The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère
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Title: The "Characters" of Jean de La Bruyère
Author: Jean de La Bruyère
Translator: Henri Van Laun
Release date: August 19, 2014 [eBook #46633]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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Transcriberʼs note:
Due to the error in the numbering of the chapters in the original
(no chapter number II and no chapter number for chapter “OF FASHION”),
chapters have been renumbered as follows:
I->I, III->II, IV->III, V->IV, VI->V, VII->VI, VIII->VII, IX-VIII,
X->IX, XI->X, XII->XI, XIII->XII, (OF FASHION)->XIII, XV->XIV, XVI->XV,
XVII->XVI.
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THE “CHARACTERS”
OF
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
_PUBLISHERʼS NOTE._
_Three hundred copies of this book printed for England, and two
hundred, with an American imprint, for sale in that country. No more
will be printed._
_No. 13_
[Illustration: JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE]
_LA BRUYÈRE_
THE “CHARACTERS”
OF
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
_NEWLY RENDERED INTO ENGLISH_
BY HENRI VAN LAUN
With an Introduction, a Biographical Memoir
and Notes
_ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY-FOUR ETCHINGS_
BY B. DAMMAN AND V. FOULQUIER
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1885
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION _11_
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR _26_
PREFACE i
OF WORKS OF THE MIND 7
OF PERSONAL MERIT 39
OF WOMEN 58
OF THE AFFECTIONS 86
OF SOCIETY AND OF CONVERSATION 100
OF THE GIFTS OF FORTUNE 132
OF THE TOWN 164
OF THE COURT 183
OF THE GREAT 221
OF THE SOVEREIGN AND THE STATE 245
OF MANKIND 271
OF OPINIONS 328
OF FASHION 377
OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS 403
OF THE PULPIT 442
OF FREETHINKERS 459
[Illustration]
LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS.
Etchings—Portraits.
PAGE
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE _Frontispiece_
MONTAIGNE 23
DESCARTES 151
LE BRUN 236
LOUIS XIV. 270
WILLIAM III. 374
BOSSUET 453
Etchings—Vignettes.
THE AUTHOR i
STUDY 7
TIRED OUT 39
THE TOILETTE 58
AFFECTION 86
SOCIETY 100
RUSTIC COURTSHIP 132
THE TUILERIES 164
THE COURT 183
THE GREAT 221
THE PRICE OF GLORY 245
THE CONSULTATION 271
DIFFERENT OPINIONS 328
THE BIRD-FANCIER 377
NOBLE AND CITIZEN 403
MONK PREACHING 442
BELIEF 459
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION.
It is a common practice for translators to state to the public that the
author they are going to introduce, and whom they sometimes traduce,
is one of the greatest men of the age, and that already for a long
time a general desire has been felt to make the acquaintance of such a
master-mind. It would be an insult to French scholars to speak thus of
La Bruyère, for the merits of his “Characters” are known; but, for the
benefit of those who are not so well acquainted with our author, I may
state that he is neither so terse, epigrammatic, sublime, nor profound
as either Pascal or La Rochefoucauld are, but that he is infinitely
more readable, as he is always trying to please his readers, and now
and then sacrifices even a certain depth of thought to attain his
object.
La Bruyère takes good care to tell us that he has not imitated any
one; Pascal “makes metaphysics subservient to religion, explains the
nature of the soul, its passions and vices; treats of the great and
serious motives which lead to virtue, and endeavours to make a man a
Christian;” La Rochefoucauldʼs “mind, instructed by his knowledge
of society, and with a delicacy equal to his penetration, observed
that self-love in man was the cause of all his errors, and attacked
it without intermission, wherever it was found; and this one thought,
multiplied as it were in a thousand different ways by a choice of words
and a variety of expression, has always the charm of novelty.”[1] Our
author, on the contrary, openly declares: “I did not wish to write any
maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess
neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator.”[2]
What is the plan and idea of the book of “Characters?” Let La Bruyère
himself answer this: “Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there
are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule
to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and
in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards
extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind; therefore, these chapters
are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is
attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at
least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the
providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of
freethinkers.”[3]
La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the
manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself a philosopher, and
above all a Christian philosopher, such as a friend of Bossuet ought
to be. He was the first to make morality attractive, and to paint
characters in a literary and delicate manner; he does not dogmatise,
and above all shows neither personal hatred nor venom; in other words,
to use his own expressions, he “gives back to the public what it
lent”[4] him.
