direct precursor of\nthe revolution which took a little more than a hundred years to gather\nbefore it broke on France. He describes the great of the earth with a\nsavage serenity, and then he adds, \"Such people are neither relatives,\nnor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even men. They\nhave money.\" There are many such maxims in the chapter \"De l'homme\"\nwhich must have set people's thoughts running in channels which had\nbefore been wholly dry. La Bruyere was not a political reformer, and\nwe must not exaggerate the influence of his charming book in this\nparticular direction. But, as a popular imaginative writer, he took a\nlong step in the democratic direction. Frenchmen were already touched\nin their consciences and beginning to examine the state of their souls\nwith anxiety; but the teachers of the ascetic revival had been too\nuncompromising. Ordinary mortals could not hope to reach the ascetic\nideal of Port Royal, they could only be discouraged by the savage\nattacks on _amour-propre_, while in the \"Caracteres\" they met with a\nlay-preacher who was one of themselves, and who did not disdain to\nencourage moral effort.\n\n     [Footnote 15: The wonderful passage in which La Bruyere\n     dwells on the condition of the French peasant of his day\n     marks a crisis in the conscience of Europe. It occurs in the\n     chapter \"De l'Homme\": \"We see certain wild animals, male and\n     female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched\n     by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir\n     with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate\n     speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a\n     countenance that is human: and in short they are human\n     beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they\n     live on black bread, water and roots. They spare the rest of\n     mankind the trouble of sowing, ploughing and reaping what is\n     required for food, and accordingly they seem to deserve that\n     they should themselves not lack the bread which they have\n     sown.\" And in \"Des Biens de Fortune\" he says: \"There are\n     sorrows in the world that grip the heart, there are men and\n     women who have nothing, not even bread, who shudder at the\n     approach of winter, who have learned the significance of\n     life, while others eat fruit forced out of due season, and\n     compel the soil and the seasons to indulge their\n     fastidiousness.\"]\n\nIt was a great advantage to La Bruyere, and a sign of his genius, that\nhe was able to descend from the pulpit, and walk about among his\nreaders with a smile, recognizing them as reasonable beings. He is\npersuasive; his forerunners had been denunciatory. He may be harsh and\nsometimes unjust, but he is never contemptuous to human nature. He\nfeels that he is addressing a wide public of intelligent men and\nwomen, whom he would fortify against the moral tyranny of the violent\nand the rich. For this purpose, though he would tell them their\nfaults, he would not shut the gates of mercy in their faces. But how\nadmirably he himself puts it in his chapter \"Des Jugements\":--\n\n\"A man of talent and reputation, if he allows himself to be peevish\nand censorious, scares young people, makes them think evil of virtue,\nand frightens them with the idea of an excessive reform and a tiresome\nstrictness of conduct. If, on the other hand, he proves easy to get on\nwith, he sets a practical lesson before them, since he proves to them\nthat a man can live gaily and yet laboriously, and can hold serious\nviews without renouncing honest pleasures; so he becomes an example\nwhich they find it possible to follow.\"\n\nWhen we look round for an author of high importance on whom the\ninfluence of La Bruyere was direct, we find the most obvious to be an\nEnglishman, and our own enchanting \"Mr. Spectator.\" Addison was born\nwhen La Bruyere was twenty-seven; when the \"Caracteres\" was published\nhe was an undergraduate at Queen's College, Oxford, walking in\nmeditation under the elms beside the Cherwell. Addison was not in\nFrance until La Bruyere had been some months dead; there can have been\nno personal intercourse between them; but he stayed at Blois for over\ntwelve months in 1699 and 1700, and during that time he was much in\ncompany with the Abbe Phelippeaux, member of that family of friends\nwho had so efficiently supported La Bruyere's candidature to the\nFrench Academy only six years before. I do not think this fact has\nbeen noted, but surely it is almost certain that in their talks about\nliterature Phelippeaux must have described La Bruyere to Addison?\nAnother contributor to the _Spectator_, Eustace Budgell, translated\nTheophrastus and knew La Bruyere's book. Dr. Johnson mentions that the\nFrench moralist is the source of Addison's effort, but English\ncritical opinion then, and since, has held that La Bruyere wrote\nwithout any of the earnestness of the moral reformer. I have\nindicated, I hope, the hasty error contained in such a judgment.\n\nThere is one point, however, on which it must be admitted that Addison\nshows himself much in advance of his French precursor, or rather\nperhaps we should consider it a proof of the advantage of English\nsociety under Anne over French society under Louis XIV. The delicacy\nand sympathy with which women are treated in the _Spectator_ has no\nparallel in the \"Caracteres.\" In that volume, the chapter \"Des Femmes\"\nis perhaps the least agreeable to a sensible reader of to-day. It is\ncrowded with types of pretentious and abnormal womanhood, which it\ncaricatures very effectively. Addison had manifestly studied it, for\nhere we see the origin of his coquettes and prudes, with their\n\"brocade petticoat which rises out of the mines of Peru, and the\ndiamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.\" But what we miss\ncompletely in La Bruyere is that cordial recognition of women as the\nproper companions of men and the organizers of intelligent society\nwhich is so admirably sustained in the _Spectator_. It was Addison,\nand not La Bruyere, who broke down once for all, and finally, the\nmonkish conception of women as the betrayers of the human species,\nwhich had lingered on so detestably from the Middle Ages.\n\nThe influence of La Bruyere on Steele is apparent, and may have\npreceded that on Addison. We may observe that Steele says, in the\ngeneral preface to the _Tatler,_ \"the elegance, purity and correctness\nwhich appeared in [Mr. Addison's] writings were not so much to my\npurpose as... to rally all those singularities of human life, through\nthe different professions and _characters_ in it, which obstruct\nanything that is truly good and great,\" The similarity of expression\nhere is certainly not accidental; La Bruyere stood before Steele as a\nmodel when he wrote, for instance, in 1709, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffs\n\"portraits\" of Chloe and Clarissa, or the \"lucubration\" on Deference\nto Public Opinion. When La Bruyere died, Steele was already an author,\nand what is more, a moralist. It is impossible not to believe that he\nhad been reading the \"Caracteres\" when it occurred to him that he\nmight procure himself \"a most exquisite pleasure,\" by framing\n\"Characters of Domestic Life.\"\n\nThe ladies may hold it to be an excuse for our French moralist that he\nwas a confirmed and impenitent bachelor. He thought that marriage\nenchained a philosopher, and would have said, in the words of Rudyard\nKipling, \"He rideth the faster who rideth alone,\" Boileau, after a\nvisit from La Bruyere, remarked that nature had not consented to make\nhim so agreeable as he wished to be. It seems that he was shy and\ngauche, and that he strove to conceal these defects by occasional\noutbursts of a dreadful playfulness. There are stories about his\nbehaviour in the House of Conde, which if they are true seem to carry\neccentricity beyond the bounds of what is permitted even to a\nphilosopher. Nevertheless, contemporaries report that, in spite of his\nplain features and his \"look of a common soldier\" (a dreadful thing to\nsay in the seventeenth century), the ladies ran after him. I am afraid\nthat when they did so, he repulsed them. He says about love none of\nthe charming things which he says about friendship, such as \"To be\nwith those we are fond of, that is enough; to dream, to speak to them,\nto say nothing to them, to think about them, to think of indifferent\nthings, but in their presence,--all is equally pleasant.\" Or this:\n\"Pure friendship has a flavour which is beyond the taste of those who\nare born mediocre.\" Or again. \"There ought to be, deep down in the\nheart, inexhaustible wells of sorrow in readiness for certain losses.\"\nThe tenderness of such thoughts as these may surely outweigh the\ndryness of the portraits of Corinne and Clarice.\n\nThe career of our moralist, after the publication of his single book,\nwas a short one. His startling success as a writer irresistibly\npointed him out as a candidate for election to the French Academy, but\nhere he was met by the barbed wire of jealousy and exasperated vanity.\nHe had laughed at too many pretentious mandarins to hope to escape\ntheir resentment. At last, in 1693, but alas! at the expense of a vast\ndeal of intrigue on the part of his illustrious protectors, he stormed\nthat reluctant fortress. In his Reception Discourse, he revenged\nhimself on his enemies by firing volley after volley of irony into\ntheir ranks, and the august body was beside itself with rage. No\npompous Academician, for instance, likes to hear, in the solemn\nconclave of his colleagues, that he is so Christian and so charitable\nthat \"writing well may be said to be among the least of his\nqualities.\" La Bruyere summed up his attacks in a preface to the\neighth edition of the \"Caracteres\" in 1694. He then retired again to\nhis independence as a crafty old bachelor, and Saint Simon gives us a\npleasant snapshot of him in these latest years, \"a very\nstraightforward man, capital company, simple, with nothing of the\npedant about him, and entirely disinterested.\"\n\nHe remained the man of one book until nearly the close of his life. It\nis thought that Bossuet, who had always been his great exemplar, urged\nhim to undertake a reply to the heresies of Mme de Guyon and Fenelon,\nand that so he was dragged into that very painful quarrel. At all\nevents, he started a series of \"Dialogues on Quietism,\" in which all\nthe extreme doctrines of Molinos and his disciples were examined and\nridiculed. On May 8, 1696, La Bruyere dined with Antoine Bossuet, the\nbishop's elder brother; after dinner he took out the MSS. from his\npocket, and read extracts to his host. Two days afterwards, after\nwalking in the garden at Versailles, he had a stroke, and two days\nafter that he died. He had had no premonition of illness, and the\nrumour went round that the Quietists had poisoned him. His body was\nexhumed, but of course no trace of poison was to be found. The\n\"Dialogues,\" revised and completed by the Abbe Ellies du Pin, were\npublished the next year. Their authenticity has been obstinately\ncontested, but, as I confess it seems to me, without excuse. Both\nexternal and internal evidence go to prove, I think, that they are\nsubstantially the work of La Bruyere, and for those who are not\nalarmed at theological discussions conducted in rather a profane\nspirit, they make very good reading.\n\nOne last word about our amiable author. His great book remains\neminently alive, and wields after two centuries and a half a permanent\ninfluence. When you refer to it, you must not expect a logical\ndevelopment of philosophical theory. We do not look to find a system\nin a book of maxims and portraits. La Bruyere was a moralist, pure and\nsimple; he awakened sensibility, he encouraged refinement, and he\nexposed the vicious difference which existed around him--and which no\none else had seemed to notice--that the possession of more or fewer\npieces of money made between human beings otherwise equal. He had a\ndemocratic philosophy which is sometimes that of Mr. Micawber,\n\"Celui-la est riche qui recoit plus qu'il ne consume; celui-la est\npauvre dont la depense excede la recette,\" But he is seldom so prosy\nas this. Let us think of him as one who wished to turn his talent as a\npainter of still life to the benefit of his nation, and who succeeded\nin a degree far beyond his own modest hopes.\n\n\n\n\n                              VAUVENARGUES\n\n\nIf we had been in Paris on a summer's day in 1744 we might have seen\nemerge from a modest house in the ungenteel rue du Paon (Peacock\nStreet) a young man of less than twenty-nine years of age. It is\nimprobable that we should have been attracted to him without warning,\nfor though his expression was very pleasant, he was not\ndistinguished-looking, and though he was uncomplaining, his evident air\nof suffering was painful to witness. He had the gallant bearing of a\nsoldier and a certain noble elegance, but a shade across his forehead\ntestified to the failure of his eyesight, and he shambled along with\ndifficulty on two lame legs. If we followed him he would probably take\nus slowly to the Garden of the Luxembourg, where it was very unlikely\nthat any one would greet him.\n\nHe would presently turn out of the fashionable promenade, to\ncontemplate the poor and the unfortunate. Sometimes he would stop\nthose who seemed most wretched, and would try to share their sorrows,\nbut sympathy on the part of a gentleman was strange, or else there was\nsomething in himself which failed to express his tenderness, for he\ncomplained that the unfortunate always turned away from him. If, at\nthe moment of such a repulse, we had addressed him, and had\nrespectfully offered him our sympathy, he would have struggled with\nhis painful shyness, and would have told us that he felt no resentment\nagainst those who rejected his help. Nothing hardened his heart, and\nthe lack of response merely doubled his pity. He would assure us, with\nthe pale smile which was the charm of his anaemic countenance, that\nthose who were vicious were so by their misfortune, not their fault,\nand that of the worst criminals he was persuaded that, if they could,\nthey would \"end their days in innocence.\" With an exquisite and simple\npoliteness he would leave us wondering a little who this pathetic\nyoung man, with all the stigmata upon him of poverty and sickness\nbravely borne, might be; and there would be none to explain to us that\nit was the Marquis de Vauvenargues, come home a broken man from the\nwars in Bohemia.\n\nThis inconspicuous personage, who glided almost like a ghost through\nless than thirty-two years of pain and adversity, was not merely the\ngreatest moralist that France produced in the course of the eighteenth\ncentury, but was of all the world's writers perhaps the one who has\nlifted highest the banner of hope and joy in heroism and virtue. In La\nRochefoucauld we encountered a representative of the dominant class,\nthe prince-dukes. La Bruyere was a typical bourgeois. In our third\nexample of the moral energy of France we meet with a specimen of the\n_petite noblesse_, the impoverished country gentlemen who dragged out\na provincial existence in obscurity and ignorance, supported by their\npride in a long pedigree. Luc de Clapiers, whose father was raised to\nthe marquisate of Vauvenargues in 1722, was born seven years earlier\nthan that, at Aix in Provence, where his father was mayor. It is a\npleasant touch to be told that his father was the only magistrate who\ndid not desert his post when Aix was swept by the plague in 1720.