Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field, have, I make no question, heard the story of the falconer, who, having earnestly fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that he would bring her down with the sole power of his sight, and did so, as it was said; for the tales I borrow, I charge upon the consciences of those from whom I have them.

We italicize the last foregoing words, to make readers see that Montaigne is not to be read for the truth of his instances. He uses what comes to hand. He takes no trouble to verify. "The discourses are my own," he says; but even this, as we have hinted, must not be pressed too hard in interpretation. Whether a given reflection of Montaigne's is strictly his own, in the sense of not having been first another's, who gave it to him, is not to be determined except upon very wide reading, very well remembered, in all the books that Montaigne could have got under his eye. That was full fairly his own, he thought, which he had made his own by intelligent appropriation. And this, perhaps, expresses in general the sound law of property in the realm of mind. At any rate, Montaigne will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He will write as pleases him. Above all things else, he likes his freedom.

Here is one of those sagacious historical scepticisms, in which Montaigne was so fond of poising his mind between opposite views. It occurs in his essay entitled, "Of the Uncertainty of our Judgments."

Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to receive the enemy's charge, "by reason that" (I shall here steal Plutarch's own words, which are better than mine) "he by so doing deprived himself of the violent impression the motion of running adds to the first shock of arms, and hindered that clashing of the combatants against one another, which is wont to give them greater impetuosity and fury, especially when they come to rush in with their utmost vigor, their courages increasing by the shouts and the career; 'tis to render the soldiers' ardor, as a man may say, more reserved and cold." This is what he says. But, if Caesar had come by the worse, why might it not as well have been urged by another, that, on the contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of fighting is that wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion; and that they who are steady upon the march, closing up, and reserving their force within themselves for the push of the business, have a great advantage against those who are disordered, and who have already spent half their breath in running on precipitately to the charge? Besides that, an army is a body made up of so many individual members, it is impossible for it to move in this fury with so exact a motion as not to break the order of battle, and that the best of them are not engaged before their fellows can come on to help them.

The sententiousness of Montaigne may be illustrated by transferring here a page of brief excerpts from the "Essays," collected by Mr. Bayle St. John in his biography of the author. This apothegmatic or proverbial quality in Montaigne had a very important sequel of fruitful influence on subsequent French writers, as chapters to follow in this volume will abundantly show. In reading the sentences subjoined, you will have the sensation of coming suddenly upon a treasure-trove of coined proverbial wisdom:—

Our minds are never at home, but ever beyond home.

I will take care, if possible, that my death shall say nothing that my life has not said.

Life in itself is neither good nor bad: it is the place of what is good or bad.

Knowledge should not be stuck on to the mind, but incorporated in it.

Irresolution seems to me the most common and apparent vice of our nature.

Age wrinkles the mind more than the face.

Habit is a second nature.

Hunger cures love.

It is easier to get money than to keep it.

Anger has often been the vehicle of courage.

It is more difficult to command than to obey.

A liar should have a good memory.

Ambition is the daughter of presumption.

To serve a prince, you must be discreet and a liar.

We learn to live when life has passed.

The mind is ill at ease when its companion has the colic.

We are all richer than we think, but we are brought up to go a-begging.

The greatest masterpiece of man is... to be born at the right time.

We append a saying of Montaigne's not found in Mr. St. John's collection:—

There is no so good man who so squares all his thoughts and actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Montaigne was too intensely an egotist, in his character as man no less than in his character as writer, to have many personal relations that exhibit him in aspects engaging to our love. But one friendship of his is memorable,—is even historic. The name of La Boetie is forever associated with the name of Montaigne. La Boetie is remarkable for being, as we suppose, absolutely the first voice raised in France against the idea of monarchy. His little treatise "Contr' Un" (literally, "Against One"), or "Voluntary Servitude," is by many esteemed among the most important literary productions of modern times. Others, again, Mr. George Saintsbury for example, consider it an absurdly overrated book. For our own part, we are inclined to give it conspicuous place in the history of free thought in France. La Boetie died young; and his "Contr' Un" was published posthumously,—first by the Protestants, after the terrible day of St. Bartholomew. Our readers may judge for themselves whether a pamphlet in which such passages as the following could occur, must not have had an historic effect upon the inflammable sentiment of the French people. We take Mr. Bayle St. John's translation, bracketing a hint or two of correction suggested by comparison of the original French. The treatise of La Boetie is sometimes now printed with Montaigne's "Essays," in French editions of our author's works: La Boetie says:—

You sow your fruits [crops] that he [the king] may ravage them; you furnish and fill your houses that he may have something to steal; you bring up your daughters that he may slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure your forms by labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty and disgusting pleasure.

Montaigne seems really to have loved this friend of his, whom he reckoned the greatest man in France. His account of La Boetie's death is boldly, and not presumptuously, paralleled by Mr. St. John with the "Phaedon" of Plato. Noble writing, it certainly is, though its stateliness is a shade too self-conscious, perhaps.

We have thus far presented Montaigne in words of his own such as may fairly be supposed likely to prepossess the reader in his favor. We could multiply our extracts indefinitely in a like unexceptionable vein of writing. But to do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Montaigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais. But Rabelais is morality itself compared with Montaigne. Montaigne is corrupt and corrupting. This feature of his writings, we are necessarily forbidden to illustrate. In an essay written in his old age,—which we will not even name, its general tenor is so evil,—Montaigne holds the following language:—

I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my better years:—

"Animus quod perdidit, optat, Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat."

PETRONIUS, c. 128.

["The mind desires what it has lost, and in fancy flings itself wholly into the past."]

Let childhood look forward, and age backward: is not this the signification of Janus' double face? Let years haul me along if they will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image of it out of my memory:—

"Hoc est Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."

MARTIAL, x. 23, 7.

["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy former life again."]

Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein, by writing as follows:—

I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil, as I find it evil and base not to dare to own them....

...I am greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly.... Many things that I would not say to a particular individual, I say to the people; and, as to my most secret thoughts, send my most intimate friends to my book.... For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being very modest, or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks [because the recommendation would be false].

We must leave it—as, however, Montaigne himself is far enough from leaving it—to the imagination of readers to conjecture what "pleasures" they are, of which this worn-out debauchee (nearing death, and thanking God that he nears it "without fear") speaks in the following sentimental strain:—

In farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave of: I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world; these are our last embraces.

Mr. Emerson, in his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and he did not clear his mind. "Que scai-je?" was his motto ("What know I?"), a question as of hopeless ignorance,—nay, as of ignorance also void of desire to know. His life was one long interrogation, a balancing of opposites, to the end.

Such, speculatively, was Montaigne. Such, too, speculatively, was Pascal. The difference, however, was greater than the likeness, between these two minds. Pascal, doubting, gave the world of spiritual things the benefit of his doubt. Montaigne, on the other hand, gave the benefit of his doubt to the world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a glutton, he was a lecher. He, for his portion, chose the good things of this life. His body he used to get him pleasures of the body. In pleasures of the body he sunk and drowned his conscience,—if he ever had a conscience. But his intelligence survived. He became, at last,—if he was not such from the first,—almost pure sense, without soul.