Underneath the literary man people often look for the man, with all
his passion, his likes and dislikes; hence the many “Keys” of the
“Characters,” published during the authorʼs lifetime and after his
death, in which all kinds of allusions were attempted, and all sorts of
hypothetical explanations ventured on.
Of the concocters of the “Keys” La Bruyère speaks as follows:
“They make it their business, if possible, to discover to which of
their friends or enemies these portraits can apply; they neglect
everything that seems like a sound remark or a serious reflection,
though almost the whole book consists of them; they dwell upon nothing
but the portraits or characters, and after having explained them
in their own way, and after they imagine they have found out the
originals, they publish to the world long lists, or, as they call them,
‘Keys,’ but which are indeed ‘false keys,’ and as useless to them as
they are injurious to the persons whose names are deciphered, and to
the writer who is the cause of it, though an involuntary one.”[5]
And yet some of these “Keys” have been of great use to modern
commentators, and served to elucidate several traits in the
“Characters” which otherwise would not have been discovered.
It would be ridiculous to deny that La Bruyère never had any particular
personage in view in delineating a certain character, but, as he
himself says: “If I might be allowed to be a little vain, I should be
apt to believe that my “Characters” have pretty well portrayed men in
general, since they resemble so many in particular; and since every one
thinks he finds there his neighbour or his countryman. I did indeed
paint after the life, but did not always mean to paint, in my book of
“Characters,” one individual or another. I did not hire myself out to
the public to draw only such portraits as should be true and like the
originals, for fear that sometimes they would be thought incredible,
and appear feigned or imaginary ones. Becoming yet more difficult I
went farther, and took one lineament from one person and one from
another, and from these several lineaments, which might be found in one
and the same person, I drew some likely portraits, studying not so much
to please the reader by describing the characters of certain people,
or, as the malcontents would say, by satirising them, as to lay before
him what faults he ought to avoid, and what examples to follow.”[6]
Our author, therefore, did not wish to depict individuals, but men
in general; for man is the same in all seasons and at all times, and
is swayed by the same motives and passions, though they exercise a
different influence in various ages, produce different results amongst
many races, and do not even act in precisely the same manner in divers
centuries, climates, and under heterogeneous circumstances. He had
no intention of presenting a series of historical events,[7] but of
depicting Frenchmen at the end of the seventeenth century as they
lived, breathed, and moved; not animated by violent likes and dislikes,
as those of the Ligue or the Fronde were, nor filled by the importance
of their own overweening individualities. When we read him, we behold
in our mindʼs eye the subdued subjects of Louis XIV., slavishly obeying
the “Roi Soleil,” admitting the King can do no wrong, becoming devout
to please His Majesty and Madame de Maintenon, inaugurating the reign
of courtly hypocrisy, embracing the principle of one religion in one
state, and seeing the royal sun gradually decline, and the star of
William III. in its ascendancy.
The notes of the present edition are necessary, I imagine, to assist
in illustrating the life of a past age, for “no usages or customs
are perennial, but they vary with the times.... Nothing can be more
opposed to our manners than all these things; but the distance of
time makes us relish them.” The “Characters” themselves, as well as
the notes, represent a “history of ... times,” when the usual custom
was “the selling of offices; that is to say, the power of protecting
innocence, punishing guilt, and doing justice to the world, bought with
ready money like a farm.” They will also make my readers acquainted
with “a great city,” which at the end of the seventeenth century was
“without any public places, baths, fountains, amphitheatres, galleries,
porticoes, or public walks, and this the capital of a powerful
kingdom; they will be told of persons whose whole life was spent in
going from one house to another; of decent women who kept neither
shops nor inns, yet had their houses open for those who would pay for
their admission,[8] and where they could choose between dice, cards,
and other games, where feasting was going on, and which were very
convenient for all kinds of intercourse. They will be informed that
people crowded the street only to be thought in a hurry; that there
was no conversation nor cordiality, but that they were confused, and,
as it were, alarmed by the rattle of coaches which they had to avoid,
and which drove through the streets as if for a prize at some race.