\nThere seems a foreshadowing here of his famous son's high courage. But\nit seems also certain that there was no appreciation of scholarship or\nliterature in the household. No atmosphere less benevolent to learning\ncan be imagined. The future philosopher went to school at Aix for a\nlittle while, and then his weak health was made the excuse for\ncancelling what was perhaps looked upon as a needless expense. He was\nthrown upon himself, and what education he secured was the result of\nhis own desultory reading.\n\nVauvenargues never acquired a knowledge of Greek or even Latin,[16] but\nwhen he was about sixteen years of age he came across a book which\nabsolutely transfigured his outlook upon the world and decided the\ncourse of his aspirations. This was none less than a translation of\nthe \"Lives\" of Plutarch, a work which has had a very remarkable moral\neffect on the Frenchmen of four centuries. We know not which this\nparticular translation was, but it would be pleasant to think it was\nthat made by Amyot in 1559. The effect it had on the temperament of\nVauvenargues must be told in his own words. He says in a letter to\nMirabeau (March 22, 1740)--\n\n     [Footnote 16: Suard is definite as to this: \"Il est mort\n     sans etre en etat de lire Horace et Tacite dans leur\n     langue.\"]\n\n\"I wept for joy while I read these 'Lives' [of Plutarch]. No night\nwent by but I had spent part of it in talking to Alcibiades, to\nAgesilas, or to others. I walked in the streets of Rome that I might\nargue with the Gracchi, and when stones were flung at Cato, there was\nI to defend him. You remember that when Caesar wished to pass a law\nwhich was too much in favour of the populace, Cato tried to prevent\nhis doing so, and put his hand on Caesar's mouth to prevent his\nspeaking? These modes of action, so unlike our fashions of to-day,\nmade a deep impression on me.\"\n\nHe attributed to the teaching of Plutarch his introduction to the\nmaster-passions of his brief future existence, namely, his devotion to\na sense of heroic duty and his determination to live up to the measure\nof his high calling. In the pages of Plutarch he says that he\ndiscovered \"la vraie grandeur de notre ame\"; here was exposed before\nhim a scene of life illustrated by \"virtue without limit, pleasure\nwithout infamy, wit without affectation, distinction without vanity,\nand vices without baseness and without disguise.\" This boyish\nappreciation is worthy of our attention, because it contains the\nfuture moral teaching of Vauvenargues as in a nutshell. To our great\nregret, it is the only positive record which survives of the\nadolescence of this great mind, on whose development we should so\ngladly dwell if it were possible. In one of his own beautiful phrases\nVauvenargues says, \"The earliest days of spring have less charm than\nthe budding virtue of a young man,\" In his own case those \"earliest\ndays\" are hopelessly sunken into oblivion.[17]\n\n     [Footnote 17: We know, at least, that he taught himself to\n     write on the \"sedulous ape\" system, by imitating Bossuet and\n     Fenelon. He must have been in several respects very much\n     like Robert Louis Stevenson. His modesty led him to distrust\n     his own taste, and it is worthy of notice that the\n     corrections he made to please Voltaire often reduce the\n     vigour of his thought in its original expression. Voltaire--\n     it is beyond conjecture why--cancelled the famous maxim,\n     \"Les feux de l'aurore\".]\n\nHow harshly his tastes were condemned at home may be judged by an\nanecdote about his father which occurs in the \"Essai sur quelques\ncaracteres\":--\n\n\"Anselme was shocked that his son should show a taste for science. He\nburnt the young man's papers and books, and when he learned that he\nhad gone to sup with certain men of letters, he threatened to banish\nhim to the country if he persisted in keeping _bad company_. 'Since\nyou are fond of reading,' he said to him, 'why don't you read the\nhistory of your own family? You will not find any savants there, but\nyou will find men of the right sort. Do you wish to be the first\npedant of your race?'\"\n\nThere were but two alternatives for a lad of his class who had to make\na living, the Church and the Army. For Vauvenargues there could be no\nquestion, he was born to be a soldier. At the age of eighteen he\nentered the King's Regiment as a second-lieutenant, and he marched\ninto Lombardy under the orders of that illustrious marshal-general,\nthe Duke of Villars, now in his eighty-first year, but still the\nunquestioned summit of French military genius. The idea of \"following\nHannibal over the mountains\" filled our young philosopher with an\nenthusiasm beyond his years. He took part in the victories of Parma\nand Guastalla, and he was probably with Villars at Turin when that\nindomitable octogenarian died in June 1734. The War of the Polish\nSuccession presently sank into a mere armistice, and until 1736 we\ndimly perceive Vauvenargues sharing the idle and boring life of the\nofficer who, too poor to retire to Paris, vegetates in some deplorable\nfrontier-garrison of Burgundy or Franche Comte. We know that he was\ndissipated and idle, for he tells us so, but his confession is marred\nby no sort of priggishness, and it is very important to insist that\nthis greatest of moralists never exaggerated the capacity of ordinary\nhuman virtue. He pretended to no exceptional loftiness in his own\nconduct; he demanded no excessive sacrifice on the part of others.\nSuard speaks of the \"sweet indulgence\" which marked his relations with\nthose with whom he lived, and he tells us that Vauvenargues \"gradually\nrose above the frivolous occupations of his time of life, without ever\ncontracting, in the development of serious ideas, that austerity which\ncommonly accompanies the virtues of youth.... Vauvenargues, thrown\nupon the world directly he ceased to be a child, learned to know men\nbefore it occurred to him to judge them. He saw their weaknesses\nbefore he had reflected on their duties; and virtue, when it entered\nhis heart, found there all possible dispositions to indulgence.\"\n\n\"Dispositions to indulgence\"--we linger on this phrase, which has an\nengaging beauty of its own. It distinguishes Vauvenargues at once from\nall the great French moralists who preceded him, from La Rochefoucauld\nwith his savage cynicism, from Pascal with his contempt of the natural\nman. Vauvenargues rejected the idea which had so tormented the great\nspirits of the seventeenth century, that the noblest life was a life\nof mortification, and he made no demand on the soul to divorce itself\nfrom all human interests as being things naturally vile and\nignominious. He was to come down to us waving an olive-branch, the\nmost amiable of all idealists, an apostle of tolerance. He says that\nhe \"hated scorn of human things.\" To this we must presently return,\nbut we may pause to note it here, as a faint light thrown over the\nobscurity of his adolescence.\n\nThe Marquis of Mirabeau was the cousin of Vauvenargues and almost\nexactly his coeval. The discovery of a packet of letters which passed\nbetween the young men from the summer of 1737 to that of 1740 has\ndissipated in some measure the otherwise total darkness which had\ngathered around the youth of our philosopher. Mirabeau (who was to be\nthe father of the famous orator) was a man of talent, but violent,\nchimerical and lawless, \"farouche,\" as he himself put it. Later he was\nthe author of the redoubtable \"Ami des Hommes.\" This prodigal uncle of\nthe Revolution, this dangerous and violent \"physiocrate\" as he called\nhimself, would seem divided, as pole from pole, from the\ngently-reasoning, the benevolently-meditative Vauvenargues.\nNevertheless, they are seen in warm relation of friendship to each\nother, and the letters exhibit their characteristics. Mirabeau\nshamelessly pours out the catalogue of his shifting and venal loves,\nin confidences which Vauvenargues invariably receives with discretion,\nunupbraiding, but not volunteering any like confidence in his turn. A\nsingle example must be quoted: Mirabeau, wishing to get rid of a\nmistress of whom he is tired, but who is still devoted to him, writes\nher a letter of the most studied insolence, cleverly turned, and sends\na copy of it, with infinite fatuity, to his friend. Vauvenargues\nreplies that he has read out this letter at dinner to his\nfellow-officers, who have been greatly diverted by its wit. \"But,\"\nsaid Vauvenargues, \"we are sorry\" (that is to say, of course,\nVauvenargues is sorry) \"for the poor girl, who shows intelligence, and\nwho loves you.\" Could anything be a more indulgent, or at the same\ntime a more definite reproof? The germ of the _Reflexions_ is found in\nthis passing phrase, so unexpected in a soldier of that time and place.\n\nAn anecdote, preserved like a spark of light in the darkness of those\nearly garrison years, takes us a step further. The sentiment of\ncompassion was scarcely known to the early eighteenth century in\nFrance; it was certainly never extended to those unfortunate women\nwho, as Vauvenargues puts it, \"watch for young men as evening begins\nto darken.\" He was himself accosted on one occasion by a girl, whom he\nallowed to walk by his side while he gently questioned her. She easily\ntold him of the wretched poverty which had driven her to vice, and\nVauvenargues, after trying to revive in her some sentiment of modesty,\nleft her with the gift of a little money. His fellow-officers of the\nregiment greeted the incident with shouts of mirth: such behaviour was\nunheard of. Vauvenargues replied: \"My friends, you laugh too easily. I\nam sorry for these poor creatures, obliged to ply such a profession to\nearn their bread. The world is full of sorrows which wring my heart;\nif we are to be kind only to those who deserve it, we may never be\ncalled upon at all. We must be indulgent to the weak who have more\nneed of support than the virtuous; and we must remember that the\nerrors of the unfortunate are always caused by the harshness of the\nrich.\" M. Paleologue, in a very interesting passage, has remarked that\nwe have to wait a hundred years before there is a repetition in French\nliterature of this peculiar mansuetude.\n\nBearing in mind this capacity for indulgence, for pity, and\nremembering how little it was conceived in the age he lived in, we may\nlook forward a moment to recognize that in his whole teaching\nVauvenargues differs from other moralists, but particularly from his\ngreat predecessors in France, in that he has a constructive object. He\nwishes exceedingly to help the unfortunate to live happily, easily and\nprofitably, and he regards almost the whole human race as more or less\nunhappy. His desire, therefore, is not, as that of the\nseventeenth-century moralists had been, to put human egotism in the\npillory and to pelt it with rotten eggs, but so far as possible to\nencourage and affirm a decent, self-respecting egotism. Vauvenargues\nfinds the lock of life to be rusty; he touches it with the oiled\nfeather of his advice, so that the key may turn without resistance,\nand without noise. He does not profess to strive after perfection in\nconduct, but after improvement, and he is most careful never to\nrecommend violent means or an excessive austerity; nor does he condemn\nor scold, even when his own humanity is most affronted, but he tries to\ninduce every one to make the best of his relations with other men\nduring the fugitive and frail duration of their common existence. If\nhe hated anything--in his universal benignity--Vauvenargues hated a\nrigid puritanism. In one place he says, \"We believe no longer in\nwitches, and yet there are people who still believe in Calvin!\"\n\nVauvenargues was twenty-six years of age when the war of the Austrian\nSuccession broke out, and swept him into military action. He was\nvegetating in garrison at Metz when the armies of Marshal de\nBelle-Isle, the gallant and thrice-unfortunate, streamed eastward into\nGermany and carried our philosopher with them. The Regiment of the\nKing, of which Vauvenargues was an officer, reached Bohemia in July\n1741. In a night attack of extraordinary rapidity and audacity Prague\nwas captured, and Vauvenargues took a personal part in this adventure,\nwhich must have cast fuel on the fire of his rising military ambition.\nBut the conduct of war is all composed of startling ups and downs, and\nat the height of the successes of the French, their luck abandoned\nthem. Relieved by no reinforcements and pressed hard by famine, the\narmy of Belle-Isle could no longer hold Prague, and on the night of\nDecember 16-17, 1742, began the retreat from Bohemia which is one of\nthe most noted disasters of the eighteenth century. Nine days later,\nwhat remained of the French army arrived at Egra, but after a march\nthrough thick fog over frozen ground, without food, without shelter,\nin a chaotic frenzy of despair.\n\nVauvenargues was one of those who never recovered from the agony of\nthe retreat from Prague. Both his legs were frost-bitten, so that for\nthe remainder of his life he was lame; his eyesight was permanently\nimpaired; and he appears to have sown the seeds of the pulmonary\ndisease which was to carry him off five years later. But his tender\nheart endured what were still severer pangs from the sufferings and\ndeath of those of his companions for whom he had the greatest regard.\nAmong these the first place was held by Hippolyte de Seyres, whose\nfigure pervades the earliest developments of the genius of\nVauvenargues. De Seyres was a lieutenant in the philosopher's\nregiment. He was only eighteen years of age, and Vauvenargues felt for\nhim the interest of an elder brother and the affection of a devoted\nfriend. We can trace the progress of the sentiment, in which are fully\nrevealed for the first time the peculiar qualities of our author's\nmind. He does not conceal from himself the weaknesses of the character\nof De Seyres, he blames him for his lack of suppleness, of simplicity\nof manner, of self-confidence. He found in him a proud and delicate\nspirit which exaggerated its own frailties and shrank morbidly from\ntheir consequences. He was anxious that the spirit of the young man\nshould not be debased by low associations; he did not think the\nslightly older officers who surrounded De Seyres to be wholesome\ncompanions for him. The lad displayed a lack of moral force; he hoped\nto succeed less by his own exertions than by the favour of others; he\nwas in despair over his own faults without having the energy to\ncorrect them. It is in writing about De Seyres that Vauvenargues first\ndefines his central axiom, that the only sources of success are\nvirtue, genius and patience. He observed the lack of them all in De\nSeyres, and his incapacity for expansion made his case the more\ndifficult to handle. \"Son coeur est toujours serre,\" Vauvenargues\nexclaims. But he nourished a deep and ever-deepening affection for\nthis sensitive lad, and became desirous, almost passionately desirous,\nto lead him up to better things from out of the mediocrity of his\npresent associations.\n\nIt appears certain to me that it was the study expended on the\ncharacter of Hippolyte de Seyres and the shock received by his\ndreadful death which gave the earliest expansion to the genius of\nVauvenargues and left their definite mark on his writings. I do not\nknow why this all-important episode seems to have attracted so little\nof the attention of those who have written about him. The \"Conseils a\nun Jeune Homme,\" which was evidently finished in 1743, is the earliest\ncomplete work of Vauvenargues which we possess; it contains in embryo\nthe whole of his teaching as a moralist, and it was written for the\nguidance of young De Seyres. On the other hand, I think that Gilbert\nand other editors are mistaken in attributing the \"Discours sur la\nGloire\" to the same date and occasion; it seems to me much later in\nstyle, and addressed to a very different person. The note of the\naddress to De Seyres is accurately given in the exquisite essay\nentitled \"Love of the Noble Passions.