Yet we have no doubt Montaigne was an agreeable gentleman. We think we should have got on well with him as a neighbor of ours. He was a tolerably decent father, provided the child were grown old enough to be company for him. His own lawful children, while infants, had to go out of the house for their nursing; so it not unnaturally happened that all but one died in their infancy. Five of such is the number that you can count in his own journalistic entries of family births and deaths. But, speaking as "moral philosopher," in his "Essays," he says, carelessly, that he had lost "two or three" "without repining." This, perhaps, is affectation. But what affectation!

Montaigne was well-to-do; and he ranked as a gentleman, if not as a great nobleman. He lived in a castle, bequeathed to him, and by him bequeathed,—a castle still standing, and full of personal association with its most famous owner. He occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. Over the door of this room may still, we believe, be read Montaigne's motto, "Que scai-je?" Votaries of Montaigne perform their pious pilgrimages to this shrine of their idolatry, year after year, century after century.

For, remember, it is now three centuries since Montaigne wrote. He was before Bacon and Shakspeare. He was contemporary with Charles IX., and with Henry of Navarre. But date has little to do with such a writer as Montaigne. His quality is sempiternal. He overlies the ages, as the long hulk of "The Great Eastern" overlay the waves of the sea, stretching from summit to summit. Not that, in the form of his literary work, he was altogether independent of time and of circumstance. Not that he was uninfluenced by his historic place, in the essential spirit of his work. But, more than often happens, Montaigne may fairly be judged out of himself alone. His message he might, indeed, have delivered differently; but it would have been substantially the same message if he had been differently placed in the world, and in history. We need hardly, therefore, add any thing about Montaigne's outward life. His true life is in his book.

Montaigne the Essayist is the consummate, the ideal, expression, practically incapable of improvement, of the spirit and wisdom of the world. This characterization, we think, fairly and sufficiently sums up the good and the bad of Montaigne. We might seem to describe no very mischievous thing. But to have the spirit and wisdom of this world expressed, to have it expressed as in a last authoritative form, a form to commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem sufficient, to erect it into a kind of gospel,—that means much. It means hardly less than to provide the world with a new Bible,—a Bible of the world's own, a Bible that shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the Old and New Testaments. Montaigne's "Essays" constitute, in effect, such a book. The man of the world may,—and, to say truth, does,—in this volume, find all his needed texts. Here is viaticum—daily manna—for him, to last the year round, and to last year after year; an inexhaustible breviary for the church of this world! It is of the gravest historical significance that Rabelais and Montaigne, but especially Montaigne, should, to such an extent, for now three full centuries, have been furnishing the daily intellectual food of Frenchmen.

Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (carefully reported by the latter), in which the conversation was on the subject of Montaigne and Epictetus contrasted,—these two authors Pascal acknowledged to be the ones most constantly in his hand,—said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences." We, for our part, are prepared, speaking more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Montaigne's "Essays," in spite of all that there is good in them,—nay, greatly because of so much good in them,—are, by their subtly insidious persuasion to evil, upon the whole quite the most powerfully pernicious book known to us in literature, either ancient or modern.



V.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: 1613-1680 (La Bruyere: 1646 (?)-1696; Vauvenargues: 1715-1747).

In La Rochefoucauld we meet another eminent example of the author of one book. "Letters," "Memoirs," and "Maxims" indeed name productions in three kinds, productions all of them notable, and all still extant, from La Rochefoucauld's pen. But the "Maxims" are so much more famous than either the "Letters" or the "Memoirs," that their author may be said to be known only by those. If it were not for the "Maxims," the "Letters" and the "Memoirs" would probably now be forgotten. We here may dismiss these from our minds, and concentrate our attention exclusively upon the "Maxims." Voltaire said, "The 'Memoirs' of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld are read, but we know his 'Maxims' by heart."

La Rochefoucauld's "Maxims" are detached sentences of reflection and wisdom on human character and conduct. They are about seven hundred in number, but they are all comprised in a very small volume; for they generally are each only two or three lines in length, and almost never does a single maxim occupy more than the half of a moderate-sized page. The "Maxims," detached, as we have described them, have no very marked logical sequence in the order in which they stand. They all, however, have a profound mutual relation. An unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact, runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld.

The writer's qualifications for treating his theme were unsurpassed. He had himself the right character, moral and intellectual; his scheme of conduct in life corresponded; he wrote in the right language, French; and he was rightly situated in time, in place, and in circumstance. He needed but to look closely within him and without him,—which he was gifted, with eyes to do,—and then report what he saw, in the language to which he was born. This he did, and his "Maxims" are the fruit. His method was largely the sceptical method of Montaigne. His result, too, was much the same result as his master's. But the pupil surpassed the master in the quality of his work. There is a fineness, an exquisiteness, in the literary form of La Rochefoucauld, which Montaigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but which he could never, even with seeking, have attained. Each maxim of La Rochefoucauld is a "gem of purest ray serene," wrought to the last degree of perfection in form with infinite artistic pains. Purity, precision, clearness, density, point, are perfectly reconciled in La Rochefoucauld's style with ease, grace, and brilliancy of expression. The influence of such literary finish, well bestowed on thought worthy to receive it, has been incalculably potent in raising the standard of French production in prose. It was Voltaire's testimony, "One of the works which has most contributed to form the national taste, and give it a spirit of accuracy and precision, was the little collection of 'Maxims' by Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld."

There is a high-bred air about La Rochefoucauld the writer, which well accords with the rank and character of the man La Rochefoucauld. He was of one of the noblest families in France. His instincts were all aristocratic. His manners and his morals were those of his class. Brave, spirited, a touch of chivalry in him, honorable and amiable as the world reckons of its own, La Rochefoucauld ran a career consistent throughout with his own master-principle, self-love. He had a wife whose conjugal fidelity her husband seems to have thought a sufficient supply in that virtue for both himself and her. He behaved himself accordingly. His illicit relations with other women were notorious. But they unhappily did not make La Rochefoucauld in that respect at all peculiar among the distinguished men of his time. His brilliant female friends collaborated with him in working out his "Maxims." These were the labor of years. They were published in successive editions, during the lifetime of the author; and some final maxims were added from his manuscripts after his death.

Using, for the purpose, a very recent translation, that of A. S. Bolton (which, in one or two places, we venture to conform more exactly to the sense of the original), we give almost at hazard a few specimens of these celebrated apothegms. We adopt the numbering given in the best Paris edition of the "Maxims:"—

No. 11. The passions often beget their contraries. Avarice sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice: we are often firm from weakness, and daring from timidity.

No. 13. Our self-love bears more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.

How much just detraction from all mere natural human greatness is contained in the following penetrative maxim!—

No. 18. Moderation is a fear of falling into the envy and contempt which those deserve who are intoxicated with their good fortune; it is a vain parade of the strength of our mind; and, in short, the moderation of men in their highest elevation is a desire to appear greater than their fortune.

What effectively quiet satire in these few words!—

No. 19. We have strength enough to bear the ills of others.

This man had seen the end of all perfection in the apparently great of this world. He could not bear that such should flaunt a false plume before their fellows:—

No. 20. The steadfastness of sages is only the art of locking up their uneasiness in their hearts.

Of course, had it lain in the author's chosen line to do so, he might, with as much apparent truth, have pointed out, that to lock up uneasiness in the heart requires steadfastness no less—nay, more—than not to feel uneasiness.

The inflation of "philosophy" vaunting itself is thus softly eased of its painful distention:—

No. 22. Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed and troubles to come, but present troubles triumph over it.