People will learn, without being greatly astonished, that in times
of public peace and tranquillity, the inhabitants went to church and
visited ladies and their friends, whilst wearing offensive weapons; and
that there was hardly any one who did not have dangling at his side
wherewith to kill another person with one thrust.”[9]
La Bruyère, though a shrewd observer, has the daring of an innovator,
but always remains very guarded in his language. When now and then
his feelings get the better of him, he expresses his opinions like a
man, and attacks the vices of his age with a boldness which none of
his contemporaries has surpassed. Nearly the whole of his chapter “Of
the Gifts of Fortune” is an attack on the financiers; in the chapter
“Of the Great,” he certainly does not flatter the courtiers, whilst he
himself never pretends to be anything else but “a plebeian,”[10] and
almost always sides with his own class. If he flatters the king, it
is because he thinks him necessary to the state, and, perhaps, also
because he wishes to have a defender against the many enemies his book
had raised up. He was, moreover, very cautious, and in the endless
alterations he made in the various editions of the “Characters,”[11]
published during his lifetime, he but seldom envenomed the barb he
had shot, or boasted of it if he did so.[12] Though he touched on all
the passions of men, he did not set one class against another, a task
which was left to the so-called philosophical authors of the eighteenth
century.
The style of La Bruyère has been praised by competent judges for its
conciseness and picturesqueness; he always employs the right word in
the right place, is correct in his expressions, varied in his thoughts,
highly imaginative, and, therefore, maybe called a perfect literary
artist.[13] A few words and expressions, which I have noticed, have
become antiquated, or have changed their meaning, but the “Characters”
will still, I think, be read for many ages, be found very entertaining,
and, what cannot be said of the works of every classical French author,
will be better liked the more they are read. If sometimes one of the
characters is portrayed with too many details, it is because it is
taken not from one man, but composed of a series of shrewd and clever
observations made on different personages; and hence our author calls
them “Characters,” and not “portraits.”
Since La Bruyèreʼs death many editions of the “Characters” have
appeared; I have collated and compared the best of them, amongst
which those edited by Mons. G. Servois and Mons. A. Chassang have
laid me under great obligations. I am indebted to these two editions
for many of the notes, and for a few to those of MM. Destailleur and
Hémardinquer.
Several imitations of the “Characters” have also been published,
amongst others a _Petit la Bruyère, ou Caractères et mœurs des
enfants de ce siècle_, and a _Le la Bruyère des domestiques, précédé
de considérations sur Pétat de domesticité en général_, both by that
voluminous author, Madame de Genlis, a _Le la Bruyère des jeunes
gens_, and a similar work for _jeunes demoiselles_, which attract the
attention by the oddity of their titles.
La Bruyèreʼs “Characters” have also been translated several times into
English.
1. A translation seems to have been published in London as early as
1698.[14]
2. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from M. Bruyèreʼs
French version by Eustace Budgell, Esq., London, 1699; and another
edition of the same work published in 1702.[15]
3. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” together with the Characters of
the Age, by La Bruyère, with a prefatory discourse and key: London,
1700.[16]
4. The “Characters, or the Manners of the Age,” by Monsieur de la
Bruyère of the French Academy, made English by several hands, with
the “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from the Greek, and a
prefatory discourse to them, by Monsieur de la Bruyère, the third
edition, corrected throughout, and enlarged, with the Key inserted in
the margin: London, Leach, 1702.
5. The Works of Monsieur de la Bruyère, containing: I. The Moral
Characters of Theophrastus; II. The Characters, or the Manners of the
Present Age; III. M. Bruyèreʼs Speech upon his Admission into the
French Academy; IV. An Account of the Life and Writings of M. Bruyère,
by Monsieur Coste, with an original Chapter of the Manner of Living
with Great Men, written after the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe,
Esq. This translation seems to have been very successful, for the sixth
edition, the only one I have seen, was published in two volumes in
1713: London, E. Curll.
6. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, by H. Gaily: London, 1725.
7. The Works of M. de la Bruyère, in two volumes, to which is added the
Characters of Theophrastus, also The Manner of Living with Great Men,
written after the manner of Bruyère, by N. Rowe, Esq.: London, J. Bell,
1776.
I have consulted the edition mentioned in No. 2, and printed in 1702,
in which the attacks of La Bruyère on William III. in the Chapter
“Of Opinions,” §§ 118 and 119, are omitted; the sixth edition of the
“Characters,” given in No. 5, and published in 1713; and the edition
referred to in No. 7.
In the “Advertisement concerning the new edition” of 1713, printed with
the “Characters,” it is stated, “We procured the last English edition
to be compared verbatim with the last Paris edition (which is the
ninth), and ... all the Supplemental Reflections ... we got translated,
and added to this present edition; and that it might be as complete
as possible, we have not scrupled to translate even those parts which
at first sight may perhaps disoblige some who have a just veneration
for the memory of our Glorious Deliverer, the late King William.” La
Bruyèreʼs speech upon his admission into the French Academy was in this
edition “made English by M. Ozell.”