\" But it appears that the edifice\nbuilt up by the tender affection of Vauvenargues was rased to the\nground in December 1742. The young friend so passionately guarded, so\nanxiously watched, died under his eyes in the course of the terrible\nretreat over the icy passes of Bohemia, a victim to the united agony\nof famine, cold and fatigue. Vauvenargues wrote an \"Eloge\" on his\nyoung friend, which betrays something of the hysterical agitation of\nhis own soul. Here is a fragment of this strange document--\n\n\"Open, ye formidable sepulchres! Solitary phantoms, speak, speak! What\nunconquerable silence! O sad abandonment! O terror! What hand is it\nwhich holds all nature paralyzed beneath its pressure? O thou hidden\nand eternal Being, deign to dissipate the alarm in which my feeble\nsoul is plunged. The secret of Thy judgments turns my timid heart to\nice. Veiled in the recesses of Thy being, Thou dost forge fate and\ntime, and life and death, and fear and joy, and deceitful and\ncredulous hope. Thou dost reign over the elements and over hell in\nrevolt. The smitten air shudders at Thy voice. Redoubtable judge of\nthe dead, take pity upon my despair.\"\n\nThis is a voice we hear, so far as I remember, nowhere else in the\nFrench literature of the eighteenth century. There is a certain accent\nof Bossuet in it; it is still more like the note which a group of\nEnglish poets were striking. It may really seem to us an extraordinary\ncoincidence that the \"Eloge\" on Hippolyte de Seyres should belong to\nthe very same year, 1743, which saw the publication of Blair's \"Grave\"\nand Young's \"Night Thoughts.\"\n\nThe rhetorical turn of the sentences I have just read was not habitual\nwith Vauvenargues; it was in this case the mask worn by the intensity\nof his feeling, but he confesses in an early letter, \"I like sometimes\nto string big words together, and to lose myself in a period; I make a\njest of it.\" But after this outburst of panic grief in 1743 we see no\nmore trace of such a tendency to eloquence. He became more and more\ncompletely himself, that is to say, very simple intellectually, in a\npedantic age. He adopted, indeed, a certain gravity at which we may\nnow smile; he did not approve of fairy-tales and fables, on the ground\nthat anything which came between direct truth and the receptive mind\nof man was a disadvantage. \"The disease of our age is to want to make\njokes about everything,\" he complains.\n\nTo poor Vauvenargues life was not a laughing matter. His health had\nbeen completely ruined by the disastrous campaigns in Austria, and by\nthe hardships of garrison life; and he was feeling more and more\nsharply that pinch of genteel poverty which is the hardest of all to\nbear. But if he never laughed, this martyr of the soul never ceased to\nsmile. His perpetual sufferings did not affect his gentle sobriety of\nconversation. Those whose privilege it was to see Vauvenargues during\nthese last years of his brief existence are united in their report of\nhis magnanimity. Voltaire wrote, \"I have always found him the most\nunfortunate of human beings and the most tranquil.\" He was notable for\nhis \"indulgent goodness,\" his \"constant peace,\" his \"justice of\nheart,\" his \"rectitude of soul.\" His conversation, so Marmontel\nreports to us, had something more animated, more delicate, than even\nhis divine writings. The same acute observer noted that in the heart\nof Vauvenargues, when he reflected upon the misery of mankind, pity\ntook the place of indignation and hatred. Sensitive, serene,\ncompassionate, affable, he tried to conceal from his friends as much\nas possible his own pain, and even when it was evident that he\nsuffered most, no one dared to be melancholy in his presence.\n\nIn the fleeting and impoverished life of Vauvenargues his friendships\nwere the main adventure. We have mentioned a name which is too\nfrequently the object of malignity on English lips, the name of\nVoltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform energy of this giant\nof literature did not take some unseemly directions and several\nunlovely shapes. But the qualities of Voltaire must, in the eyes of\nany unbiassed observer, vastly overtop his defects. If, however, we\nwish to see Voltaire at his best, we must contemplate him in relation\nto our soldier-philosopher. As soon as his health had recovered a\nlittle from the horror of the Bohemian campaign, Vauvenargues took the\nstep of writing to Voltaire, then a stranger, for his opinion on that\ncrying question, the relative greatness of Corneille and of Racine, a\nquestion to all Frenchmen like that between predestination and\nfree-will to Milton's rebel angels. This was towards the end of 1743,\nwhen Voltaire, who had reached his fiftieth year, was recognised as\nthe first living historian and critic in France, and had been recalled\nto court through the good offices of Mme du Chatelet. It was, no doubt,\nat a happy moment that Vauvenargues' random letter arrived, Voltaire\nresponded with ardour; Vauvenargues quickly became to him, as\nMarmontel says, what Plato was to Socrates, and nothing in the long\nlife of Voltaire shows him in a more charming light than does his\ndevotion to the young friend whom he called \"the sweet hope of the\nremainder of my days.\" After the death of the philosopher, Voltaire\nwrote a brief, but invaluable, account of their relations, which had\nlasted, without a cloud, until the death of Vauvenargues.\n\nHe reminded Voltaire of Pascal, whose \"incurable disease was consoled\nby study,\" but the elder friend noted a striking distinction; the\neloquence of Pascal was fiery and imperious, that of Vauvenargues was\n\"insinuating.\" The powerful physical force of Voltaire was softened by\nthe suffering of his young companion, for whom \"nature had poured out\nlarge draughts of hemlock,\" and who, \"while all his body sank into\ndissolution, preserved in spirit that perfect tranquillity which the\npure alone enjoy.\" Although Vauvenargues was twenty years younger than\nhis friend, Voltaire succumbed to the gravity of his demeanour; like\nthe fellow-officers at Arras or at Metz, we smile to find him\naddressing Vauvenargues as _mon pere_. One of the philosopher's maxims\nis, \"Great thoughts proceed from the heart,\" and Voltaire in a note\nhas added, \"In writing this, though he knew it not, he painted his own\nportrait.\" He found in Vauvenargues \"the simplicity of a timid child,\"\nand it seems that he had a difficulty in overcoming his modesty so far\nas to make him write down those Reflections which are now placed for\never among the masterpieces of French literature. It is to Voltaire\nthat we owe the fact that Vauvenargues found resolution enough to\nbecome an author.\n\nA typical instance of the mixture of courage and tact in the young\nauthor is to be found in the attitude which he took up towards\nVoltaire with regard to the Marquise de Pompadour, without in the\nleast offending his tempestuous friend. That remarkable young lady,\nthen still known as la petite Etoile, had succeeded in catching the\nKing's eye, and was soaring into the political heavens like a rocket,\ncarrying, among other incongruous objects, the genius of Voltaire in\nher glittering train. Voltaire must have boasted to his young friend\nthat his fortune was made. Vauvenargues surprisingly expresses in his\nreply the evil which must be done by great authors who flatter vice\nand think to conceal its corruption by heaping flowers over a lie. The\nincident is important for us, because it led Vauvenargues, thus\ndisappointed in Voltaire as he had been disappointed in Mirabeau, to\nexamine into the sources of the low moral condition of the age. He\nattributed it to \"le mepris de la gloire,\" and he set himself to\ndefine this quality and to impress it, with all the force of\nrepetition, on the dulled consciences of his contemporaries.\n\nIt is extremely difficult, it is well-nigh impossible, to find an\nequivalent in English for the word \"gloire.\" It is a French\nconception, and one to which our language does not readily, or\ngracefully, lend itself. In the mind of Vauvenargues the idea of\n\"gloire\" took the central place, and we may form an intelligent\nconception of the meaning he stamped upon the word, by repeating some\nof his axioms.\n\nHe says: \"The flush of dawn is not so lovely as the earliest\nexperiences of _gloire_. _Gloire_ makes heroes beautiful.\" Again:\n\"Nothing is so essential as renown, and nothing so surely gives renown\nas merit; these are things that reason itself has united, and why\nshould we distinguish true _gloire_ from merit, which is the source of\nit, and of which it is the proof?\" This moral union of merit, glory\nand renown, in triple splendour revolving round each other, was the\nmain object of Vauvenargues' contemplation, and he admits that the\ncentral passion of his life was \"l'amour de la gloire.\" What, then, is\nthe exact meaning of \"la Gloire,\" which the dictionaries superficially\ntranslate by \"glory,\"--a very different thing?\n\nVauvenargues starts a new conception of the value of self-esteem, or\nrather of the desire of being esteemed by others. The seventeenth\ncentury had poured its vials of contempt over the _amour-propre_ of\nmankind, and no doubt that had led to a corresponding decline in the\nenergy of the nation. Pascal had severely ridiculed the vanity which\nhe says is anchored in the heart of man, and he actually mocks at the\nidea of a desire for renown; expressing his astonishment that even\nphilosophers have the fatuity to wish for fame. Vauvenargues is\nprobably thinking of Pascal when he says that those who dilate upon\nthe inevitable nothingness of human glory would feel vexation if they\nhad to endure the open contempt of a single individual. Men are proud\nof little things--of dancing well or even of skating gracefully, or of\nstill meaner accomplishments, yet those very persons despise real\nrenown. \"But us,\" he says in one of his noble outbursts, \"but us it\nexcites to labour and virtue.\" We note, then, at once that the\n_amour-propre_ of the seventeenth century, the sentiment against which\nwe saw the most burning arrows of La Rochefoucauld directed, was not\nthe source of Vauvenargues' desire of glory; that with him renown was\nnot a matter of egotistic satisfaction, but of altruistic stimulus,\nawakening in others, by a happy rivalry, sentiments of generosity and\nself-sacrifice which might redeem society and the dying world of\nFrance. And this may perhaps at this point be observed as the centre\nof his action, namely the discovery that a wholesome desire for fame\nproceeds not from our self-satisfaction, but from our profound sense\nof emptiness, of imperfection.\n\nHow needful the lesson was, no one who examines the social history of\nthe first half of the eighteenth century can doubt. Without falling\ninto errors of a Puritanic kind, we cannot fail to see that opinion\nand action alike had become soft, irresolute, superficial; that strong\nviews of duty and piety and justice were half indulged in, half\nsneered at, and not at all acted upon. The great theologians who\nsurrounded Bossuet, the Eagle of Meaux, had died one by one, and had\nleft successors who were partly pagan, partly atheist. Art and\nliterature tripped after the flowered skirts of the emancipated\nDuchess of Maine. Looking round the world of France in 1746,\nVauvenargues could but cry, like a preacher in the wilderness, \"we\nhave fallen into decadence, into moral desuetude,\" but he cried\nwithout anger, remembering that \"still the love of _gloire_ is the\ninvisible soul of all those who are capable of any virtue.\"\n\nIt was a critical moment in the history of France. After the long and\npainful wars of Louis XIV. the army had become unpopular; it was the\nfashion to sneer at it. The common soldiers were considered, and often\nwere, the offscourings of the community. The officers, who had left\ntheir homes too soon, in most cases, to acquire the rudiments of\neducation, were bored with garrison life, and regretted Paris, which\nthey made every excuse to regain. They affected to have no curiosity\nabout military science, and to talk \"army shop\" was the worst of bad\nform. Those who were poor lived and grumbled in their squalor; those\nwho were rich gave themselves up to sinful extravagance. There was no\ninstinctive patriotism in any section of the troops. What pleasure can\na man have in being a soldier if he possesses neither talent for war,\nnor the esteem of his men, nor a taste for glory? It is Vauvenargues\nhimself, who had seen all classes of officers, who asks that question.\nFrom his \"Reflexions\" of 1746 a chapter on \"Our Armies at the Present\nMoment\" was omitted, and not published in its proper sequence until\nlong after his death. No doubt its searching exposure of the rot in\nthe military state of France was the cause of this suppression.\n\n\"Courage,\" he says in this deleted chapter of his book, \"courage,\nwhich our ancestors admired as the first of virtues, is now generally\nregarded as a popular error.\" Those few officers who still desire to\nsee their country glorious, are forced to retire into civil life\nbecause they cannot endure a condition in which there is no reward but\nshame for a man of courage and ambition.\n\nThese were prominent among the considerations which filled the mind of\nVauvenargues when, at the age of twenty-nine, he saw himself driven\nout of military life by the rapid aggravation of ill-health. His\nthoughts turned to diplomacy. He greatly admired the writings of Sir\nWilliam Temple, on whom he may have partly modelled his own style as\nan essayist; he dreamed of becoming an ambassador of the same class,\nknown, as Temple was, \"by their writings no less than by their\nimmortal actions.\" But his inexorable bad luck followed him in this\ndesign. A pathetic letter to the King remained unanswered, and so did\nanother to Amelot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs.\n\nAfter waiting a long time he wrote again to Amelot, and this second\nletter is highly characteristic of the temper and condition of\nVauvenargues--\n\n\"MONSEIGNEUR.\n\n\"I am painfully distressed that the letter which I had the honour of\nwriting to you, as well as that which I took the liberty of asking you\nto forward to the King, have not been able to arrest your attention.\nIt is not, perhaps, surprising that a minister so fully occupied as\nyou are should not find time to examine such letters; but,\nMonseigneur, will you permit me to point out to you that it is\nprecisely this moral impossibility for a gentleman, who has no claim\nbut zeal, to reach his master, which leads to that discouragement that\nis noticeable in all the country nobility, and which extinguishes all\nemulation?\n\n\"I have passed, Monseigneur, my youth far from all worldly\ndistractions, in order to prepare myself for the species of employment\nfor which it was my belief that my temperament designed me; and I was\nbold enough to think that so concentrated an effort would place me at\nleast on a level with those who depend for all their fortune upon\ntheir intrigues and upon their pleasures. It overwhelms me,\nMonseigneur, to discover that the confidence which I had based mainly\non the love of my duty, should be so disappointed. My health no longer\npermitting me to continue my services in the war, I have written to M.\nthe Duke de Biron to beg him to appoint my successor. I could not, in\na situation so piteous, refrain from informing you of my despair.\nPardon me, Monseigneur, if it has led me into any extravagance of\nexpression.