When Jesus once rebuked the fellow-disciples of James and John for blaming those brethren as self-seekers, he acted on the same profound principle with that disclosed in the following maxim:—

No. 34. If we had no pride, we should not complain of that of others.

How impossible it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the fast hand, of this incredulous Frenchman:—

No. 39. Interest [self-love] speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

No. 49. We are never so happy, or so unhappy, as we imagine.

No. 78. The love of justice is, in most men, only the fear of suffering injustice.

What a subtly unsoldering distrust the following maxim introduces into the sentiment of mutual friendship!—

No. 83. What men have called friendship, is only a partnership, a mutual accommodation of interests, and an exchange of good offices: it is, in short, only a traffic, in which self-love always proposes to gain something.

No. 89. Every one complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

How striking, from its artful suppression of strikingness, is the first following, and what a wide, easy sweep of well-bred satire it contains!—

No. 93. Old men like to give good advice, to console themselves for being no longer able to give bad examples.

No. 119. We are so much accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that, at last, we disguise ourselves to ourselves.

No. 127. The true way to be deceived, is to think one's self sharper than others.

The plain-spoken proverb, "A man that is his own lawyer, has a fool for his client," finds a more polished expression in the following:—

No. 132. It is easier to be wise for others, than to be so for one's self.

How pitilessly this inquisitor pursues his prey, "the human soul, into all its useless hiding-places!—

No. 138. We would rather speak ill of ourselves, than not talk of ourselves.

The following maxim, longer and less felicitously phrased than is usual with La Rochefoucauld, recalls that bitter definition of the bore,—"One who insists on talking about himself all the time that you are wishing to talk about yourself:"—

No. 139. One of the causes why we find so few people who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation, is, that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of what he wishes to say, than of replying exactly to what is said to him. The cleverest and the most compliant think it enough to show an attentive air; while we see in their eyes and in their mind a wandering from what is said to them, and a hurry to return to what they wish to say, instead of considering that it is a bad way to please or to persuade others, to try so hard to please one's self, and that to listen well is one of the greatest accomplishments we can have in conversation.

If we are indignant at the maxims following, it is probably rather because they are partly true than, because they are wholly false:—

No. 144. We are not fond of praising, and, without interest, we never praise any one. Praise is a cunning flattery, hidden and delicate, which, in different ways, pleases him who gives and him who receives it. The one takes it as a reward for his merit: the other gives it to show his equity and his discernment.

No. 146. We praise generally only to be praised.

No. 147. Few are wise enough to prefer wholesome blame to treacherous praise.

No. 149. Disclaiming praise is a wish to be praised a second time.

No. 152. If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could not hurt us.

No. 184. We acknowledge our faults in order to atone, by our sincerity, for the harm they do us in the minds of others.

No. 199. The desire to appear able often prevents our becoming so.

No. 201. Whoever thinks he can do without the world, deceives himself much; but whoever thinks the world cannot do without him, deceives himself much more.

With the following, contrast Ruskin's noble paradox, that the soldier's business, rightly conceived, is self-sacrifice; his ideal purpose being, not to kill, but to be killed:—

No. 214. Valor, in private soldiers, is a perilous calling, which they have taken to in order to gain their living.

Here is, perhaps, the most current of all La Rochefoucauld's maxims:—

No. 218. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue.

Of the foregoing maxim, it may justly be said, that its truth and point depend upon the assumption, implicit, that there is such a thing as virtue,—an assumption which the whole tenor of the "Maxims," in general, contradicts.

How incisive the following!—

No. 226. Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.

No. 298. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to receive greater favors.

No. 304. We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.

No. 318. Why should we have memory enough to retain even the smallest particulars of what has happened to us, and yet not have enough to remember how often we have told them to the same individual?

The first following maxim satirizes both princes and courtiers. It might be entitled, "How to insult a prince, and not suffer for your temerity":—

No. 320. To praise princes for virtues they have not, is to insult them with impunity.

No. 347. We find few sensible people, except those who are of our way of thinking.

No. 409. We should often be ashamed of our best actions, if the world saw the motives which cause them.

No. 424. We boast of faults the reverse of those we have: when we are weak, we boast of being stubborn.

Here, at length, is a maxim that does not depress,—that animates you:—

No. 432. To praise noble actions heartily, is in some sort to take part in them.

The following is much less exhilarating:—

No. 454. There are few instances in which we should make a bad bargain, by giving up the good that is said of us, on condition that nothing bad be said.

This, also:—

No. 458. Our enemies come nearer to the truth, in the opinions they form of us, than we do ourselves.

Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly "suppressed" by the author, after first publication:—

No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always find something which does not displease us.

Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, "Even in the midst of compassion, we feel within us an unaccountable bitter-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing another suffer;" and Burke, after both, wrote (in his "Sublime and Beautiful") with a heavier hand, "I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others."

La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than is Montaigne. But, as a man, he wins upon you less. His maxims are like hard and sharp crystals, precipitated from the worldly wisdom blandly solute and dilute in Montaigne.

The wise of this world reject the dogma of human depravity, as taught in the Bible. They willingly accept it,—nay, accept it complacently, hugging themselves for their own penetration,—as taught in the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld.

* * *

Jean de La Bruyere is personally almost as little known as if he were an ancient of the Greek or Roman world, surviving, like Juvenal, only in his literary production. Bossuet got him employed to teach history to a great duke, who became his patron, and settled a life-long annuity upon him. He published his one book, the "Characters," in 1687, was made member of the French Academy in 1693, and died in 1696. That, in short, is La Bruyere's biography.

His book is universally considered one of the most finished products of the human mind. It is not a great work,—it lacks the unity and the majesty of design necessary for that. It consists simply of detached thoughts and observations on a variety of subjects. It shows the author to have been a man of deep and wise reflection, but especially a consummate master of style. The book is one to read in, rather than to read. It is full of food to thought. The very beginning exhibits a self-consciousness on the writer's part very different from that spontaneous simplicity in which truly great books originate. La Bruyere begins:—

Every thing has been said; and one comes too late, after more than seven thousand years that there have been men, and men who have thought.

La Bruyere has something to say, and that at length unusual for him, of pulpit eloquence. We select a few specimen sentences:—

Christian eloquence has become a spectacle. That gospel sadness, which is its soul, is no longer to be observed in it; its place is supplied by advantages of facial expression, by inflexions of the voice, by regularity of gesticulation, by choice of words, and by long categories. The sacred word is no longer listened to seriously; it is a kind of amusement, one among many; it is a game in which there is rivalry, and in which there are those who lay wagers.

Profane eloquence has been transferred, so to speak, from the bar,... where it is no longer employed, to the pulpit, where it ought not to be found.

Matches of eloquence are made at the very foot of the altar, and in the presence of the mysteries. He who listens sits in judgment on him who preaches, to condemn or to applaud, and is no more converted by the discourse which he praises than by that which he pronounces against. The orator pleases some, displeases others, and has an understanding with all in one thing,—that as he does not seek to render them better, so they do not think of becoming better.

The almost cynical acerbity of the preceding is ostensibly relieved of an obvious application to certain illustrious contemporary examples among preachers by the following open allusion to Bossuet and Bourdaloue:—

The Bishop of Meaux [Bossuet] and Father Bourdaloue make me think of Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them, masters of pulpit eloquence, have had the fortune of great models; the one has made bad critics, the other, bad imitators.