In the edition of 1776, the “parts” reflecting on William III. are
again omitted. It greatly differs from the one of 1713, and is
dedicated to the Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Lincoln, Auditor of
the Exchequer, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. &c.
Many faults may be found in the old translations, but I have
endeavoured to amend them; and I never scrupled to adopt any
expressions, turn of thought, or even page of any or every translation
of my predecessors, whenever I found I could not improve upon them.
Translations of the “Characters” have appeared in several other
languages; four of these were published in German, the last one
printed in 1872, whilst already the final chapter of La Bruyèreʼs book
“Of Freethinkers” had come out in a German dress in 1739; moreover,
La Bruyèreʼs book has been translated twice into Italian, once into
Spanish, and once into Russian.
The imitations of the “Characters” into English are—
1. “The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age, being the
modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City,” by Boyer:
London, 1692 and 1702.
2. The Chapter “Of the Manner of Living with Great Men,” written after
the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe, mentioned already.
3. Imitations of the Characters of Theophrastus: London, 1774.
I imagine that the author of the “English Theophrastus” was M. Abel
Boyer, the compiler of the well-known dictionary, born at Castres in
1664, who fled to England at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
and died at Chelsea in 1729.
The direct influence of La Bruyèreʼs writings on English literature
is not easily to be traced. Swift may, possibly, have studied him,
though he never mentions him,[17] and so may, perhaps, Anthony Cooper,
third earl of Shaftesbury,[18] “who spoke French so fluently, and
with so perfect an accent, that in France he was often mistaken for
a native.”[19] I venture to think that Addison and Steele were also
acquainted with our Frenchman;[20] but the English author who in
expression, turn of thought, art of delineating character, and in his
mixture of seriousness and familiarity, is most like him, is a doctor
of divinity, R. South, Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ
Church, and yet he wrote before La Bruyère, and therefore cannot have
imitated him.[21]
I am not aware La Bruyère knew English, though his successor at the
French Academy states that he spoke several foreign languages;[22] he
was well acquainted with German, Italian, and I think also Spanish;
nor do I know if any of Dr. Southʼs sermons were published separately
before La Bruyère wrote, and if he, therefore, could have seen them. I
should imagine he never read any of them.
Six portraits, which adorn these volumes, have been specially etched
for this edition by M. B. Damman, whilst the portrait of La Bruyère,
and the vignettes at the head of each chapter, have been drawn and
etched by M. V. Foulquier.
In the biographical memoir of La Bruyère, I have only stated what is
known of him, which is very little.
HENRI VAN LAUN.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR
OF
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE.
For a long time it has generally been taken for granted that our author
first saw the light at Dourdan, a small town in the department of
Seine-et-Oise, but it has only lately been discovered that he was born
in Paris in the month of August 1645. His father, Louis de la Bruyère,
was _contrôleur des rentes de la ville_, a sort of town-tax collector,
whilst his mother, Elizabeth Hamonin, belonged to a respectable family
of Parisian burgesses. His grandfather and great-grandfather on the
fatherʼs side, declared partisans of the Ligue, were both exiled from
France when Henri IV. came to the throne. Perhaps, therefore, the
feelings our author entertained for the people may be explained by
atavism. A younger brother of his father and our authorʼs godfather, a
very wealthy man, and most likely a money-lender, as well as interested
in the farming of certain taxes, seems to have produced no favourable
impression on his god-son, for the latter always attacks the farmers of
the revenue.
Jean de la Bruyère was educated at the Oratorians in Paris, and two
years before his father died, in the month of June 1664, took his
degree of licentiate at law at the University of Orléans. He became
an advocate, but in 1673, when twenty-eight years old, he forsook
the bar, and bought for about 24,000 _livres_ the post of _trésorier
des finances_ in the Caen district, in Normandy. There were fifteen
_trésoriers_ at Caen, of whom only some were obliged to reside there,
but all became ennobled by virtue of their office, and received as
non-residents a yearly salary of about 2500 _livres_. La Bruyère
had bought this treasurership of a certain Joseph Metezeau, said to
have been a relative by marriage of Bossuet, but this is not at all
proved; and in 1686, about two years before he was going to publish
the “Characters,” and when already he had been for some time one of
the teachers of the Duke de Bourbon, a grandson of the Prince Louis de
Condé, he sold again his post for 18,000 _livres_ to Charles-François
de la Bonde, Seigneur dʼIberville.