\n\n\"I am, etc.\"\n\nTo this last appeal the Minister for Foreign Affairs did respond in a\nbrief and perfunctory note, promising to find an occasion of bringing\nthe talents of Vauvenargues to the notice of the King, but nothing\nresulted. Vauvenargues had been living in a dream of military glory,\nand had been thirsting to serve his country in the loftiest and most\nresponsible capacities. His very physical appearance now completed the\nbankruptcy of his wishes, for he was attacked with the smallpox, which\ndisfigured him so badly that, to use his own expression, \"it prevented\nhis soul from appearing in his features.\" Thus without fortune, or\nprofession, without hope for the future, half-blind, with gangrened\nlimbs that tottered under his feeble body, Vauvenargues started on the\nsteadily downward path which was to lead in less than four years to\nhis grave. History presents to us no more dolorous figure of physical\nand social failure, nor a more radiant example of moral success.\n\nThe alternative now presented itself of a wretched solitude in the\ncastle of his Provencal ancestors, or a garret, perhaps even more\nwretched, but certainly far less solitary, in Paris. In either case it\nwould be necessary to relinquish all the luxuries, all the comforts of\nlife. He chose to finish his suffering years in Paris, and in humble\nfurnished rooms in the street of the Peacock, where he was consoled by\nthe visits of Voltaire and Marmontel. We find him settled there in May\n1745, and seven months later there crept into circulation an anonymous\nvolume of moral essays, which was absolutely ignored by the literary\nworld of France. We do not appreciate to the full the Calvary which\nVauvenargues so meekly mounted, unless we realize that to all his\nother failures was added a complete disregard of his ideas by the\nliterary public of his own day. He died unknown, save by two or three\nfriends, having never experienced anything but languor, disappointment\nand obscurity. Under the pseudonym of Clazomene, just before his\ndeath, he drew a picture of his own fortune and character which proves\nthat he had no illusion about himself, and which yet contains not a\nmurmur against the injustice of fate nor a breath of petulance or\nresentment. \"Let no one imagine,\" this portrait closes, \"that\nClazomene would exchange his wretchedness for the prosperity of weak\nmen; fortune may sport with the wisdom of brave souls, but it has no\npower to subdue their courage.\"\n\nIt is time, however, to examine the actual compositions of our\nauthor.[18] Until his friendship with Voltaire began, Vauvenargues had\nnot given much attention to verse, but he now began a series of\ncritical essays on the poets. He says, in the course of these\n\"Reflexions,\" that what little he knew of poetry he owed to M. de\nVoltaire. His remarks on this subject, however, are more independent\nthan he would give us to suppose, and they are always worthy of\nattention because they illustrate the moral attitude of Vauvenargues\nhimself. He was not embarrassed by tradition in advancing along his\nroad through the masterpieces of literature. He was always an amateur,\nnever a man in bondage to the \"authorities;\" he seems, indeed, to have\navowed a dislike for general reading: \"Pascal avait peu lu, ainsi que\nMalebranche,\" was his excuse. In the case of Pascal, we may question\nthe fact, but it is recorded that when at last Malebranche was\npersuaded to read Descartes' \"Traite de l'homme,\" it excited him so\nviolently as to bring on palpitation of the heart. Such are the\ndangers of a retarded study of the classics. Vauvenargues was no less\ninflammable. He met with the tragedies of Racine at a moment when the\nreputation of that poet had sunk to its lowest point, and, totally\nindifferent to the censure of the academical sanhedrim, he extolled\nhim as a master-anatomist of the human heart.\n\n     [Footnote 18: The writings of Vauvenargues exist in a\n     confusion which is not likely to be ever remedied, for the\n     bulk of his MSS. were burned during the Commune in May 1871.\n     But much gratitude is owing to Suard (1806) and Gilbert\n     (1857) for their pious labours. A variorum edition might\n     even yet be attempted, and although not complete, might at\n     least be final.]\n\nIn considering the observations of Vauvenargues with regard to poets,\nwe must bear in mind that he and his contemporaries did not seek from\npoetry what we require in the twentieth century. The critics of the\nearly eighteenth century in France talked about Homer and Virgil, but\nwhat they really admired were Ariosto and Pope. Voltaire, the greatest\nof them, considered the \"epopee heroi-comique\" the top-stone of modern\npractical effort; we know what astonishing feats he was himself guilty\nof in that species of architecture. But his whole teaching and\npractice tended towards an identity of speech between prose and verse,\nthe prosodical pattern or ornament being the sole feature which\ndistinguished the latter from the former. His own poetry, when it was\nnot fugitive or satiric, was mainly philosophical, that is to say, it\ndid not stray beyond the confines of logic and wit. At the same time,\nVoltaire was an energetic protagonist for verse, and he did very much\nto prevent the abandonment of this instrument at a time when prose, in\nsuch hands as those of Montesquieu and Buffon, was manifestly in the\nascendant. He earnestly recommended the cultivation of a form in which\nprecision of thought and elegance of language were indispensable, and\nhe employed it in tragedies which we find it impossible to read, but\nwhich enchanted the ear and fancy of Vauvenargues.\n\nThe taste of the age of Louis XV. affected to admire Corneille to the\ndisadvantage of all other rivals, and Voltaire was not far from\nblaming Vauvenargues for his \"extreme predilection\" for Racine. But\nVauvenargues, with unexpected vivacity, took up the cudgels, and\naccused the divine Corneille of \"painting only the austere, stern,\ninflexible virtues,\" and of falling into the affectation of mistaking\nbravado for nobility, and declamation for eloquence. He is extremely\nsevere on the faults of the favourite tragedian, and he blames\nCorneille for preferring the gigantic to the human, and for ignoring\nthe tender and touching simplicity of the Greeks. It is from the point\nof view of the moralist that these strictures are now important; they\nshow us that Vauvenargues in his reiterated recommendation of virtue\nand military glory did not regard those qualities from the Cornelian\npoint of view, which he looked upon as fostering a pompous and falsely\n\"fastueux\" conception of life. He blamed Corneille's theatrical\nferocity in terms so severe that Voltaire called the passage \"a\ndetestable piece of criticism\" and ran his blue pencil through it. No\ndoubt the fact is that Vauvenargues saw in the rhetoric of Corneille a\nparody of his own sentiments, carried to the verge of rodomontade.\n\nThe publications of Vauvenargues during his lifetime come under two\ncategories. His \"Introduction a la Connaissance de l'Esprit Humain\" is\na short book, and it is also a fragment. The author had begun to\ncollect notes for it during his Bohemian campaign, in 1741; but \"those\npassions which are inseparable from youth, and ceaseless physical\ninfirmity, brought on by the war, interrupted my studies,\" he says.\nVoltaire has expressed his amazement that under such piteous\nconditions, Vauvenargues had the fortitude to pursue them at all.\nThere seems to be a change apparent in the object he put before him;\nhe set out, like Locke, to write an essay on the Human Understanding,\nbut he ended by putting together a chain of maxims. He quoted Pascal,\nwho had said, \"All good maxims are in the world; we have only got to\napply them,\" but though Vauvenargues takes this dictum as his text he\nrefutes it. He says that maxims originally \"good,\" in Pascal's sense,\nmay have grown sleepy in popular use, and may have ceased to act, so\nthat we ought to rid ourselves of conventional prejudice and go to the\nfountain-head, to try all spirits, in fact, and find out what spirits\nreally are of God. When Vauvenargues began to reflect, he was\nastonished at the inexactitude and even self-contradiction of the\nphilosophical language of his day. He was not, and probably never\nwould have become, what we understand now as a philosopher. He was a\nmoralist, pure and simple, and had no more relation with men like\nDescartes or Berkeley than a rousing revivalist preacher has with a\nregius professor of Theology.\n\nThe only thing which really interested Vauvenargues was the social\nduty of man, and to discover what that is he attempted to define\nmorals, politics and religion. He had an intense desire for clear\nguidance, and he waited for the heavenly spark to fall. He said to\nhimself, before he made it plain to others, that if we are not guided\nby _truth_, we fall into the pit. There was a certain childishness in\nhis attitude in this matter, for he was inclined to regard abstract\ntruth as the only one worthy of pursuit. That he was advancing in\nbreadth of view is shown by the fact that he cancelled in the second\nedition of his book a whimsical passage in which he urged people who\nwere studying conchology, to throw away their shells, asking them to\nconsider \"whether glory is but a name, virtue all a mistake, and law\nnothing else than a phantom.\" The \"Introduction\" is all written in\nthis spirit; it is a passionate appeal to the French nation to leave\nmean and trivial pursuits, and to live for pure and passionate ideals,\nfor glory gained by merit, and as the reward of solid and strenuous\neffort.\n\nVauvenargues' attitude to the English moralists has not been\nsufficiently examined. So far as is known he never visited this\ncountry, although he desired to do so. In one of his letters he speaks\nof intending to consult a famous oculist in London, but this project\nwas not carried out; his poverty doubtless prevented it. Whether he\nknew English is not certain, but he appears to have read Temple and\nLocke, possibly in the original, and a reference to a remarkable\nEnglish contemporary appears to have hitherto escaped observation. In\nthe \"Introduction a la connaissance de l'esprit humain,\" he speaks of\na writer who has argued that private vices are public benefits, and he\nattempts to show that this is a fallacy. He returns, less definitely,\nto the same line of thought in the \"Discours sur la gloire,\" where he\ndenies that vice has any part in stimulating social action. It is\nstrange that no one, so far as I know, has observed this proof that\nVauvenargues was acquainted with the celebrated paradox of Bernard\nMandeville, whose \"Fable of the Bees\" was in 1747 continuing to cause\nso scandalous a sensation, and was still so completely misunderstood.\nThere seems, occasionally, a trace of the idealism of Shaftesbury in\nthe colour of Vauvenargues' phrase, but on this it would be dangerous\nto insist.\n\nHis own views, however, were more emphatically defined, and more\ndirectly urged, in the other contribution to literature published by\nVauvenargues in his lifetime, the \"Reflexions sur divers sujets.\" Here\nhe abandons the attempt at forming a philosophical system, and admits\nthat his sole object is \"to form the hearts and the manners\" of his\nreaders. Perhaps the most penetrating of all his sentences is that in\nwhich he says: \"If you possess any passion which you feel to be noble\nand generous, be sure you foster it.\" This was diametrically opposed\nto all the teaching of the seventeenth-century moralists who had\npreceded him, and also had taught us that we should mistrust our\npassions and disdain our enthusiasms. To see how completely\nVauvenargues rejected the Christian doctrine of the utter decrepitude\nand hopeless inherent badness of the human mind, we have but to gather\nsome of his sparse thoughts together. He says, in defiance of Pascal\nand the Jansenists, \"Mankind is the only source of our happiness,\noutside that there is nothing.\" Again, \"As it is the heart, in most\npeople, that doubts, so when once the heart is converted, all is done;\nit leads them along the path to virtue.\" He deprecated the constant\nchecking and blaming of children which was part of the system of\neducation then in vogue; he declared that it sapped the confidence of\nthe young, their inherent sense of virtue; and he exclaimed, \"Why does\nno one dream of training children to be original, bold and\nindependent?\"\n\nThose who knew Vauvenargues recognized in the purity and sweetness and\nseverity of his teaching the record of his own conduct. Marmontel\nspeaks of the \"tender veneration\" with which all the more serious of\nhis early comrades in the army regarded him. In his works we trace the\nresult of a curious thing, experience superseding, taking the place\nof, education. \"He observed the weaknesses of mankind before he had\ntime to reflect upon their duties,\" says a contemporary. His mind,\nalthough assaulted by such a crowd of disadvantages, remained calm,\nand free from prejudice; remained gently indulgent to human weakness\non the one hand, rigid in allegiance to his ideal pursuit of \"la\ngloire\" on the other. The noble movements of his mind were native, not\nacquired, and he had not been hardened or exasperated by the pressure\nof a mortifying theology. He does not take so exalted or so pitiless\nan attitude as the classic seventeenth-century moralist. Pascal\nscourges the mass of humanity down a steep place into the sea;\nVauvenargues takes each wanderer by the hand, and leads him along the\nprimrose path.\n\nA singular charm in the French character lies in its gift for\ncomposite action. Frenchmen prefer marching towards victory in a body\nto a scattered effort of individual energy. It was part of the\nconstructive genius of Vauvenargues to find the aim and joy of life in\na combination of sentiment and action, in a community of rivals\namiably striving for the crown with fellowmen of like instincts and of\nlike experience. He was of all moralists the least solitary; he had\nspent his life as a soldier among soldiers, among those who did their\nbest, in the midst of hardships, to live a life of pleasure without\nreflection. He was no prig, but he had formed the habit of giving\nfatherly counsel which was much beyond his years. He observes that\n\"the advice of old men is like winter sunshine that gives out light\nwithout warmth,\" but that the words of a wise and genial young man may\nradiate heat and glow. His own advice, given first to his\nfellow-officers, then to a circle of literary friends, then to France\nso long as her classic literature finds readers, was identical. He\nhated conscientious subterfuges which equalize good and evil. He looked\nupon \"gloire\" and \"vertu\" as the two great motive forces of a sane and\nbeneficent life. In this he was unique; Voltaire notes that\nVauvenargues soared, in an age of mediocrities, _un siecle des\npetitesses_, by his refusal to adopt the spirit of the world. He was a\npuritan of the intelligence, and for the ideal of Sully or Villars he\nput up the ideal of Oliver Cromwell.\n\nThe moral grandeur and spiritual force of Vauvenargues' philosophy\ndemanded in the disciple a constant exercise of energy and will. Faith\ninspired by effort was to be pursued through sacrifice to the utmost\nlimits of endurance, and with no ultimate reward but _gloire_. This\nwas, however, modified, as it is in the most strenuous direction of\ncharacter in the Frenchmen of to-day, by an illuminating humanity.\nLofty as was the aim of Vauvenargues, nothing could have been more\ntender than his practice. We are told that the expression in the eyes\nof a sick animal, the moan of a wounded deer in the forest, moved him\nto compassion. He carried this tolerance into human affairs, for he\nwas pre-eminently a human being; \"the least of citizens has a right to\nthe honours of his country.