Here is a happy instance of La Bruyere's successful pains in redeeming a commonplace sentiment by means of a striking form of expression; the writer is disapproving the use of oaths in support of one's testimony:—

An honest man who says, Yes, or No, deserves to be believed; his character swears for him.

Highly satiric in his quiet way, La Bruyere knew how to be. Witness the following thrust at a contemporary author, not named by the satirist, but, no doubt, recognized by the public of the time:—

He maintains that the ancients, however unequal and negligent they may be, have fine traits; he points these out; and they are so fine that they make his criticism readable.

How painstakingly, how self-consciously, La Bruyere did his literary work, is evidenced by the following:—

A good author, and one who writes with care, often has the experience of finding that the expression which he was a long time in search of without reaching it, and which at length he has found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and that which, as it would seem, should have presented itself at first, and without effort.

We feel that the quality of La Bruyere is such as to fit him for the admiration and enjoyment of but a comparatively small class of readers. He was somewhat over-exquisite. His art at times became artifice—infinite labor of style to make commonplace thought seem valuable by dint of perfect expression. We dismiss La Bruyere with a single additional extract,—his celebrated parallel between Corneille and Racine:—

Corneille subjects us to his characters and to his ideas; Racine accommodates himself to ours. The one paints men as they ought to be; the other paints them as they are. There is more in the former of what one admires, and of what one ought even to imitate; there is more in the latter of what one observes in others, or of what one experiences in one's self. The one inspires, astonishes, masters, instructs; the other pleases, moves, touches, penetrates. Whatever there is most beautiful, most noble, most imperial, in the reason is made use of by the former; by the latter, whatever is most seductive and most delicate in passion. You find in the former, maxims, rules, and precepts; in the latter, taste and sentiment. You are more absorbed in the plays of Corneille; you are more shaken and more softened in those of Racine. Corneille is more moral; Racine, more natural. The one appears to make Sophocles his model; the other owes more to Euripides.

* * *

Less than half a century after La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere had shown the way, Vauvenargues followed in a similar style of authorship, promising almost to rival the fame of his two predecessors. This writer, during his brief life (he died at thirty-two), produced one not inconsiderable literary work more integral and regular in form, entitled, "Introduction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind"; but it is his disconnected thoughts and observations chiefly that continue to preserve his name.

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

Corneille's heroes often say great things without inspiring them; Racine's inspire them without saying them.

Here is a good saying:—

It is a great sign of mediocrity always to be moderate in praising.

There is worldly wisdom also here:—

He who knows how to turn his prodigalities to good account, practises a large and noble economy.

Virgil's "They are able, because they seem to themselves to be able," is recalled by this:—

The consciousness of our strength makes our strength greater.

So much for Vauvenargues.



VI.

LA FONTAINE.

1621-1695.

La Fontaine enjoys a unique fame. He has absolutely "no fellow in the firmament" of literature. He is the only fabulist, of any age or any nation, that, on the score simply of his fables, is admitted to be poet as well as fabulist. There is perhaps no other literary name whatever among the French, by long proof more secure, than is La Fontaine's, of universal and of immortal renown. Such a fame is, of course, not the most resplendent in the world; but to have been the first, and to remain thus far the only, writer of fables enjoying recognition as true poetry,—this surely is an achievement entitling La Fontaine to monumental mention in any sketch, however summary, of French literature.

Jean de La Fontaine was humbly born, at Chateau-Thierry in Champagne. His early education was sadly neglected. At twenty years of age he was still phenomenally ignorant. About this time, being now better situated, he developed a taste for the classics and for poetry. With La Fontaine the man, it is the sadly familiar French story of debauched manners in life and in literary production. We cannot acquit him, but we are to condemn him only in common with the most of his age and of his nation. As the world goes, La Fontaine was a "good fellow," never lacking friends. These were held fast in loyalty to the poet, not so much by any sterling worth of character felt in him, as by an exhaustless, easy-going good-nature, that, despite his social insipidity, made La Fontaine the most acceptable of every-day companions. It would be easy to repeat many stories illustrative of this personal quality in La Fontaine, while to tell a single story illustrative of any lofty trait in his character would he perhaps impossible. Still, La Fontaine seemed not ungrateful for the benefits he received from others; and gratitude, no commonplace virtue, let us accordingly reckon to the credit of a man in general so slenderly equipped with positive claims to admiring personal regard. The mirror of bonhomie (easy-hearted good-fellowship), he always was. Indeed, that significant, almost untranslatable, French word might have been coined to fit La Fontaine's case. On his amiable side—a full hemisphere or more of the man—it sums him up completely. Twenty years long, this mirror of bonhomie was domiciliated, like a pet animal, under the hospitable roof of the celebrated Madame de la Sabliere. There was truth as well as humor implied in what she said one day: "I have sent away all my domestics; I have kept only my dog, my cat, and La Fontaine."

But La Fontaine had that in him which kept the friendship of serious men. Moliere, a grave, even melancholy spirit, however gay in his comedies; Boileau and Racine, decorous both of them, at least in manners,—constituted, together with La Fontaine, a kind of private "Academy," existing on a diminutive scale, which was not without its important influence on French letters. La Fontaine seems to have been a sort of Goldsmith in this club of wits, the butt of many pleasantries from his colleagues, called out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augustine was one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La Fontaine lost the benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged meantime on a quite different character. Catching, however, at the name, La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, betrayed the secret of his absent thoughts by asking, "Do you think St. Augustine had as much wit as Rabelais?"—"Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine: you have put one of your stockings on wrong side out,"—he had actually done so,—was the only answer vouchsafed to his question. The speaker in this case was a doctor of the Sorbonne (brother to Boileau), present as guest. The story is told of La Fontaine, that egged on to groundless jealousy of his wife,—a wife whom he never really loved, and whom he soon would finally abandon,—he challenged a military friend of his to combat with swords. The friend was amazed, and, amazed, reluctantly fought with La Fontaine, whom he easily put at his mercy. "Now, what is this for?" he demanded. "The public says you visit my house for my wife's sake, not for mine," said La Fontaine. "Then I never will come again." "Far from it," responds La Fontaine, seizing his friend's hand. "I have satisfied the public. Now you must come to my house every day, or I will fight you again." The two went back in company, and breakfasted together in mutual good humor.

A trait or two more, and there will have been enough of the man La Fontaine. It is said that when, on the death of Madame de la Sabliere, La Fontaine was homeless, he was met on the street by a friend, who exclaimed, "I was looking for you; come to my house, and live with me!" "I was on the way there," La Fontaine characteristically replied. At seventy, La Fontaine went through a process of "conversion," so called, in which he professed repentance of his sins. On the genuineness of this inward experience of La Fontaine, it is not for a fellow-creature of his, especially at this distance of time, to pronounce. When he died, at seventy-three, Fenelon could say of him (in Latin), "La Fontaine is no more! He is no more; and with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses!"

La Fontaine's earliest works were Contes, so styled; that is, stories, tales, or romances. These are in character such that the subsequent happy change in manners, if not in morals, has made them unreadable,—for their indecency. We need concern ourselves only with the Fables, for it is on these that La Fontaine's fame securely rests. The basis of story in them was not generally original with La Fontaine. He took whatever fittest came to his hand. With much modesty, he attributed all to AEsop and Phaedrus. But invention of his own is not altogether wanting to his books of fables. Still, it is chiefly the consummate artful artlessness of the form that constitutes the individual merit of La Fontaine's productions. With something, too, of the air of real poetry, he has undoubtedly invested his verse.