On the recommendation of Bossuet, La Bruyère, in 1684, had been
appointed teacher of history to the Duke de Bourbon; and remained
with the Condés for twelve years, until the day of his death. He
instructed his pupil not only in history, but also in geography,
literature, and philosophy; yet his lessons appear to have produced no
great impression, and moreover, they did not last very long, for the
youthful duke married in 1685 a daughter of Madame de Montespan and
Louis XIV.,[23] and La Bruyère received then the appointment of _écuyer
gentilhomme_ to Henri Jules, Duke of Bourbon, the father of his former
pupil.
Why La Bruyère ever accepted the post of teacher, and afterwards of
“gentleman in waiting,” cannot be elucidated at the present time; he
may have suffered reverses of fortune, which compelled him to gain a
livelihood, but in any case he made the best use of his residence with
a noble family, by studying the personages whose vices and ridicules
he so admirably portrayed. Living with the Condés at their hotel at
Paris, at their country seats at Chantilly and Saint Maur, or when
they were visiting the Court, at Versailles, Marly, Fontainebleau, or
Chambord, amidst the noble and high-born of the land, without being
considered one of them, he had the best opportunity of penetrating the
characters of those men who strutted about in gaudy trappings, and
lorded it over the common herd, whilst soliciting offices or dignities;
and for observing that these men were neither superior in feelings nor
intellect to the “common people.”[24]
All his reflections and observations he arranged under a certain number
of headings, called the whole of them “Characters,” and read some
passages to a few of his friends, who seem not to have been greatly
smitten by them. But this did not discourage La Bruyère; he translated
into French the “Characters” of Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher of
the peripatetic school, the successor of Aristotle as the head of the
Academy, who seems to have lived until about the year 285 B.C., wrote
a prefatory discourse to them, in which he displayed more satirical
power than in any of his other works,[25] and resolved to publish his
translation, and to print as a kind of appendix his own “Characters”
at the end of it. One day,[26] whilst La Bruyère was sitting in the
shop of a certain bookseller, named Michallet, which he visited almost
daily, and was playing with the shop-keeperʼs little daughter, he
took the manuscript of the “Characters” out of his pocket, and told
Michallet he might print it if he liked, and keep the profits, if there
were any, as a dowry for his child. The bookseller hesitated for some
time, but finally published it, and the sale of it was so large that he
brought out one edition after another as quick as he could.
It is certain that the publication of the “Characters” in 1688 made its
author many enemies, but he calmly pursued the even tenor of his way,
and increased the number of his paragraphs during the remaining portion
of his life.[27]
In 1691 he endeavoured to be elected a member of the French Academy,
and to become the successor of Benserade,[28] but failed, thanks to
the number of his enemies, amongst whom probably Fontenelle and Thomas
Corneille, the nephew and brother of the great poet Pierre Corneille,
were the most active; yet in 1693 he was elected without having made
the usual visits to the Academicians to solicit their votes,[29]
though his friends, Racine, Boileau, the secretary of state, de
Pontchartrain,[30] and others, used all their influence to ensure his
nomination.
The speech he delivered at his reception seems not to have given
general satisfaction, for La Bruyère defended the partisans of the
classical and attacked those of the modern school, proclaimed Boileau
a judicious critic, and hardly admitted Corneille to be the equal of
Racine. This speech, preceded by a very satirical preface,[31] in which
he ridiculed his enemies under the name of “Theobalds,” was published
with the eighth edition of the “Characters.”
But if he had bitter enemies he had also warm friends, amongst whom,
besides the illustrious men I have already named, must be reckoned:
Phélypeaux, the son of de Pontchartrain; the Marquis de Termes;
Bossuet, and his nephew the Abbé Bossuet; Fénelon; de Malesieu;
Renaudot; de Valincourt; Regnier-Desmarais; La Loubère, and Bouhier,
nearly all present or future members of the French Academy; the poet
Santeuil, and the historian Caton de Court.