\" He set a high moral value on courtesy,\nand exposed, as a fallacy, the pretence that to be polite is to lack\nsincerity. His disposition was easy-going, although his intellect was\nsuch a high-flyer; in pagan times he would have believed in ridiculous\ndivinities rather than set himself up as an atheist. He did not\nbelieve that excess of knowledge gives firmness to the judgment, and\nhe remarks that the opulence of learned men often leads to more errors\nthan the poverty of those who depend on the native virtues of instinct\nand experience. He has phrases which seem meant to condemn the\nmechanical emptiness of the modern German system of _kultur_.\n\nFull of ardour for all that is beautiful and good, tortured by disease\nand pinched by poverty, but never allowing his personal misfortunes to\naffect his view of life, or to cloud his vision of the trinity of\nheavenly lights, _merite_, _vertu_, _gloire_, Vauvenargues pursued his\npainful life in the Street of the Peacock. He knew his feebleness, but\nhe refused to let it depress him; \"labour to get _gloire_ is not\nlost,\" he said, \"if it tends to make us worthy of it.\" In his curious\nmixture of simplicity and acuteness, in his gravity and ardour, he was\nmorally just like the best types which this great war has produced, he\nis like Paul Lintier in France, like Julian Grenfell among ourselves,\nmeeting the worst blows of fate with serenity and almost with ecstasy,\nwith no shadow of indignation or rebellion. Some posthumous\nreflections have let us into the secret that, as the shadows darkened\naround him, he occasionally gave way, if not to despair, yet to\ndepression, and permitted himself to wonder whether all his effort in\nthe cause of manliness and virtue had been useless. He had not\nawakened the sleepers in France; he doubted that his voice would ever\nreach them; he asked himself whether all his effort had not been in\nvain. This was the natural inner weakness consequent on his physical\nstate; he gave no outward sign of it. Marmontel, who watched his last\nhours with enthusiastic affection, says that, \"In his company we\nlearned how to live,--and how to die.\" He lay like Socrates,\nsurrounded by his friends, talking and listening to the last; he\nastonished them by the eloquence and gravity of his discourse. His\nlatest recorded utterance was, \"Fortune may sport with the wisdom of\nthose who are courageous, but it has no power to bend their courage.\"\nGently but firmly refusing the importunities of the Church,\nVauvenargues was released from his life-in-death on May 28, 1747, in\nhis thirty-second year.\n\nYou will not find in the pages of Vauvenargues a distinct revival of\nthat passion for the very soil of France, \"la terre sainte, la douce\nFrance,\" which inspired the noble \"Chanson de Roland\" and has been so\nstrongly accentuated in the recent struggle for Alsace-Lorraine. But\nhe recalled to the memory of a generation which had grown densely\nmaterial the forgotten ideal of France as the champion of chivalry. We\nmust not forget that we possess in the writings of Vauvenargues merely\nthe commencements of reflection, the first fruit of a life which was\nbroken before its summer was complete. But we find in his teaching,\nand in that of no other moralist of the early eighteenth century, the\ninsistence on spiritual courage as the necessary opposite to brutal\nforce and mere materialism. He connected that high ambition, that\ncraving for _la gloire_, with all pure and elevated things, with the\nart and literature, with the intelligence and beauty of the French\ncreative mind. He recommended, in that gray hour of European dulness,\na fresh ornament to life, a scarlet feather, a _panache_, as our\nFrench friends say. And the gay note that he blew from his battered\nclarion was still sounding last year in the heroic resistance of the\nforts of Verdun.\n\n\n\n\n                        THE GALLANTRY OF FRANCE\n\n\nThe spirit displayed by the young French officers in this war deserves\nto be compared in many essential respects with that which is blazoned\nin the glorious \"Chanson de Roland.\" It is interesting to remember\nthat during the long years in which the direct influence of that\ngreatest of medieval epics was obscured, it was chiefly known through\nthe paraphrase of it executed in German by the monk Konrad in the\ntwelfth century. Many years ago, Gaston Paris pointed out the curious\nfact that Konrad completely modified the character of the \"Chanson de\nRoland\" by omitting all expressions of warlike devotion to \"la douce\nFrance,\" and by concentrating the emotion of the poem on its religious\nsentiment. But the real theme of the \"Chanson de Roland,\" as we know\nnow, was the passionate attachment of the heroes to the soil of\nFrance; \"ils etaient pousses par l'amour de la patrie, de l'empereur\nfrancais leur seigneur, de leur famille, et surtout de la gloire.\"\n\nIt is a remarkable instance of German \"penetration\" that in the\nparaphrase of the \"Chanson de Roland\" which Germany so long foisted\nupon Europe, these elements were successfully effaced. There was a\nsort of poetical revenge, therefore, in the attitude of those who\nanswered the challenge of Germany in the true spirit of Roland and\nOliver.\n\nWe have seen that Vauvenargues--to whose memory the mind incessantly\nreverts in contemplation of the heroes of this war--says in one of his\n\"Maximes\"--written nearly two centuries ago--\"The earliest days of\nspring have less charm than the budding virtue of a young man.\" No\nfigure of 1914 exemplifies this quality of grace more surprisingly\nthan Jean Allard (who called himself in literature Meeus). He was only\ntwenty-one and a half when he was killed at Pierrepont, at the very\nbeginning of the war, but he was already one of the promising figures\nof his generation. Allard was looked upon as an incipient Admirable\nCrichton; he was a brilliant scholar, an adroit and multiform athlete,\nthe soul of wit and laughter, the centre of a group of adoring\nadmirers. This sparkling poet was suddenly transformed by the\ndeclaration of war into the sternest of soldiers. His poem, called\n\"Demain,\" created, or rather expressed, the patriotic passion which\nwas simultaneously evoked all over France; it is really a lesser\n\"Marseillaise.\" Not less popular, but more elaborate and academic, is\nAllard's aviation poem, \"Plus haut toujours!\"--an extraordinary vision\nof the flight and ecstasy and tragic death of a solitary airman. We\nmay notice that in this, and many other verses describing recent\ninventions of science, the young French poets contrive to be very\nlucid and simple in their language, and to avoid that display of\ntechnical verbiage which deforms too many English experiments in the\nsame class.\n\nIt is not, however, so much by his writings, which are now collected\nin two, or perhaps three, little volumes, that Allard-Meeus strikes\nthe imagination of a foreign spectator, as by his remarkable attitude.\nFrom the first, this lad of twenty-one exemplified and taught the\nvalue of a chivalrous behaviour. In the face of events, in that\ncorruption of all which could make the martial spirit seem noble, that\nGermany has forced upon the world, this attitude of young French\nofficers at the very opening of the war is pathetic, and might even\nlend itself, if we were disposed for mirth, to an ironic smile. But it\nshould be recorded and not forgotten. It was Allard who revived the\netiquette of going to battle dressed as sprucely as for a wedding. We\nshall do well to recollect the symbolic value which the glove holds in\nlegends of medieval prowess. When the dying Roland, under the\npine-trees, turns to the frontier of Spain, he offers, as a dying\nsoldier, his glove to God--\n\n\"_Pur ses pecchiez deu puroftrid son guant_.\"\n\nAllard-Meeus at St. Cyr made all the young officers swear that they\nwould not go into battle except in white gloves and with their _kepi_\nadorned with the _casoar_, the red and white dress-plume. \"Ce serment,\nbien francais, est aussi elegant que temeraire,\" he said, and the rest\nfollowed him with acclamation. He was one of the first French officers\nto fall in battle, at the head of his infantry, and his mother was\npresented by the regiment with his _casoar_ and his gloves, worn at\nthe moment of his death, on August 22, 1914, and stained with his\nblood. Allard offers a fugitive but typical specimen of the splendour\nof French sentiment in the first flush of its enthusiasm.\n\nOn March 26, 1917, the Societe des Gens de Lettres in Paris held a\nsolemn assembly under the presidency of M. Pierre Decourcelle to\ncommemorate those authors who, during the present war, have fallen in\nthe service of France. Touching and grave in the extreme was the\nscene, when, before a crowded and throbbing audience, the secretary\nread the name of one young writer after another, pausing for the\npresident to respond by the words \"Mort au champ d'honneur!\" In each\ncase there followed a brief silence more agitating in its emotion than\nany eloquence could be.\n\nThe great number of young men of high intellectual promise who were\nkilled early in this war is a matter for grave and painful reflection.\nEspecially in the first months of the autumn of 1914 the holocaust was\nterrible. There was no restraining the ardour of the young, who sought\ntheir death in a spirit of delirious chivalry, each proud to be the\nIphigenia or the Jephtha's Daughter of a France set free. It has been\nnoted since that the young generation, born about 1890, had been\nprepared for the crisis in a very significant way. The spiritual\ncondition of these grave and magnificent lads resembled nothing that\nhad been seen before, since the sorrows of 1870. They gave the\nimpression of being dedicated. As we now read their letters, their\njournals, their poems, we are astonished at the high level of moral\nsentiment which actuated them all. There is often even a species of\nrapturous detachment which seems to lift them into a higher sphere\nthan that of vain mortality. Examples might be given by the sheaf, but\nit suffices here to quote a letter from the youthful Leo Lantil, who\nwas killed early in 1915, in one of the obscure battles of Champagne.\nHe says, in writing to his parents, shortly before his death, \"All our\nsacrifice will be of sweet savour if it leads to a really glorious\nvictory and brings more light to human souls.\" It was this Leo Lantil,\ndying in his twenty-fifth year, whose last words were \"Priez pour la\nFrance, travaillez pour la France, haussez-la!\"\n\nA story is told by M. Henri Bordeaux which illustrates the impression\nmade by these young soldiers. A peasant of Savoy, while ploughing his\nfields in the autumn of 1914, saw his wife crossing to him with the\nlocal postman, who had a letter in his hands. He took it from them,\nand put on his spectacles, and read that his two sons had been killed\nin an engagement in the Vosges. He said quietly, \"God has found them\nready,\" and then, slowly, \"My poor wife!\" and he returned to his yoke\nof oxen. It would seem that the French accepted, without reserve and\nwithout difficulty, an inward discipline for which the world had\nformed little conception of their readiness. There is no question now,\nsince all the private letters and diaries prove it, that the\ngeneration which had just left college, and had hardly yet gone out\ninto the world, had formed, unsuspected by their elders, a conception\nof life which might have been called fatalistic if it had not been so\nrigorously regulated by a sense of duty. They were singularly calm\nunder a constant presentiment of death. When the war came, they\naccepted the fiery trial not merely with resignation, but even with\nrelief. Their athletic stoicism took what fortune offered them,\ninstead of attempting to rebel against it. Their sentiment was that a\ndifficulty had been settled. Life had been producing upon their\nconsciences a sense of complication, a tangle of too many problems.\nNow they might, and did, cheerfully relinquish the effort to solve\nthem. One of the most extraordinary features of the moral history of\nthe young French officers in this war has been the abandonment of\ntheir will to the grace of God and the orders of the chief. In the\nletters of the three noble brothers Belmont, who fell in rapid\nsuccession, this apprenticeship to sacrifice is remarkable, but it\nrecurs in all the records. \"God found them ready!\"\n\nWhen all is of so inspired an order of feeling, it is difficult, it is\neven invidious, to select. But the figure of Paul Lintier, whose\njournals have been piously collected by M. Edmond Haraucourt, stands\nout before us with at least as much saliency as any other. We may take\nhim as a peculiarly lucent example of his illuminated class.\nQuartermaster Lintier died on March 15, 1916, struck by a shell, on\nthe Lorraine frontier, at a place called Jeandelincourt. He had not\nyet completed his twenty-third year, for he was born at Mayenne on May\n13, 1893. In considering the cases of many of these brilliant and\nsympathetic young French officers, who had already published or have\nleft behind them works in verse and prose, there may be a disposition,\nin the wonderful light of their experience, to exaggerate the positive\nvalue of their productions. Not all of them, of course, have\ncontributed, or would have contributed, durable additions to the store\nof the literature of France. We see them, excusably, in the rose-light\nof their sunset. But, for this very reason, we are inclined to give\nthe closer attention to Paul Lintier, who not only promised well but\nadequately fulfilled that promise. It seems hardly too much to say\nthat the revelation of a prose-writer of the first class was brought\nto the world by the news of his death.\n\nHis early training predicted nothing of romance. He was intended for a\ncareer in commerce, but, showing no aptitude for trade, he dallied\nwith legal studies at Lyons, and \"commenced author\" by publishing some\nessays in that city. At the age of twenty he joined a regiment of\nartillery, and seems to have perceived, a year before the war, that\nthe only profession he was fitted for was soldiering. Towards the\nclose of September 1914, in circumstances which he recounts in his\nbook, he was severely wounded; he went back to the front in July 1915,\nand, as we have said, fell fighting eight months later. This is the\nhistory of a young man who will doubtless live in the annals of French\nliterature; and brief as it seems, it is really briefer still, since\nall we know of Paul Lintier, or are likely ever to know, is what he\ntells us himself in describing what he saw and practised and endured\nbetween August 1 and September 22, 1914. This wonderful book, \"Ma\nPiece,\" was written by the young gunner, night after night, on his\nknee, during seven weeks of inconceivable intensity of emotion, and it\nis by this revelation of his genius that his memory will be preserved.\n\nThe style of Paul Lintier is one of the miracles of art. There is no\nevidence that this youth had studied much or had devoted himself to\nany of the training which adequate expression commonly demands. We\nknow nothing about him until he suddenly bursts upon us, in the\nturmoil of mobilization, as a finished author. What strikes a critical\nreader of \"Ma Piece,\" as distinguishing it from other works of its\nclass, is a certain intellectual firmness most remarkable in a lad of\nLintier's age, suddenly confronted by such a frenzy of public action.