We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been the prime favorite of the author himself. It is the fable of "The Oak and the Reed." Of this fable, French critics have not scrupled to speak in terms of almost the very highest praise. Chamfort says, "Let one consider, that, within the limit of thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield himself to the current of his story, has taken on every tone, that of poetry the most graceful, that of poetry the most lofty, and one will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch at which this fable appeared, there was nothing comparable to it in the French language." There are, to speak precisely, thirty-two lines in the fable. In this one case, let us try representing La Fontaine's compression by our English form. For the rest of our specimens, we shall use Elizur Wright's translation,—a meritorious one, still master of the field which, near fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty-four. The additions are not ungraceful, but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines—lines of six feet—obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice, and makes his verses long or short, as pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece is, in accordance with the intended majesty of the representation, an Alexandrine.

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

A blast you feel, I feel a breeze. Had you been born beneath my roof, Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof, Less had you known your life to tease; I should have sheltered you from storm. But oftenest you rear your form On the moist limits of the realm of wind. Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned." "Your pity," answers him the Heed, "Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain; I more than you may winds disdain. I bend, and break not. You, indeed, Against their dreadful strokes till now Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow: But wait we for the end." Scarce had he spoke, When fiercely from the far horizon broke The wildest of the children, fullest fraught With terror, that till then the North had brought. The tree holds good; the reed it bends. The wind redoubled might expends, And so well works that from his bed Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the dead.

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

The sage Levantines have a tale About a rat that weary grew Of all the cares which life assail, And to a Holland cheese withdrew. His solitude was there profound, Extending through his world so round. Our hermit lived on that within; And soon his industry had been With claws and teeth so good, That in his novel heritage, He had in store for wants of age, Both house and livelihood. What more could any rat desire? He grew fat, fair, and round. God's blessings thus redound To those who in his vows retire. One day this personage devout, Whose kindness none might doubt, Was asked, by certain delegates That came from Rat United States, For some small aid, for they To foreign parts were on their way, For succor in the great cat-war: Ratopolis beleaguered sore, Their whole republic drained and poor, No morsel in their scrips they bore. Slight boon they craved, of succor sure In days at utmost three or four. "My friends," the hermit said, "To worldly things I'm dead. How can a poor recluse To such a mission be of use? What can he do but pray That God will aid it on its way? And so, my friends, it is my prayer That God will have you in his care." His well-fed saintship said no more, But in their faces shut the door. What think you, reader, is the service, For which I use this niggard rat? To paint a monk? No, but a dervise. A monk, I think, however fat, Must be more bountiful than that.

The fable entitled "Death and the Dying" is much admired for its union of pathos with wit. "The Two Doves" is another of La Fontaine's more tender inspirations. "The Mogul's Dream" is a somewhat ambitious flight of the fabulist's muse. On the whole, however, the masterpiece among the fables of La Fontaine is that of "The Animals Sick of the Plague." Such at least is the opinion of critics in general. The idea of this fable is not original with La Fontaine. The homilists of the middle ages used a similar fiction to enforce on priests the duty of impartiality in administering the sacrament, so called, of confession. We give this famous fable as our closing specimen of La Fontaine:—

The sorest ill that Heaven hath Sent oil this lower world in wrath,— The plague (to call it by its name), One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich, Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire: Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled, So love and therefore joy were dead. The lion council held, and said, "My friends, I do believe This awful scourge for which we grieve, Is for our sins a punishment Most righteously by Heaven sent. Let us our guiltiest beast resign, A sacrifice to wrath divine. Perhaps this offering, truly small, May gain the life and health of all. By history we find it noted That lives have been just so devoted. Then let us all turn eyes within, And ferret out the hidden sin. Himself, let no one spare nor flatter, But make clean conscience in the matter. For me, my appetite has played the glutton Too much and often upon mutton. What harm had e'er my victims done? I answer, truly, None. Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger pressed, I've eat the shepherd with the rest. I yield myself if need there be; And yet I think, in equity, Each should confess his sins with me; For laws of right and justice cry, The guiltiest alone should die." "Sire," said the fox, "your majesty Is humbler than a king should be, And over-squeamish in the case. What! eating stupid sheep a crime? No, never, sire, at any time.

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

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

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

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

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



VII.

MOLIERE.

1623-1673.

MOLIERE is confessedly the greatest writer of comedy in the world. Greek Menander might have disputed the palm; but Menander's works have perished, and his greatness must be guessed. Who knows but we guess him too great? Moliere's works survive, and his greatness may be measured.

We have stinted our praise. Moliere is not only; the foremost name in a certain department of literature; he is one of the foremost names in literature. The names are few on which critics are willing to bestow this distinction. But critics generally agree in bestowing this distinction on Moliere.

Moliere's comedy is by no means mere farce. Farces he wrote, undoubtedly; and some element of farce, perhaps, entered to qualify nearly every comedy that flowed from his pen. But it is not for his farce that Moliere is rated one of the few greatest producers of literature. Moliere's comedy constitutes to Moliere the patent that it does of high degree in genius, not because it provokes laughter, but because, amid laughter provoked, it not seldom reveals, as if with flashes of lightning,—lightning playful, indeed, but lightning that might have been deadly,—the "secrets of the nethermost abyss" of human nature. Not human manners merely, those of a time, or of a race, but human attributes, those of all times, and of all races, are the things with which, in his higher comedies, Moliere deals. Some transient whim of fashion may in these supply to him the mould of form that he uses, but it is human nature itself that supplies to Moliere the substance of his dramatic creations. Now and again, if you read Moliere wisely and deeply, you find your laughter at comedy fairly frozen in your throat, by a gelid horror seizing you, to feel that these follies or these crimes displayed belong to that human nature, one and the same everywhere and always, of which also you yourself partake. Comedy, Dante, too, called his poem, which included the "Inferno." And a Dantesque quality, not of method, but of power, is to be felt in Moliere.

This character in Moliere the writer, accords with the character of the man Moliere. It might not have seemed natural to say of Moliere, as was said of Dante, "There goes the man that has been in hell." But Moliere was melancholy enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an exclamation such as, 'There goes the man that has seen the human heart.'

A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at least, feel Moliere to be. In Victor Hugo's list of the eight greatest poets of all time, two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks (Homer and AEschylus), one is a Roman (Lucretius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman (Shakspeare),—seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a Frenchman, and that Frenchman is Moliere. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps make the list nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo himself.

Curiously enough, Moliere is not this great writer's real name. It is a stage name. It was assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty-four years of age, on occasion of his becoming one in a strolling band of players,—in 1646 or thereabout. This band, originally composed of amateurs, developed into a professional dramatic company, which passed through various transformations, until, from being at first grandiloquently self-styled, L'Illustre Theatre, it was, twenty years after, recognized by the national title of Theatre Francais. Moliere's real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin.

Young Poquelin's bent, early encouraged by seeing plays and ballets, was strongly toward the stage. The drama, under the quickening patronage of Louis XIII.'s lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public interest of those times in Paris. Moliere's evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired a certain actress in the capital. She became the companion—probably not innocent companion—of his wandering life as actor. A sister of this actress—a sister young enough to be daughter, instead of sister—Moliere finally married. She led her jealous husband a wretched conjugal life. A peculiarly dark tradition of shame, connected with Moliere's marriage, has lately been to a good degree dispelled. But it is not possible to redeem this great man's fame to chastity and honor. He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs of jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy for himself hidden within the comedy that he acted for others. (Moliere, to the very end of his life, acted in the comedies that he wrote.) When some play of his represented the torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it was probably not so much acting, as it was real life, that the spectators saw proceeding on the stage between Moliere and his wife, confronted with each other in performing the piece.