We hardly know anything for certain of the character of La Bruyère
except by the glimpses we get now and then in his book, or by what is
told of him in some of the letters and writings of his friends and
enemies. He was unmarried, and seems to have been a man of a modest
disposition, fond of his books and his friends, polite in his manners,
and willing to oblige. I imagine he must have felt it sometimes hard
to be dependent on so fantastic, suspicious, half-demented a man as
was the father of his former pupil, above all, after the death of the
great Condé, which took place on the 8th of December 1686,[32] and also
to have disliked being made now and then the butt of courtiers[33] his
mental inferiors, but aristocratic superiors; hence he was often silent
for fear of being laughed at.[34]
He was scarcely fifty when, according to some reports, he became
suddenly deaf; a few days afterwards, during the night of the 10th of
May 1696, he died of an attack of apoplexy at the hotel of the Condés
at Versailles.
In 1699 were published some _Dialogues sur le Quiétisme_, attributed to
La Bruyère; but as the editor, the Abbé du Pin, admitted he had partly
altered them, as well as added some of his own, it is difficult to
judge what was the original share of our author in their composition.
Only twenty-one authenticated letters of La Bruyère are in existence,
of which seventeen are in the collection of the Duke dʼAumale, at
Twickenham.
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
“Admonere voluimus, non mordere; prodesse, non lædere; consulere
moribus hominum, non officere.”[35]
The subject-matter of this work being borrowed from the public, I now
give back to it what it lent me; it is but right that having finished
the whole work throughout with the utmost regard to truth I am capable
of, and which it deserves from me, I should make restitution of it.
The world may view at leisure its picture drawn from life, and may
correct any of the faults I have touched upon, if conscious of them.
This is the only goal a man ought to propose to himself in writing,
though he must not in the least expect to be successful; however, as
long as men are not disgusted with vice we should also never tire of
admonishing them; they would perhaps grow worse were it not for censure
or reproof, and hence the need of preaching and writing. Neither
orators nor authors can conceal the joy they feel on being applauded,
whereas they ought to blush if they aim at nothing more than praise
in their speeches or writings; besides, the surest and least doubtful
approbation is a change and regeneration in the morals of their readers
and hearers. We should neither write nor speak but to instruct; yet,
if we happen to please, we should not be sorry for it, since by those
means we render those instructive truths more palatable and acceptable.
When, therefore, any thoughts or reflections have slipped into a book
which are neither so spirited, well written, nor vivid as others,
though they seem to have been inserted for the sake of variety, as a
relaxation to the mind, or to draw its attention to what is to follow,
the reader should reject and the author delete them, unless they are
attractive, familiar, instructive, and adapted to the capacity of
ordinary people, whom we must by no means neglect.
This is one way of settling things; there is another which my own
interest trusts may be adopted; and that is, not to lose sight of my
title, and always to bear in mind, as often as this book is read,
that I describe “The Characters or Manners of the Age;” for though
I frequently take them from the court of France and from men of my
own nation, yet they cannot be confined to any one court or country,
without greatly impairing the compass and utility of my book, and
departing from the design of the work, which is to paint mankind in
general, as well as from the reasons for the order of my chapters,
and even from a certain gradual connection between the reflections
in each of those chapters. After this so necessary precaution, the
consequences of which are obvious enough, I think I may protest against
all resentment, complaint, malicious interpretation, false application
and censure, against insipid railers and cantankerous readers. People
ought to know how to read and then hold their tongues, unless able to
relate what they have read, and neither more nor less than what they
have read, which they sometimes can do; but this is not sufficient—they
must also be willing to do it. Without these conditions, which a
careful and scrupulous author has a right to demand from some people,
as the sole reward of his labour, I question whether he ought to
continue writing, if at least he prefers his private satisfaction to
the public good and to his zeal for truth. I confess, moreover, that
since the year MDCLXXXX, and before publishing the fifth edition, I was
divided between an impatience to cast my book into a fuller and better
shape by adding new Characters, and a fear lest some people should say:
“Will there never be an end to these Characters, and shall we never
see anything else from this author?” On the one hand several persons
of sound common-sense told me: “The subject-matter is solid, useful,
pleasant, inexhaustible; may you live for a long time, and treat it
without interruption as long as you live! what can you do better? The
follies of mankind will ensure you a volume every year.” Others,
again, with a good deal of reason, made me dread the fickleness of the
multitude and the instability of the public, with whom, however, I have
good cause to be satisfied; they were always suggesting to me that for
the last thirty years, few persons read except for the pleasure of
reading, and not to improve themselves, and that, to amuse mankind,
fresh chapters and a new title were needed; that this sluggishness had