\nThere is no pessimism, and no rhetoric, and no touch of humour, but an\nobsession for the truth. This is displayed by another and an extremely\npopular recent publication, \"En Campagne,\" by M. Marcel Dupont, which\nexhibits exactly the same determination to exaggerate nothing and to\nreduce nothing, but to report exactly what the author saw with his own\neyes, in that little corner of the prodigious battle-field in which\nhis own regiment was fighting. Truth, the simple unvarnished truth,\nhas been the object of these various writers in setting down their\nimpressions, but the result exemplifies the difference between what\nis, and what is not, durable as literature. For this purpose, it is\nwell to turn from Lintier's pages to those of the honest writers of\nwhom Dupont is the type, and then back again to Lintier. All evoke,\nthrough intense emotion, most moving and most tragic sensations, but\nLintier, gifted with some inscrutable magic, evokes them in the\natmosphere of beauty.\n\nA quality of the mind of Paul Lintier which marked him out for a place\nabove his fellows was the prodigious exactitude of his memory. This\nwas not merely visual, but emotional as well. Not only did it retain,\nwith the precision of a photograph, all the little fleeting details of\nthe confused and hurried hours in which the war began, but it kept a\nminute record of the oscillation of feeling. Those readers who take a\npleasure in the technical parts of writing may enjoy an analysis of\ncertain pages in \"Ma Piece,\" for instance, the wonderful description\nof an _alerte_ at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp.\n131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may\ncompare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to\nform such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes\n(August 14, 1914):--\"La nuit est claire, rayee par les feux des\nprojecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel;\nmerveilleuse nuit de mi-aout, infiniment constellee, egayee d'etoiles\nfilantes qui laissent apres elles de longues phosphorescences.\n\n\"La lune s'est levee. Elle perce mal les feuillages denses des\npruniers et le cantonnement immobile reste sombre. Ca et la,\nseulement, elle fait des taches jaunes sur l'herbe et sur les croupes\ndes chevaux qui dorment debout. Le camarade avec qui je partage cette\nnuit de garde est etendu dans son manteau au pied d'un grand poirier.\nDevant moi, la lune illumine la plaine. Les prairies sont voilees de\ngaze blanche. Les deux armees, tous feux eteints, dorment ou se\nguettent.\"\n\nLintier has no disposition to make things out better than they were.\nHis account of the defeat at Virton, on August 22, is grave and calm\nin its sad stoicism, it is even harsh in its refusal to overlook any\nof the distressing features of the affair. But hope rises in his heart\nlike clear water in a troubled well, and it is just after this\nmelancholy set-back that the noble French spirit most vividly asserts\nitself. In the very forefront of physical and moral misery, \"quelle\nemouvante comprehension de la Patrie s'est revelee a nous!\" An army\nwhich is instantly and completely victorious can never experience the\ndepth of this sentiment. It is necessary to have fought, to have\nsuffered, to have feared (if only for a moment) that all was lost, in\norder to comprehend with passion what the mother-country means to a\nman. Lying in the fog, soaked with rain, at the edge of the copses\nfrom which the German guns had ejected them, it was at that wretched\nmoment that the full apprehension came to Paul Lintier that France\ncomprised for him all the charm of life, all the affections, all the\njoys of the eyes and the heart and the brain. \"Alors, on prefere\ntomber, mourir la, parce qu'on sent que la France perdue, ce serait\npire que la mort.\" This is a feeling which animates the darkest pages\nof his book--and many of them perforce are gloomy; through all the\nconfusion and doubt, the disquietude, the physical dejection, the\nsense of a kind of blind-man's buff intolerably wearisome and\nfatiguing--through all this, which the young author does not seek to\nconceal, there runs the ceaseless bright thread of hope sustained by\nlove.\n\nFor us English the book has a curious interest in its unlikeness to\nanything which an English lad of twenty would have dreamed of writing.\nIt strikes an English reader, in comparison with the equally gallant\nand hardly less picturesque records which some of our own young\nofficers have produced, as extraordinarily \"grown up.\" The new\ngeneration which France sent into the war of defence was more simple\nand more ardent at the outset than our own analogous generation was.\nIt was less dilettante and more intellectual. The evidences of\nthought, of reasoned reflection carried out to its full extent, of an\nadequate realization of the problems presented by life, are manifest,\nthough in various degree, in all these records of French officers\nkilled in the months which preceded Christmas 1914. These Frenchmen\ndid not go out light-heartedly, nor with a pathetic inability to\nfathom the purpose for which they so generously went, but they had\ngiven the matter a study which seemed beyond their years. They marched\nto the blood-baths of Belgium and Lorraine with solemnity, as though\nto a sacrament.\n\nIt must be remarked as an interesting point that this generation had\nrecovered a sense of the spirituality of a war of national defence. In\nsimpler words, it had recovered that honest pride which France, in\ncertain of its manifestations since the war of 1870, seemed to have\nlamentably lost. Posterity will compare the serene simplicity of Peguy\nand Lintier with the restlessness and bitter disenchantment of the\n1880 generation, which arrived at manhood just when France was most\ndeeply conscious of her humiliation. If we seek for the sources of\nthis recovery of self-respect, which so beautifully characterized\nFrench character at the immediate crisis of 1914, we have to find it,\nof course, in the essential elasticity of the trained French mind. The\nFrenchman likes the heroic attitude, which is unwelcome to us, and he\nadopts it instinctively, with none of our national shyness and false\nmodesty. But, if we seek for a starting-point of influence, we may\nprobably find it in the writings of a soldier whose name is scarcely\nknown in England, but whose \"Etudes sur le Combat,\" first published in\n1880, have been the text-book of the young French officer, and were\nnever being so much read as just before the outbreak of the war.\n\nThe author of these \"Etudes sur le Combat\" was Colonel Ardent du Picq,\nwho fell at the battle of Longeville-les-Metz, on August 15, 1870. He\nhad predicted the calamity of that war, which he attributed to the\nmental decadence of the French army, and to the absence of any\nadequate General Staff organization. Ardent du Picq had received no\nencouragement from within or from without, and the reforms which he\nnever ceased to advocate were treated as the dreams of an eccentric\nidealist. He died, unrecognized, without having lived to see carried\nout one of the reforms which he had so persistently advocated. His\ntongue was rough and his pen was dipped in acid; the military critic\nwho ridiculed the \"buffooneries\" of his generals and charged his\nfellow-officers with trying to get through their day's work with as\nlittle trouble to themselves as possible, was not likely to carry much\nweight at the close of the Second Empire. But the scattered papers of\nthe forgotten Colonel Ardent du Picq were preserved, and ten years\nafter his death a portion of them was published. Every scrap which\ncould be found of the work of so fruitful a military thinker was\npresently called for, and at the moment of the outbreak of the present\nwar the \"Etudes sur le Combat\" had become the text-book of every\npunctilious young officer. It is still unknown how much of the\nmagnificent effort of 1914 was not due to the shade of Ardent du Picq.\nAlthough the name of that author does not occur in the pages of \"Ma\nPiece,\" we are constrained to believe that Lintier had been, like so\nmany young men of his class, an infatuated student of the \"Etudes.\" He\nhad comprehended the essence of military vitality and the secret of\nmilitary grandeur. He had perceived the paramount importance of moral\nforce in contending with formidable hostile organizations. Ardent du\nPicq, who possessed the skill of his nation in the manufacture of\nmaxims, laid it down that \"Vaincre, c'est d'etre sur de la victoire.\"\nHe assented to the statement that it was a spiritual and not a\nmechanical ascendancy which had gained battles in the past and must\ngain them in the future. Very interesting it is to note, in the\ndelicately scrupulous record of the mind and conscience of Paul\nLintier, how, side by side with this uplifted patriotic confidence,\nthe weakness of the flesh makes itself felt. At Tailly, full of the\nhope of coming battle, waiting in the moonlit forest for the sound of\napproaching German guns, suddenly the heroism drops from him, and he\nmurmurs the plaintive verses of the old poet Joachim du Bellay to the\necho of \"Et je mourrai peut-etre demain!\" The delicate sureness with\nwhich he notes these changes of mood is admirable; and quickly the\ndepression passes: \"vite notre extraordinaire insouciance l'emporte,\net puis, jamais heure a-t-elle ete plus favorable a la revanche?\"\n\nIn defining the particular principles which have actuated the\nmagnificent French General Staff in the present crisis, Lord Haldane\nhas dwelt on the fact that the French have displayed throughout \"that\nmoral effect which comes from certainty of purpose and which only\nconcentrated thought can give.\" The value which the higher authority\nsets on the cultivation of moral enthusiasm is exemplified by the fact\nthat the French Ministry of War has encouraged the publication of\nthose personal records, from which we have here made a selection, on\nthe ground that they carry throughout the army a contagion of energy\nand courage. We are far here from the obscure jealousy of thought\nwhich made a military representative of the British War Office the\nother day lay down the brilliant axiom \"A hairdresser is of more value\nto the country at war than a librarian!\" Such a man could not exist in\na French community, where, at the very height of hostilities, so\nprominent a military authority as Colonel Emile Manceau could pause to\nsay, \"Let us read, let us give much time to reading!\" It is a curious\nreflection that the present struggle has been, for the French, the\nmost literary of all wars, the one in which the ordered expression of\nclear thought in language has been most carefully and consciously\ncultivated.\n\nThis was very far from being the case with the war of 1870, when the\nabsence of literature was strongly felt during and after the crisis.\nThe old satirist of the \"Iambes,\" Auguste Barbier, wrote, immediately\nafter the declaration of peace, a poem in which he rehearsed the\nincidents of the war, and commented on the absence from the list of\nits victims of a single distinguished writer. He said--\n\n_\"La Muse n'a pas vu tomber un seul poete_,\"\n\nand it was out of any one's power to refute the sinister and prosaic\nverse. The contrast with 1914 is painful and striking. In the existing\nwar the holocaust of victims, poets and historians, painters and\nsculptors, musicians and architects, has been heartrending, and it can\nnever in future years be pretended that the Muses have this time\nspared us their most poignant sacrifices. A year ago the _Revue\nCritique_, one of the most serious and original of the learned\njournals of Paris, announced the losses it had endured. It was\nconducted by a staff of forty scholars; by the summer of 1916 this\nnumber was reduced by twenty-seven; thirteen had been killed, eleven\nseverely wounded, three had disappeared.\n\nMany writers have asked, and M. Maurice Barres prominently among them,\nwhat is the reason of the fact that intelligence has taken a front\nplace in this war? What has been the source of the spirit of\nself-immolation which has driven the intellectual and imaginative section\nof French youth to hold out both hands to catch the full downpour of\nthe rain of death? There is no precedent for it in French history, and\nwe may observe for ourselves how new a thing it was, and how\nunexpected, by comparing with the ardent and radiant letters and poems\nof the youngest generation the most patriotic expressions of their\nelders. A single example may suffice. No man of letters has given a\nnobler witness to the truth of his patriotism than Colonel Patrice\nMahon, known in letters as Art Roe. His novels, which dealt largely\nwith modern Russian life, in relation with the French army, were\nvirile and elevated productions, but he was a man of fifty at the time\nof his heroic death at the head of his troops, in the battle of\nWisembach (August 22, 1914), and his tone was not that of such young\nmen as Camille Violand and Marcel Drouet. To read again the \"Pingot et\nmoi\" of Art Roe is to return to a book of the utmost sincerity and\nvalour, but it was published in 1893, and there is no touch of the\nsplendour of 1914 about it.\n\nA figure which stands midway between the generation of Art Roe and\nthat of the adolescent comrades of a new Sophocles of whom we shall\npresently speak, is Captain E.J. Detanger, who seems to be\ntransitional, and to share the qualities of both. This name has, even\nnow, scarcely grown familiar to the eye and ear, but it proves to have\nbeen the real name of Emile Nolly, whose romances of modern life in\nthe Extreme East had been widely read just before the war. Nolly's\nearliest books, \"Hien le Maboul\" and \"La Barque Annamite\" (but\nparticularly the latter), gave promise of a new Pierre Loti or a new\nRudyard Kipling, but totally distinct in manner from both. Detanger\nwas just thirty-four when the war broke out, and he was one of its\nearly victims, dying at Blainville-sur-l'Eau on September 5. He\ngreatly distinguished himself by his personal bravery, and the cross\nof the Legion of Honour was pinned to his blood-stained uniform on his\nlast battle-field. The tribute of a fellow-officer to this devoted man\nof letters may be quoted here. It is an example of the sudden and\ncomplete transformation which turned artists into soldiers at the\nfirst sound of the bugle:--\n\n\"Emile Nolly proved a magnificent soldier. He had a youthful, blithe,\nfervent and resolute soul; he had the soul of a hero completely\nprepared to sacrifice himself with joy for his country. After having\nserved valiantly and brilliantly in Indo-China, and then in Morocco,\nit was with a radiant hope that he set out for the frontier of\nLorraine. 'What does the life of any one of us matter?' he said to me\njust before he left. 'All that is essential is that France should\nlive, that she should be victorious.'\"\n\nMarcel Drouet, who has just been mentioned, was much younger. He was a\nnative of the invaded department of the Ardennes, and had not\ncompleted his twenty-sixth year when he was killed in the trenches of\nConsenvoye, in the Woevre, when he was taking part in the outer\ndefence of Verdun. He seems to have been distinguished by a refinement\nof spirit, which is referred to, in different terms, by every one who\nhas described him. He leaves behind him a volume of poems, \"L'Ombre\nqui tourne,\" and various essays and fragments. The journal of the last\ndays of his life has been edited by M. Maurice Barres, and is a record\nof singular delicacy and courage. We see him facing the dreadful\ncircumstances of the war, made the more dreadful to him because the\nhorrors are committed in the midst of the familiar scenes of his own\nhome, and we find him patiently waiting for the signal to lead his men\ninto action while he holds a volume of Chateaubriand open upon his\nknee. The reflections of Marcel Drouet differ in some respects from\nthose of his most enthusiastic companions. There is a note of\ntenderness in them which is unusual, and which is very pathetic. At\nthe very close of his brief and heroic life, the thoughts of Drouet\nreverted to the historic town in which he was born, to Sedan which\nstill shuddered in his infancy at the recollection of the horrors of\n1870. He thought of the dead who fell on that melancholy field; and\nthen his thoughts turned to those dear faces which he had so recently\nleft behind. The following passage, in its simplicity, in its\nsweetness, deserves to live in the memorial literature of the war:--\n\n\"Je pense a vous, mes chers vivants, aux mains des barbares en ce\nmoment sans doute, mais en le coeur de qui j'ai foi, tant je connais\nvotre devouement aux choses sublimes.