Despite his faults, Moliere was cast in a noble, generous mould, of character as well as of genius. Expostulated with for persisting to appear on the stage when his health was such that he put his life at stake in so doing, he replied that the men and women of his company depended for their bread on the play's going through, and appear he would. He actually died an hour or so after playing the part of the Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that name. That piece was the last work of his pen.

Moliere produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from among which we select a few of the most celebrated for brief description and illustration.

The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" ("Shopkeeper turned Gentleman") partakes of the nature of the farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But it is farce such as only a man of genius could produce. In it Moliere ridicules the airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure in a social rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his merit. Jourdain is the name under which Moliere satirizes such a character. We give a fragment from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process of fitting himself for that higher position in society to which he aspires. He will equip himself with the necessary knowledge. To this end he employs a professor of philosophy to come and give him lessons at his house:—

M. JOURDAIN. I have the greatest desire in the world to be learned; and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when I was young.

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this, and you have, no doubt, a knowledge of Latin?

M. JOUR. Yes; but act as if I had none. Explain to me the meaning of it.

PROF. PHIL. The meaning of it is, that, without science, life is an image of death.

M. JOUR. That Latin is quite right.

PROF. PHIL. Have you any principles, any rudiments, of science?

M. JOUR. Oh, yes! I can read and write.

PROP. PHIL. With what would you like to begin? Shall I teach you logic?

M. JOUR. And what may this logic be?

PROF. PHIL. It is that which teaches us the three operations of the mind.

M. JOUR. What are they—these three operations of the mind?

PROF. PHIL. The first, the second, and the third. The first is to conceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by means of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by means of the figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, etc.

M. JOUR. Pooh! what repulsive words! This logic does not by any means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening.

PROF. PHIL. Will you learn moral philosophy?

M. JOUR. Moral philosophy?

PROF. PHIL. Yes.

M. JOUR. What does it say, this moral philosophy?

PROF. PHIL.It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their passions, and—

M. JOUR. No, none of that. I am devilishly hot-tempered, and morality, or no morality, I like to give full vent to my anger whenever I have a mind to it.

PROF. PHIL. Would you like to learn physics?

M. JOUR. And what have physics to say for themselves?

PROF. PHIL. Physics are that science which explains the principles of natural things and the properties of bodies; which discourses of the nature of the elements, of metals, minerals, stones, plants, and animals; which teaches us the cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the ignis fatuus, comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, and whirlwinds.

M. JOUR. There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too much riot and rumpus.

PROF. PHIL. Very good.

M. JOUR. And now I want to intrust you with a great secret. I am in love with a lady of quality, and I should be glad if you would help me to write something to her in a short letter which I mean to drop at her feet.

PROF. PHIL. Very well.

M. JOUR. That will be gallant, will it not?

PROF. PHIL. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her?

M. JOUR. Oh, no! not verse.

PROF. PHIL. You only wish prose?

M. JOUR. No. I wish for neither verse nor prose.

PROF. PHIL. It must be one or the other.

M. JOUR.Why?

PROF. PHIL. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can express ourselves except prose or verse.

M. JOUR. There is nothing but prose or verse?

PROF. PHIL. No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; and whatever is not verse, is prose.

M. JOUR.And when we speak, what is that, then?

PROF. PHIL. Prose.

M. JOUR. What! when I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my nightcap," is that prose?

PROF. PHIL. Yes, sir.

M. JOUR. Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these forty years without being aware of it; and I am under the greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. Well, then, I wish to write to her in a letter, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" but I would have this worded in a genteel manner, and turned prettily.

PROF. PHIL. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to ashes; that you suffer day and night for her, tortures—

M. JOUR. No, no, no, I don't any of that. I simply wish for what I tell you,—"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love."

PROF. PHIL. Still, you might amplify the thing a little.

M. JOUR. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these very words in the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and arranged as they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I may see the different ways in which they can be put.

PROF. PHIL. They may be put first of all, as you have said, "Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love;" or else, "Of love die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes;" or, "Your beautiful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness, die;" or, "Die of love your beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness, make me;" or else, "Me make your beautiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love."

M. JOUR. But of all these ways, which is the best?

PROF. PHIL. The one you said,—"Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love."

M. JOUR. Yet I have never studied, and I did all right off at the first shot.

The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" is a very amusing comedy throughout.

From "Les Femmes Savantes" ("The Learned Women")—"The Blue-Stockings," we might perhaps freely render the title—we present one scene to indicate the nature of the comedy. There had grown to be a fashion in Paris, among certain women high in social rank, of pretending to the distinction of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in science. It was the Hotel de Rambouillet reduced to absurdity. That fashionable affectation Moliere made the subject of his comedy, "The Learned Women."

In the following extracts, Moliere satirizes, under the name of Trissotin, a contemporary writer, one Cotin. The poem which Trissotin reads for the learned women to criticise and admire, is an actual production of this gentleman. Imagine the domestic coterie assembled, and Trissotin, the poet, their guest. He is present, prepared to regale them with what he calls his sonnet. We need to explain that the original poem is thus inscribed: "To Mademoiselle de Longueville, now Duchess of Namur, on her Quartan Fever." The conceit of the sonneteer is that the fever is an enemy luxuriously lodged in the lovely person of its victim, and there insidiously plotting against her life:—

TRISSOTIN. Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever, Your prudence sure is fast asleep, That thus luxuriously you keep And lodge magnificently so Your very hardest-hearted foe.

BELISE. Ah! what a pretty beginning!

ARMANDE. What a charming turn it has!

PHILAMINTE. He alone possesses the talent of making easy verses.

ARM. We must yield to prudence fast asleep.

BEL. Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe is full of charms for me.

PHIL. I like luxuriously and magnificently: these two adverbs joined together sound admirably.

BEL. Let us hear the rest.

TRISS. Your prudence sure is fast asleep, That thus luxuriously you keep And lodge magnificently so Your very hardest-hearted foe.

ARM. Prudence fast asleep.

BEL. To lodge one's foe.

PHIL. Luxuriously and magnificently.

TRISS. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, From out your chamber, decked so gay, Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife, Bold she assails your lovely life.

BEL. Ah! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you.

ARM.Give us time to admire, I beg.

PHIL. One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable something which goes through one's inmost soul, and makes one feel quite faint.

ARM. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, From out your chamber, decked so gay—

How prettily chamber, decked so gay, is said here! And with what wit the metaphor is introduced!

PHIL. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say.

Ah! in what an admirable taste that whate'er men say is! To my mind, the passage is invaluable.

ARM. My heart is also in love with whate'er men say.

BEL. I am of your opinion: whate'er men say is a happy expression.

ARM. I wish I had written it.

BEL. It is worth a whole poem.

PHIL. But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the wit of it?

ARM. and BEL. Oh! Oh!

PHIL. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say. Although another should take the fever's part, pay no attention; laugh at the gossips.

Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, Whate'er men say, whate'er men say.

This whate'er men say, says a great deal more than it seems. I do not know if every one is like me, but I discover in it a hundred meanings.

BEL. It is true that it says more than its size seems to imply.

PHIL. (to TRISSOTIN). But when you wrote this charming whate'er men say, did you yourself understand all its energy? Did you realize all that it tells us? And did you then think that you were writing something so witty?

TRISS. Ah! ah!

ARM. I have likewise the ingrate in my head,—this ungrateful, unjust, uncivil fever that ill-treats people who entertain her.

PHIL. In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us come quickly to the triplets, I pray.

ARM. Ah! once more, whate'er men say, I beg.

TRISS. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say,—

PHIL., ARM., and BEL. Whate'er men say!

TRISS. From out your chamber, decked so gay,—

PHIL., ARM., and BEL. Chamber decked so gay!

TRISS. Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife,—

PHIL., ARM., and BEL. That ingrate fever!

TRISS. Bold she assails your lovely life.

PHIL. Your lovely life!

ARM. and BEL. Ah!

TRISS. What! reckless of your ladyhood, Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood,—

PHIL., ARM., and BEL. Ah!

TRISS. And day and night to work you harm. When to the baths sometime you've brought her, No more ado, with your own arm Whelm her and drown her in the water.

PHIL. Ah! It is quite overpowering.

BEL. I faint.

ARM. I die from pleasure.

PHIL. A thousand sweet thrills seize one.

ARM. When to the baths sometime you've brought her,

BEL. No more ado, with your own arm

PHIL. Whelm her and drown her in the water. With your own arm, drown her there in the baths.

ARM. In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty.

BEL. One promenades through them with rapture.

PHIL. One treads on fine things only.

ARM. They are little lanes all strewn with roses.

TRISS. Then, the sonnet seems to you—

PHIL. Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more beautiful.

BEL. (to HENRIETTE). What! my niece, you listen to what has been read without emotion! You play there but a sorry part!

HEN. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a wit does not depend on our will.

TRISS. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you.

HEN. No. I do not listen.

PHIL. Ah! Let us hear the epigram.

But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epigram. They will relish, however, a fragment taken from a subsequent part of the same protracted scene. The conversation has made the transition from literary criticism to philosophy, in Moliere's time a fashionable study rendered such by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande resents the limitations imposed upon her sex:—

ARM. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the beauties of lace, or of a new brocade.

BEL. We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely proclaim our emancipation.

TRISS. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that, if I render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honor the splendor of their intellect.

PHIL. And our sex does you justice in this respect: but we will show to certain minds who treat us with proud contempt, that women also have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned meetings—regulated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite what elsewhere is kept apart, join noble language to deep learning, reveal nature's laws by a thousand experiments; and, on all questions proposed, admit every party, and ally themselves to none.

TRISS. For order, I prefer peripateticism.

PHIL. For abstractions, I love platonism.

ARM. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid.

BEL. I agree with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter.

TRISS. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.

ARM. I like his vortices.

PHIL. And I, his falling worlds.

ARM. I long to see our assembly opened, and to distinguish ourselves by some great discovery.

TRISS. Much is expected from your enlightened knowledge, for nature has hidden few things from you.

PHIL. For my part, I have, without boasting, already made one discovery; I have plainly seen men in the moon.

BEL. I have not, I believe, as yet quite distinguished men, but I have seen steeples as plainly as I see you.

ARM. In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into grammar, history, verse, ethics, and politics.

PHIL. I find in ethics charms which delight my heart; it was formerly the admiration of great geniuses: but I give the preference to the Stoics, and I think nothing so grand as their founder.

"Les Precieuses Ridicules" is an earlier and lighter treatment of the same theme. The object of ridicule in both these pieces was a lapsed and degenerate form of what originally was a thing worthy of respect, and even of praise. At the Hotel de Rambouillet, conversation was cultivated as a fine art. There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the standards which the ladies of that circle enforced. Their mutual communication was all conducted in a peculiar style of language, the natural deterioration of which was into a kind of euphuism, such as English readers will remember to have seen exemplified in Walter Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies called each other, with demonstrative fondness, "Ma precieuse." Hence at last the term precieuse as a designation of ridicule. Madame de Sevigne was a precieuse. But she, with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic common sense to be a precieuse ridicule. Moliere himself, thrifty master of policy that he was, took pains to explain that he did not satirize the real thing, but only the affectation.

"Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most celebrated of all Moliere's plays. Scarcely comedy, scarcely tragedy, it partakes of both characters. Like tragedy, serious in purpose, it has a happy ending like comedy. Pity and terror are absent; or, if not quite absent, these sentiments are present raised only to a pitch distinctly below the tragic. Indignation is the chief passion excited, or detestation, perhaps, rather than indignation. This feeling is provided at last with its full satisfaction in the condign punishment visited on the impostor.

The original "Tartuffe," like the most of Moliere's comedies, is written in rhymed verse. We could not, with any effort, make the English-reading student of Moliere sufficiently feel how much is lost when the form is lost which the creations of this great genius took, in their native French, under his own master hand. A satisfactory metrical rendering is out of the question. The sense, at least, if not the incommunicable spirit, of the original is very well given in Mr. C. H. Wall's version, which we use.

The story of "Tartuffe" is briefly this: Tartuffe, the hero, is a pure villain. He mixes no adulteration of good in his composition. He is hypocrisy itself, the strictly genuine article. Tartuffe has completely imposed upon one Orgon, a man of wealth and standing. Orgon, with his wife, and with his mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. These people have received the canting rascal into their house, and are about to bestow upon him their daughter in marriage. The following scene from act first shows the skill with which Moliere could exhibit, in a few strokes of bold exaggeration, the infatuation of Orgon's regard for Tartuffe. Orgon has been absent from home. He returns, and meets Cleante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness, he begs to excuse his not answering a question just addressed to him:—

ORGON (to CLEANTE). Brother, pray excuse me: you will kindly allow me to allay my anxiety by asking news of the family. (To DORINE, a maid-servant.) Has every thing gone on well these last two days? What has happened? How is everybody?

DOR. The day before yesterday our mistress was very feverish from morning to night, and suffered from a most extraordinary headache.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. Tartuffe! He is wonderfully well, stout and fat, with blooming cheeks and ruddy lips.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain in her head was so great that she could not touch any thing at supper.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. He ate his supper by himself before her, and very devoutly devoured a brace of partridges, and half a leg of mutton hashed.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. She spent the whole of the night without getting one wink of sleep: she was very feverish, and we had to sit up with her until the morning.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from the table to his room, and got at once into his warmed bed, where he slept comfortably till the next morning.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. At last yielding to our persuasions, she consented to be bled, and immediately felt relieved.

ORG. And Tartuffe?

DOR. He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his soul against all evils, to make up for the blood which our lady had lost, drank at breakfast four large bumpers of wine.

ORG. Poor man!

DOR. Now, at last, they are both well; and I will go and tell our lady how glad you are to hear of her recovery.

Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefactor by making improper advances to that benefactor's wife. Orgon's son, who does not share his father's confidence in Tartuffe, happens to be an unseen witness of the man's infamous conduct. He exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the result of being himself expelled from the house for his pains; while Tartuffe, in recompense for the injury done to his feelings, is presented with a gift-deed of Orgon's estate. But now Orgon's wife contrives to let her husband see and hear for himself the vileness of Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts the villain, and, with just indignation, orders him out of his house. Tartuffe reminds Orgon that the shoe is on the other foot; that he is himself now owner there, and that it is Orgon, instead of Tartuffe, who must go. Orgon has an interview with his mother, who is exasperatingly sure still that Tartuffe is a maligned good man:—

MADAME PERNELLE. I can never believe, my son, that he would commit so base an action.