\n\n\"Mais aussi je pense a vous, mon Dieu, qui avez voulu toutes ces\nchoses pour votre plus grand gloire et pour l'etablissement de votre\njustice. Tous ces malheurs, ces tristesses, tout ce sang repandu sont\nimposes par vous, mon Dieu, en maniere de redemption. Mais votre\nsoleil glorieux eclairera bientot, j'en suis absolument certain, la\nvictoire du bon droit qui attend depuis pres d'un demi-siecle. J'y\ncoopere de toutes mes forces, de toute mon ame. Et si vous me retirez\nde ce monde, o Dieu de bonte, permettez que ce soit pour me joindre a\nceux qui m'out precede dans votre sejour, et dont l'affection\nterrestre me fut precieuse. C'est toute la priere ardente que je fais\ndevant le soleil levant, ce jour de Toussaint que sillonnent deja les\nobus semeurs de mort, en cette annee 1914 qui verra retablir la paix\ndu monde, par l'aneantissement du peuple barbare, et la regenerescence\nde la nation francaise.\"\n\nIn most cases there rests an obscurity over the brief lives of these\ngallant young officer-authors, whose nature was little observed until\nthe flash of battle illuminated them for one last brilliant moment. We\nfeel a strong desire, which cannot be gratified, to follow them from\ntheir childhood to their adolescence, and to see for ourselves what\nimpulses directed them into the path of heroism. It is rarely that we\ncan do this, but one of these poets has left behind him two friends\nwho have recaptured the faint and shrouded impressions of his early\nlife. The piety of M. Henri Albert Besnard, who was his intimate\ncompanion, and of that practised narrator M. Henri Bordeaux, who is\nhis biographer, enable us to form a clearer and fuller conception of\nCamille Violand than of any of his compeers. Born in 1891, he was\ntypical of that latest generation of which we have spoken, in whom all\nseemed to be unconsciously preparing for the great and critical\nsacrifice. He was born at Lyons, but was brought up in the Quercy,\nthat wild and tortured district just north of the Pyrenees, where\nnature seems to gather together all that she possesses of the\ngrotesque and violent in landscape; but he was educated at Alencon,\nand trained at Vouziers, in the midst of the orchards of Normandy.\nThus both sides of France, the Midi and the Manche, were equally known\nto him, but the ceaseless peregrinations which he underwent, so far\nfrom enlarging his horizon, seem to have plunged his soul in\nmelancholy. At the age of twenty he struck M. Bordeaux as being the\ntypical _deracine._\n\nThe letters of Camille Violand and the memories of his friends present\nto us the record of a vague and uneasy boyhood. He began quite early\nto exercise his mind in prose and verse, but without energy or aim. He\nwas not fixed in any plan of life. His letters--for he wrote with\nabundance, and something undefined seems to have induced his family to\nkeep his letters--are steeped in sombre and objectless melancholy. He\nwas tormented by presentiments of misfortune; he indulged a kind of\nromantic valetudinarianism. In the confusion of his spirit as he\npassed uneasily from boyhood into manhood, the principal moral quality\nwe perceive is a peevish irritation at the slow development of life.\nHe was just twenty-one when the death of his mother, to whom he was\npassionately attached, woke him out of this paralyzed condition, and\nit is remarkable that, in breaking, like a moth from a chrysalis, out\nof his network of futile and sterile sophisms, it was immediately on\nthe contingency of war that he fixed his thoughts. The news of his\nmother's death, by a strange and rapid connexion of ideas, reminded\nhim of his future responsibility as an officer in the coming struggle.\nHe wrote, in 1913, \"Je m'effraie en pensant a cette responsabilite qui\npesera certainement un jour sur moi, car je considere la guerre comme\na peu pres certaine a bref delai.\"\n\nHaving once formed this conviction, a complete revolution affected the\ncharacter of the young Violand. His melancholy ceased; his uncertainty\nfell from him; it seemed as though his soul threw off her fetters.\nFrom the close of 1913, when the chancelleries of Europe were still\nprofoundly unconscious of the tremendous upheaval which was in store\nfor them, this young man, hitherto so timorous and irresolute, is seen\nto be filled with a species of prophetic ecstasy:--\n\n     _\"The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness!\n     The vaporous exultation not to be confined!\n     .........the animation of delight\n     Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,\n     And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind\"_\n\nThis remarkable change of character was encouraged by the military\ndiscipline which now regulated his life, and which he accepted with\nrapture and devotion. His mother's one aim had been to make of Camille\na soldier and a Christian, and he became the very type of that\ncombination.\n\nTo use a striking phrase of M. Henri Bordeaux, the war found Camille\nVioland in a state of preparedness. He saw it arrive, not with anxiety\nor trepidation, but with solemn joy. His father was placed in command\nof a brigade of dragoons, and he himself, at another part of the\nfrontier line, was given the rank of second lieutenant and a command\nwhich filled him with the pride of responsibility. Three weeks later\nhe was wounded in the head at the battle of Virton, but not until he\nhad seen the Germans, after a hard fight, retire before the attack of\nhis men. \"Il a connu l'ivresse de la victoire: il a vu fuir\nl'ennemi\"--so a friend announced it. He was taken back to the hospital\nat Limoges, but the victory of the Marne intoxicated him, and it was\nfound impossible to hold him back. With a head still bandaged, he made\nhis appearance once more in his beloved regiment, which was now\nfighting in the forest of the Argonne, but on the first occasion on\nwhich he led his men, Violand was wounded again, now in the shoulder.\nHe was sent far back, into Brittany, to Quimper, where, a second time,\nby a subterfuge he contrived to escape from the hospital before his\nwound was properly healed. He was absolutely intractable in his\ndetermination to get back promptly to the fighting line: \"il etait\ncomme ca, avec son air delicat et tranquille!\" Again brought back, he\nwas set to training men at Quimper. But he could not endure the\nrestraint, and his nerves broke down.\n\nIt was found impossible to hold him back, and on October 8 the\nmilitary authorities consented to his return to his regiment, and with\nthe permission was combined the news that he had been nominated for\nthe cross of the Legion of Honour. The letter in which he announces\nthat fact to the ladies at home--\"mes cheres Grand'mere et Tante\"--is\ncharming in its simplicity. \"La croix gagnee sur un champ de bataille,\nc'est a mes yeux le plus beau reve qu'un jeune Francais put faire; je\nregrette seulement de ne pas l'avoir meritee davantage; mais l'avenir\nme permettra, j'espere, de justifier cette recompense, que je\nconsidere comme anticipee.\" The official notification specifies the\nwounds which he had received and the fact that, by the testimony of\nall who saw him under fire, the young lieutenant gave evidence of very\ngreat courage and of indomitable energy. That he was, by what he calls\na queer coincidence, the youngest officer of his regiment and its only\nmember of the Legion of Honour, afforded him an unaffected\nsatisfaction.\n\nFrom this time--the end of October 1914--the letters of Camile Violand\ntestify to the rapid development of his mind and character. He loses a\ncertain childishness which had hitherto clung to him, and he expresses\nhimself with a more virile sobriety. Nothing could exceed the pathos\nof his pictures of the terrible life in the Argonne, and we are made\nto feel how rapidly the suffering and the responsibility of his\nmilitary life were bringing out all the deepest and most serious\nelements in his character. There is a remarkable letter of January 7,\n1915, describing an engagement in which he lost several of his best\nmen, and in particular an experienced corporal in whose skill he much\nconfided. The briefest fragment broken from this pathetic description,\naddressed to his father, will give a notion of the tone of it:--\n\n\"J'etais absorbe par les blesses dans mon poste de commandement et\nquand je pus me rendre dans la tranchee ou il etait, il tombait dans\nle coma. Ses derniers mots avaient ete: 'Adieu, ma Patrie!' Pourtant,\nil me reconnut a la voix, me repondit faiblement. Je l'assistai dans\nses derniers moments. Ce fut bien rapide, bien simple et bien beau.\n_J'etais pour lui le chef, ce qui est plus que le Pere et le Pretre\nreunis_. Je l'ai bien senti la; quand ce fut presque fini, je\nl'embrassai et le quittai pour retourner aux soucis que nous donne\nl'ennemi.\"\n\nThus was this lad of three-and-twenty fortified and ripened by the\narduous warfare in the Argonne. He was now spending what leisure the\nfighting gave him in a careful study of Homer. We gather that he had\njust finished re-reading the \"Iliad\" when the end came. On March 4,\n1915, at Mesnil-les-Hurlus, a ball pierced his heart, splintering in\nits passage the cross of the Legion of Honour of which he was so\nproud. In his pocket was found his last letter, still unposted, in\nwhich he told his father of a fresh distinction for valour which he\nhad just received, and in the course of which, with a manifest\npresentiment of his approaching end, he wrote, \"Je mourrai, si Dieu\nveut, en bon chretien et en bon Francais.\"\n\nIt is not to be denied that ordinary observers were not in any degree\nprepared for the heroic devotion displayed by such young officers as\nthese at the beginning of the war. The general opinion in peace time\nwas expressed by M. Maurice Maeterlinck when he laid it down that\n\"courage, moral and physical endurance (if not abnegation,\nforgetfulness of self, renunciation of all comfort, the faculty of\nsacrifice, the power to face death) belong exclusively to the most\nprimitive, the least happy, the least intelligent of peoples, those\nwhich are least capable of reasoning, of taking danger into account.\"\nIt was the common hypothesis among moralists that, as men's nerves\ngrew more sensitive and the means of destruction more cruel and\nirresistible, no human being would be able to support the strain of\nactual fighting. It seemed inevitable that soldiers would rapidly\nbecome demoralized, when exposed to the multifarious horrors of modern\nmechanical battle. Nothing, therefore, could have been more surprising\nthan the temper shown by thousands of young men, suddenly called up\nfrom sedentary and safe pursuits, and confronted by the terrors of\nshrapnel and liquid fire and mines and gas, and all the other horrible\ningenuities of an unseen enemy for killing and mutilating. Their\nimaginations were unaccustomed to these terrors, it is true, but the\nhigher faculties of the human mind asserted themselves, and in the\nvague collective battle of the trenches these young French officers;\ndespite the refinement and the security in which they had always been\nacustomed to exist, instantly reverted to the chivalrous attitude\nwhich their remote ancestors had adopted in a warfare that was\nromantic and personal in its individualism.\n\nNo doubt a not inconsiderable part of the serenity, which is so\nremarkably evident in the letters and journals of these young men, was\ndue to the fact that they had arrived, for the first time, at a\ncomprehension of the unity of life. There is no tedious alternative of\nchoice in the active military career. All is regulated, all is\narranged in accordance with a hierarchical discipline, and war becomes\nwhat dogmatic religion is to a weak soul that has been tossed about by\nthe waves of doubt. It must be also borne in mind that the incessant\ndread of invasion, especially in the neighbourhood of the eastern\nfrontier, had kept the spirits of those who knew that responsibility\nwould fall upon them, in a state of unceasing agitation. It is a\nparalyzing thing to exist under a perpetual menace which nothing can\nprecipitate and yet nothing can avert. Captain Belmont, in his\nadmirable letters, speaks much of the \"romanticism\" which attracted\nmany of his companions, and of the natural satisfaction which the\ndeclaration of war gave to their restless faculties. The two\nsentiments were probably one and the same, and to a poetical\ntemperament that might well seem \"romantic\" which filled a less vivid\nmind with restlessness and languor.\n\nIt is noticeable, too, that when once the sickening suspense was\nremoved, and the path of pain and glory lay clear before these\nyouthful spirits, they grew very rapidly in intellectual stature. They\nhad found their equilibrium, and no more time and force were wasted in\nuseless oscillations. Each of them had, at last, the occasion, and\ntherefore the power, to fill out the lines of his proper\nindividuality. As M. Henri Bordeaux excellently says, \"L'esprit\ninquiet ne se contente de rien, le coeur inapaise se croit incompris.\"\nBut now these men knew their vocation, and a precocious experience of\nlife developed in them a temper of meditation. It is extraordinary\nwhat an intelligent philosophy, what a delicate study of nature, were\nrevealed at once in the writings of these heroic boys of twenty.\nLieutenant Belmont, who fought in Alsace, had spent his infancy and\nadolescence in the neighbourhood of Grenoble, and his memory was full\nof the rich Dauphine valley, with its great river and its eastern\nhorizon of the Alps. In the misery of the September nights of 1914, in\nthe harshness of misty mornings among the Alsatian pines, his thoughts\nreturn to the luminous twilights of his old home under the great oaks\nof the Isere, and he expresses his nostalgia in terms of the most\nexquisite and the most unstudied grace. Here is a fragment of one of\nhis letters home (October 1914):--\n\n\"Les journees sont exquises, tristes et pales, egalement differentes\ndes crudites de nos idees et des tenebres de l'hiver. L'imagination a\nvite fait de s'envoler, a travers cette lumiere adoucie, vers tous les\nhorizons familiers de la petite patrie, vers la vallee de Grenoble,\nparesseusement allongee dans ce bain de leger soleil, au pied des\nAlpes deja engourdies, vers les terres rousses de Lonnes longees par\nles futaies jaunissantes ou s'abritent les gibiers, tranquilles cette\nannee.\"\n\nNo doubt, the reason why this war has been, for France, so peculiarly\na literary war, is that the mechanical life in the trenches,\nalternately so violent and so sedentary, has greatly enforced the\nhabit of sustained contemplation based on a vivid and tragic\nexperience. This has encouraged, and in many instances positively\ncreated, a craving for literary expression, which has found abundant\nopportunity for its exercise in letters, journals, and poems; and what\nit has particularly developed is a form of literary art in which\nFrenchmen above all other races have always excelled, that analysis of\nfeeling which has been defined as \"le travail de ciselure morale.