ORG. What?

PER. Good people are always subject to envy.

ORG. What do you mean, mother?

PER. That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but too well aware of the ill will they all bear him.

ORG. What has this ill will to do with what I have just told you?

PER. I have told it you a hundred times when you were young, that in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that, although the envious die, envy never dies.

ORG. But what has this to do with what has happened to-day?

PER. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against him.

ORG. I have already told you that I saw it all myself.

PER. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great.

ORG. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw his audacious attempt with my own eyes.

PER. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and here below, there is nothing proof against them.

ORG. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I tell you,—saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w, saw! Must I din it over and over into your ears, and shout as loud as half a dozen people?

PER. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We must not always judge by what we see.

ORG. I shall go mad!

PER. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is often mistaken for evil.

ORG. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as charitable?

PER. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse another, and you should have waited till you were quite sure of the fact.

ORG. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I suppose, mother, I ought to have waited till—you will make me say something foolish.

PER. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I cannot possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what you accuse him of.

ORG. If you were not my mother, I really don't know what I might now say to you, you make me so savage.

The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea, the suggestion that under the existing circumstances some sort of peace ought to be patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Meantime one LOYAL is observed coming, whereupon the fourth scene of act fifth opens:—

LOY. (to DORINE at the farther part of the stage). Good-day, my dear sister; pray let me speak to your master.

DOR. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see any one just now.

LOY. I would not be intrusive. I feel sure that he will find nothing unpleasant in my visit: in fact, I come for something which will be very gratifying to him.

DOR. What is your name?

LOY. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tartuffe, for his benefit.

DOR. (to ORGON). It is a man who comes in a civil way from Mr. Tartuffe, on some business which will make you glad, he says.

CLE. (to ORGON). You must see who it is, and what the man wants.

ORG. (to CLEANTE). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between us in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to behave to him?

CLE. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of an agreement, listen to him.

LOY. (to ORGON). Your servant, sir! May heaven punish whoever wrongs you! and may it be as favorable to you, sir, as I wish!

ORG. (aside to CLEANTE). This pleasant beginning agrees with my conjectures, and argues some sort of reconciliation.

LOY. All your family was always dear to me, and I served your father.

ORG. Sir, I am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not know who you are, neither do I remember your name.

LOY. My name is Loyal; I was born in Normandy, and am a royal bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years I have had the good fortune to fill the office, thanks to Heaven, with great credit; and I come, sir, with your leave, to serve you the writ of a certain order.

ORG. What! you are here—

LOY. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons,—a notice for you to leave this place, you and yours; to take away all your goods and chattels, and make room for others, without delay or adjournment, as hereby decreed.

ORG. I! leave this place?

LOY. Yes, sir; if you please. The house incontestably belongs, as you are well aware, to the good Mr. Tartuffe. He is now lord and master of your estates, according to a deed I have in my keeping. It is in due form, and cannot be challenged.

DAMIS (to MR. LOYAL). This great impudence is, indeed, worthy of all admiration.

LOY. (to DAMIS). Sir, I have nothing at all to do with you. (Pointing to ORGON.) My business is with this gentleman. He is tractable and gentle, and knows too well the duty of a gentleman to try to oppose authority.

ORG. But—

LOY. Yes, sir: I know that you would not, for any thing, show contumacy; and that you will allow me, like a reasonable man, to execute the orders I have received....

The scene gives in conclusion some spirited by-play of asides and interruptions from indignant members of the family. Then follows scene fifth, one exchange of conversation from which will sufficiently indicate the progress of the plot:—

ORG. Well, mother, you see whether I am right; and you can judge of the rest by the writ. Do you at last acknowledge his rascality?

PER. I am thunderstruck, and can scarcely believe my eyes and ears.

The next scene introduces Valere, the noble lover of that daughter whom the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Valere comes to announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Orgon to the king. Orgon must fly. Valere offers him his own carriage and money,—will, in fact, himself keep him company till he reaches a place of safety. As Orgon, taking hasty leave of his family, turns to go, he is encountered by—the following scene will show whom:—

TAR. (stopping ORGON). Gently, sir, gently; not so fast, I beg. You have not far to go to find a lodging, and you are a prisoner in the king's name.

ORG. Wretch! you had reserved this shaft for the last; by it you finish me, and crown all your perfidies.

TAR. Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I know how to suffer every thing for the sake of Heaven.

CLE. Your moderation is really great, we must acknowledge.

DA. How impudently the infamous wretch sports with Heaven!

TAR. Your anger cannot move me. I have no other wish but to fulfil my duty.

MARIANNE. You may claim great glory from the performance of this duty: it is a very honorable employment for you.

TAR. The employment cannot be otherwise than glorious, when it comes from the power that sends me here.

ORG. But do you remember that my charitable hand, ungrateful scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery?

TAR. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the interest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself with them.

ELMIRE. The impostor!

DOR. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all that men revere!...

TAR. (to the OFFICER). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all this noise, and to act according to the orders you have received.

OFFICER. I have certainly put off too long the discharge of my duty, and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order, follow me immediately to the prison in which a place is assigned to you.

TAR. Who? I, sir?

OFFICER. Yes, you.

TAR. Why to prison?

OFFICER. To you I have no account to render. (To ORGON.) Pray, sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under a king [Louis XIV.] who is an enemy to fraud,—a king who can read the heart, and whom all the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great mind, endowed with delicate discernment, at all times sees things in their true, light.... He annuls, by his sovereign will, the terms of the contract by which you gave him [Tartuffe] your property. He moreover forgives you this secret offence in which you were involved by the flight of your friend. This to reward the zeal which you once showed for him in maintaining his rights, and to prove that his heart, when it is least expected, knows how to recompense a good action. Merit with him is never lost, and he remembers good better than evil.

DOR. Heaven be thanked!

PER. Ah! I breathe again.

EL. What a favorable end to our troubles!

MAR. Who would have foretold it?

ORG. (to TARTUFFE, as the OFFICER leads him off). Ah, wretch! now you are—

Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends, with a vanishing glimpse afforded us of a happy marriage in prospect for Valere with the daughter.

Moliere is said to have had a personal aim in drawing the character of Tartuffe. This, at least, was like Dante. There is not much sweet laughter in such a comedy. But there is a power that is dreadful.

Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies its bright and ingenious wits who produce comedy. But as there is no second Shakspeare, so there is but one Moliere.



VIII.

PASCAL.

1623-1662.

Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. He achieved notable things. But it is what he might have done, still more than what he did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intellectual glories of France.

Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward mathematics. The story is that his father, in order to turn his son's whole force on the study of languages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own resources, the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches toward Newton's binomial theorem.

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected Pascal's mind. His health, never robust, began to give way. His physicians prescribed mental diversion, and forced him into society. That medicine, taken at first with reluctance, proved dangerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and susceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her brother that he was going too far. But he was still more effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost miraculously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died—in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected himself at fault in his spirit.

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted, worthy of fame, in science, it was his fortune to become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. His, in fact, would now be a half-forgotten name if he had not written the "Provincial Letters" and the "Thoughts."