\"\nThis moral carved-work, or chasing, as of a precious metal, revealing\nthe rarity and value of spiritual surfaces, is characteristic of the\njournals of Paul Lintier, of the beauty of which we have already\nspoken. His art expends itself in the effect of outward things on the\nsoul. He speaks of mysterious sights, half-witnessed in the gloaming,\nof sinister noises which have to be left unexplained. He does not\nshrink from a record of unlovely things, of those evil thoughts which\nattend upon the rancour of defeat, of the suspicion of treason which\ncomes to dejected armies like a breath of poison-gas. That portion of\nhis \"Souvenirs\" which deals with the days of the retreat on Paris is\nwritten in a spasm of savage anger; a whole new temper is instantly\nrevealed when once the tide turns at Nanteuil. Nature herself thus\nendorses his new mood, as he writes \"There are still clouds heaped up\nto the west, but the blue, that cheers us, is chasing them all away.\"\n\nAmong the noble young poets whose pathetic and admirable fragments the\npiety of surviving friends has preserved, it is difficult to select\none name rather than another. But in the rank of these Rupert Brookes\nand Julian Grenfells and Charles Listers of France, we may perhaps\npause before the ardent figure of Jacques de Choudens. He was a\nBreton, and was trained for the law on the other side of France, at\nLille. He found that the call of the sea was irresistible, and after\ntwo years at a desk in that dreary and dusty city, he suddenly flung\nup his cap and would have no more of such drudgery. To the despair of\nhis family, he started on the high seas, and explored the wonderland\nof Haiti. After various adventures, he was about to return to France,\nwhen the sea again took him by the throat, and he vanished, like\nRobert Louis Stevenson, in the Pacific. Having sailed twice round the\nworld, \"beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars,\" a\ntired Ulysses under thirty, Jacques de Choudens had just come back to\nFrance when the war seized him with a fresh and deep enchantment. He\nentered into it with a profound ardour, and proved himself to possess\nexceptional military qualities. He was severely wounded on the second\nday of the battle of Charleroi, but slowly recovered, only to be\nkilled in an engagement on June 13, 1915. His poems, written since war\nbroke out, have been carefully collected and published by his friend,\nM. Charles Torquet. They are few, and they suffer from a certain\nhardness of touch; Jacques de Choudens had, as yet, a deeper\nacquaintance with life than with literature; but they breathe a spirit\nof high and romantic heroism. Let the sonnet called \"Autre Priere\" be\noffered as an example:--\n\n     \"_Terres, fleuves, forets, o puissances occultes,\n     C'est votre ame qui bat au bleu de nos poignets;\n     Notre orgueil s'est enfin cabre sous les insultes\n     Dont, depuis quarante ans, o France, tu saignais.\n\n     Dans le livre ou s'apprend le plus hautain des cultes,\n     Marque la page avec nos sabres pour signets;\n     Ceins la couronne d'or qu'en l'An deux tu ceignais,\n     Car c'est dans notre chair a nous que tu la sculptes.\n\n     France! France! Benis chaque arme et chaque front;\n     C'est d'ardeur, non de peur, que tremble l'eperon.\n     Nous sommes tes martyrs volontaires, superbes,\n\n     Sous l'aureole d'or des galons du kepi....\n     Nous allons preparer aux faucilles des gerbes,\n     Puisqu'ou tombe un soldat pousse un nouvel epi._\"\n\nThe poet, shortly before he fell, wrote to a friend \"Nous\ntravaillerons mieux apres la victoire, ce que nous ferons ayant ete\nmuri par la fatigue et les angoisses. La vie est bonne et belle et la\nguerre est une chose bien amusante.\" This is the type of Frenchman who\nfights for the love of fighting, who puts above all other happiness\nthe prize of military honour and glory won in a good cause. We meet\nwith it in the lyrical effusion of an adventurous poet like Jacques de\nChoudens and in the straightforward evidence of a practised soldier\nlike Captain Hassler, whose \"Ma Campagne\" is a record extraordinary\nalike for its courage, for its vivacity, and for its modesty.\n\nThe peculiar spirit of ardent gallantry to which we have dedicated\nthese few pages is illustrated, as will be observed, by examples taken\nwithout exception from the first months of the war. It would be rash\nto say, without a careful sifting of evidence, how much of this\nsentiment survived the days which preceded the battle of the Marne.\nFrance has, in the succession of her attacks up to the present hour,\ncontinued and confirmed the magnificent tradition of her courage. But\nit is impossible to overlook the elements which have taken the\nromantic colour out of the struggle. No chivalry could survive close\nexperience of the vile and bestial cruelty of German methods. The sad\nand squalid aspects of a war of resistance, fought in the very\nbleeding flesh of the beloved mother-country, were bound to be fatal\nto \"cette bonne humeur bienfaisante\" which so marvellously\ncharacterized the young French officers of August 1914. Moreover, the\nmere physical element of fatigue has been enough to quench that first\nradiant flame. We find it deadening, at last, even the high spirit of\nPaul Lintier, and we listen to his confession: \"To sleep! to sleep! O\nto live without a thought, in absolute silence. To live, after having\nso often nearly died. I could sleep for days, and days, and days!\"\n\nThese are considerations which belong to a heavier and a wearier time.\nAs a matter of history--so that in our hurrying times a gesture of so\nmuch beauty may not, because it was so ephemeral, be forgotten--I have\nendeavoured to catch a reflection of the glow which blazed in the\nhearts of young intellectual officers at the very beginning of the\nwar. If in the inevitable wear and tear of the interminable struggle,\nthis beauty fades into the light of common day, so much the more is\nthere need that we should fix it in memory, since in a world which\nsavagery and treason have made so hideous, we cannot afford to let\nthis jewel of pure moral beauty be trampled into oblivion.\n\n        _breve et irreparabile tempus\n     Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere facti\n     Hoc virtutis opus._\n\n\n\n\n                          BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE\n\n\nThe writings of La Rochefoucauld were subjected to accurate and\ndetailed examination in the edition begun by Gilbert in 1868, and\nbrought to a pause at his untimely death in 1870. It was completed in\n1883 by J. Gourdault. After the lapse of half a century, the short\nbiography by Gilbert, with which this edition began, naturally\nrequires some revision, and is open to several additions. An earlier\nvolume (1863), by E. de Barthelemy, is of a more technical character,\nbut may be referred to with advantage by those curious regarding\ndetail. The MSS of Rochefoucauld still in existence--one of these,\nknown as the Liancourt MS., is in the Duke's handwriting--are\nnumerous, and may still, no doubt, reward investigation. The best\nrecent summary is that by J. Bourdeau (1895), published in M.\nJusserand's charming series. There is not, so far as I am aware, any\nEnglish biography of the author of the \"Maximes.\"\n\nThe complete works of La Bruyere were elaborately edited in three\nvolumes (1865-1878) by G. Servois. Much curious information is to be\nfound in Allaire's \"La Bruyere dans la Maison de Conde\" (1887), and an\nexcellent summary in the Life by M Paul Morillot, 1904. But the latest\nand fullest account of La Bruyere's career is to be found in M. Emile\nMagne's Preface to the selected works (1914). Editions of \"Les\nCaracteres\" are countless.\n\nThe writings of Vauvenargues were collected by the Marquis de Portia\nin 1797, by Suard in 1806, by Briere in 1821, by Gilbert in 1857, and\nagain in 1874; each of these editions added considerably to knowledge.\nThe only recent Life is that by M Maurice Paleologue (1890).\n\nThe principal volumes referred to in \"The Gallantry of France\" are the\n  following:--\n\n\"Ma Piece\" Souvenir d'un canonnier de 1914. Par Paul Lintier. Paris:\n  Librairie Plon, 1916.\n\n\"Anthologie des Ecrivains francais morts pour la Patrie.\" Par Carlos\n  Larronde. Preface de Maurice Barres. I-IV. Paris: Larousse. 1916-1917\n\n\"La Jeunesse Nouvelle.\" Par Henri Bordeaux. Paris: Librairie Plon\n  1917.\n\n\"En Campagne\" (1914-1915). Impression d'un officier de Legere. Par\n  Marcel Dupont. Paris: Librairie Plon. 1916.\n\n\"Ma Campagne de jour de jour.\" Par le Capitaine Hassler. Paris:\n  Librairie Plon. 1917.\n\n\n\n\n                                 INDEX\n\n\nAcademy, French, 91\n\nAddison, at Blois, 87,88\n\n----compared with La Bruyere, 87\n\nd'Ailly, Abbe, 22\n\nAix in Provence, 100\n\nAlencon, 155\n\nAllard, Jean, 136-138\n\nAlsace, 162\n\nAlsace-Lorraine, 132\n\nAmelot, 118\n\nAmyot, Jacques, 99\n\nAnne of Austria, 11, 13\n\nAnne of England, 88\n\nApemantus, 6\n\nArgonne, the, 157\n\nd'Argonne, Bonaventure, 61 _n_.\n\nArnauld (d'Andilly), 22\n\nAugustine, St., 43\n\n\nBarbier, Auguste, 150\n\nBarres, M. Maurice, xiii, xv, 153\n\nBelgium, 146\n\nBellay, Joachim du, 148\n\nBelle-Isle, Marshal de, 106-107\n\nBelmont, the brothers, 140, 161, 162\n\nBerkeley, Bishop, 125\n\nBesnard, H A., 155\n\nBlair's \"Grave,\" 110\n\n\"Blue Room,\" the, 8\n\nBohemia, the campaign in, 98, 107, 109, 112\n\nBohemia, Queen of, 33\n\nBoileau, xix, 47, 70, 82\n\nBordeaux, M Henri, 139, 157, 162\n\nBossuet, Antoine, 92\n\nBossuet (Bishop),35, 44, 47, 61, 62, 76, 91, 101 _n_. 110, 116\n\nBouillon, Godefroi de, 58\n\nBourbon, Duc de, 61\n\nBrillon, 55\n\nBrooke, Rupert, 131, 164\n\nBrunetiere, Ferdinand, 32 _n_.\n\nBuckingham, Duke of, 11\n\nBudgell, Eustace, 88\n\nBurney, Fanny, 62\n\nBussy-Rabutin, 45, 70\n\n\nCaen, 59, 60, 64\n\nCalvin, 106\n\nCasaubon, 70\n\n\"Chambre des Sublimes,\" 47\n\nChampagne, 139\n\n\"Chanson de Roland,\" 132, 135\n\nChateaubriand, 153\n\nChatelet, Mme du, 112\n\nChevreuse, Mme de, 14\n\nChoudens, Jacques de, 164-6\n\nClapiers, Luc de, 99 _see_ Vauvenargues\n\nColeridge, his \"Table-Talk,\" 29\n\nCommune, the, 121 _n_.\n\nConde, Prince de (the Grand Conde), 19, 61, 63, 64\n\nConsenvoye, 152\n\nConti, Prince de, 14\n\nCorneille, Pierre, 123, 124, his \"Pulcherie,\" 48\n\nCousin, Victor, 32\n\nCromwell, Oliver, 129\n\n\nDecourcelle, M. Pierre, 138\n\nDescartes, 33, 122, 125\n\nDetanger, Capt E J., 151, 152\n\nDrouet, Marcel, 151-154\n\nDupont, Marcel, his \"En Campagne,\" 143\n\nDuryer, his tragedy of \"Alcyonee,\" 18\n\nDyke, Daniel, his \"Mystery of Self-deceiving,\" 28\n\n\nEgra, 107\n\nd'Enghien, Henri Jules, Duc, 63\n\nEsprit, Jacques, 30-32, 50 _n_\n\n\nFenelon, 35, 91, 101 _n_.\n\nFontenelle, 61, 69 _n_.; described as \"Cydias\", 68\n\nFresnes, Chateau de, 36\n\nFronde, the, 13, 20, 24\n\nFuller, Thomas, 28, 74\n\n\nGilbert, 109\n\nGourville, 18\n\nGrenfell, Julian, 131, 164\n\nGrenoble, 162, 163\n\nGrignan, Mme de, 39 _n_, 48\n\nGuastalla, victory at, 102\n\nGuienne, 15\n\nGuillot, Leon, xv\n\nGuyon, Mme, 91\n\n\nHaldane, Lord, quoted, 149, 174\n\nHalifax, Earl of, 77, 78\n\nHaraucourt, M.E., 141\n\nHassler, Capt, his \"Ma Campagne\", 166\n\nd'Hautefort, Mlle, 11\n\nHelvetius, 42\n\nHobbes, his \"Leviathan,\" 33, 34\n\nHuet, Bishop of Avranches, 37\n\n\nJansenists, 27, 33, 127\n\nJeandelincourt, 141\n\nJesuits, 33\n\nJohnson, Dr., 88\n\nJouy, Ernest, 28\n\n\nKipling, Rudyard, 152, quoted, 90\n\nKonrad, the monk, 135-6\n\n\nLa Bruyere, 55-93; birth and parentage, 58; La Bruyere at Chantilly,\n  64; contrasted with La Rochefoucauld, 57, described as \"Menippe,\"\n  65, in the House of Conde, 65, 90, at Fontainebleau, 64, Paris, 64;\n  at Versailles, 64; his \"Caracteres,\" 55-57; 66-72, 76, 78, 83, his\n  \"Dialogues,\" 92\n\nLa Bruyere, Louis, 58\n\nLa Fayette, Mme de, 36, 37, 39, 45, 46, 48-50\n\nLa Fontaine, 47; \"Fables\" of, 49 _n_\n\nLagrange, Henri, xiv\n\nLamb, Charles, 58\n\nLantil, Leo, 139\n\nLa Rochefoucauld, Duc de, 3-52, birth and descent, 8, 9; marriage,\n  10; his \"Letters,\" his \"Maximes,\" xvi, 4-6, 33,47, 51, 52, 57, his\n  \"Memoires,\" 9-17, 21, 23-25; his portrait by himself, 22-25 by\n  Petitot, 19, by Cardinal de Retz, 17\n\nLauzun, Duc de, 80\n\nLa Vergne, Marie de, _see_ La Fayette, Mme de\n\nLille, 164\n\nLintier, Paul, 3, 4, 131, 140-149, 163, 169\n\nLister, Charles, 164\n\nLocke, John, 74, 124, 126\n\nLongeville-les-Metz, 147\n\nLongueville, Mme de, 14, 18, 39 40 _n_\n\nLorraine, 146\n\nLoti, Pierre, 152\n\nLouis XIII, 8, 9, 13, 14\n\nLouis XIV., 84\n\nLouis XV, 84, 117, 123\n\nLuxembourg (Palace), 23, 64\n\nLyons, 141, 155\n\n\nMademoiselle, La Grande, 17, 23\n\nMaeterlinck, M., 160\n\nMagne, M., Emile, 63\n\nMahon, Col Patrice, 151\n\nMaine, Duc du, 46,47\n\nMaine, Duchesse du, 116\n\nMaintenon, Mme de, 46\n\nMalebranche, 122\n\nMalizian, 70\n\nManceau, Col. Emile, 149\n\nMandeville, Bernard, 42, 126\n\nMarcillac, Prince de, 11, 12, 47, _see_ La Rochefoucauld\n\nMirabeau, Marquis de, 100, 103-105\n\nMoliere, 48\n\n\nNolly, Emile; _see_ Detanger\n\n\nPaleologue, M., 105, 169\n\nParis, Gaston, 135\n\nParma, French victory at, 102\n\nPascal, xviii, 22, 23, 32, 33, 35, 55, 81, 113, 115, 122, 127, 128\n\nPeguy, 146\n\nPetitot, 19\n\nPhelippeaux, Abbe, 87, 88\n\nPicq, Col. Ardent du 147, 148\n\nPierrepont, 136\n\nPin, Abbe Ellies du, 92\n\nPlessis, Mme du, 36\n\nPlutarch's \"Lives,\" 99, 100\n\nPompadour, Mme de, 114\n\nPort Royal, 22, 23, 27, 28, 36, 86\n\nPrague, capture of, 107\n\n\nQuercy, 155\n\nQuimper,157, 158\n\n\nRacine, xix, 35, 47, 122, 123\n\nRambouillet, Hotel de, 7\n\nRegnier, Henri, 20\n\nRetz, Cardinal de, 10, 16, 17\n\n_Revue Critique_, 150\n\nRhine, Passage of the, 40 _n_.\n\nRichelieu, 10-12, 14\n\nRoe, Art, _see_ Mahon\n\nRousseau, J.J., 38\n\nRuffec, 19\n\n\nSable, Mme de, 4, 5, 21, 23, 29, 31, 32. 36, 41 _n_.\n\nSaint-Antoine, Faubourg, 18\n\nSaint-Cyr, 137\n\nSaint-Simon, quoted, 79, 91\n\nSchomberg, Duchesse de, 7\n\nScudery, Mlle de, 39, 45\n\nSedan, 153\n\nSegrais, 35, 50 _n_\n\nSeguier (Chancellor), 30\n\nSeneca, 43\n\nSeven Years War, 106\n\nSevigne, Mme de, 34, 39 _n_, 40 _n_, 45 _n_, quoted, 48-50\n\nSeyres, Hippolyte de, 107-110\n\nShaftesbury, Third Earl, 126\n\nShakespeare, quoted, 6, 30\n\nSinglin, Antoine, 22\n\nSociete des Gens de Lettres, 138\n\n_Spectator_, the, 88, 89\n\nSpinoza, 33\n\nSteele, Sir Richard, 89\n\nStephen, Sir Leslie, 34\n\nStevenson, R.L., 78, 101, 165\n\nSuard, 99, 121\n\nSully, 129\n\n\nTailly-sur-Meuse, 143, 148\n\nTallemont des Reaux, 22\n\nTemple, Sir William, 118, 126\n\nTheophrastus, 69-71, 88\n\nThiange, Mme de, 46, 47\n\nTorquet, M. Charles, 165\n\nTurin, 102\n\n\nValincourt, 64\n\nVauban, Sebastien de, 84 _n_.\n\nVauvenargues, Marquis de, 97-132; birth and parentage, 99-101;\n  described as \"Clazomene,\" 121; serves in the Bohemian campaign, 98,\n  107, 109, 112, in garrison at Arras, 113; in garrison at Metz, 106,\n  113, in Paris, 120, with Villars in Lombardy, 102; his \"Eloge\" on De\n  Seyres, 109, his \"Discours sur la Gloire,\" 109, his \"Introduction a\n  la Connaissance de l'Esprit humain,\" 124, his \"Reflexions sur divers\n  Sujets,\" 104, 117, 121, 127\n\nVerdun, 144\n\nVernulius, 28\n\nVerteuil, 19, 20, 48\n\nVigneul de Marville, 60, 61 _n_.\n\nVillars, Marshal de, 102, 129\n\nVioland, Camille, 151, 155-160\n\nVirton, Battle of, 144, 157\n\nVivonne, Andree de, 10\n\nVoiture, 8\n\nVoltaire, 40, 84, 101 _n_, 111-114, quoted, 33, 52, 75, 122, 123\n\nVouziers, 155\n\n\nYoung's \"Night-Thoughts,\" 110","title":"Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":45064}