filled the shops and crowded the world with dull and tedious books,
written in a bad style and without any intelligence, order, or the
least correctness, against all morality or decency, written in a hurry,
and read in the same way, and then only for the sake of novelty; and
that if I could do nothing else but enlarge a sensible book, it would
be much better for me to take a rest. I adopted something of both those
advices, though they were at variance with one another, and observed an
impartiality which clashed with neither. I did not hesitate to add some
fresh remarks to those which already had doubled the bulk of the first
edition of my book;[36] but, in order not to oblige the public to read
again what had been printed before, to get at new material, and to let
them immediately find out what they only desired to read, I took care
to distinguish those second additions by a peculiar mark ((¶));[37]
I also thought it would not be useless to distinguish the first
augmentations by another and simpler mark (¶), to show the progress
of my “Characters,” as well as to guide the reader in the choice he
might be willing to make. And lest he be afraid I should never have
done with those additions, I added to all this care a sincere promise
to venture on nothing more of the kind. If any one accuses me of
breaking my word, because I inserted in the three last editions[38] a
goodly number of new remarks, he may perceive at least that by adding
new ones to old, and by completely suppressing those differences
pointed out in the margin, I did not so much endeavour to entertain
the world with novelties, as perhaps to leave to posterity a book of
morals more complete, more finished, and more regular. To conclude, I
did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I
acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for
a legislator. I also know I have transgressed the ordinary standard of
maxims, which, like oracles, should be short and concise.[39] Some of
my remarks are so, others are more diffuse; we do not always think of
things in the same way, and we describe them in as different a manner
by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor, or some other figure; by a
parallel or a simple comparison; by a story, by a single feature, by a
description, or a picture; which is the cause of the length or brevity
of my reflections. Finally, those who write maxims would be thought
infallible; I, on the contrary, allow any one to say that my remarks
are not always correct, provided he himself will make better ones.
[Illustration]
I.
OF WORKS OF THE MIND.
(1.) After above seven thousand years,[40] during which there have been
men who have thought we come too late to say anything that has not been
said already, the finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners
have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but
to glean after the ancients and the ablest[41] amongst the moderns.
(2.) We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves,
without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions;[42]
this would be too great an undertaking.
(3.) To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something
more than intelligence is required to become an author. A certain
magistrate was going to be raised by his merit to the highest legal
dignity; he was a man of subtle mind and of experience, but must needs
print a treatise of morality, which was quickly bought up on account of
its absurdity.[43]
(4.) It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as
to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already
acquired.
(5.) A satirical work or a book of anecdotes[44] handed about privately
in manuscript from one to another, passes for a masterpiece, even when
it is but middling; the printing ruins its reputation.
(6.) Take away from most of our works on morality the “Advertisement
to the reader,” the “Epistle dedicatory,” the “Preface,” the “Table of
contents,” and the “Permission to print,” and there will scarcely be
pages enough left to deserve the name of a book.
(7.) In certain things mediocrity is unbearable, as in poetry, music,
painting, and eloquence. How we are tortured when we hear a dull
soliloquy delivered in a pompous tone, or indifferent verses read with
all the emphasis of a wretched poet!
(8.) Some poets in their tragedies employ a goodly number of big
sounding verses, which seem strong, elevated, and filled with lofty
sentiments.[45] They are listened to anxiously, with eyes raised
and gaping mouths, and are thought to please the public; and where
they are understood the least, are admired the most; people have no
time to breathe, they have hardly time to exclaim and to applaud.
Formerly, when I was quite young, I imagined those passages were clear
and intelligible to the actors, the pit, and the galleries; that the
authors themselves understood them, and that I must have been very dull
not to understand what it was all about. But now I am undeceived.
(9.) Up to the present time there exists hardly any literary
masterpiece which is the joint labour of several men.[46] Homer wrote
the Iliad,[47] Virgil the Æneid, Livy the Decades, and the Roman
orator[48] his Orations.
(10.) There is in art an acme of perfection, as there is in Nature
one of goodness and completeness. Any one who feels this and loves
art possesses a perfect taste; but he who is not sensible of it, and
loves what is below or above that point, is wanting in taste. Thus
there exists a good and a bad taste, and we are right in discussing the
difference between them.
(11.) Men have generally more vivacity than judgment; or, to speak more
accurately, few men exist whose intelligence is combined with a correct
taste and a judicious criticism.
(12.) The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has
adorned the actions of heroes; and thus I cannot say whether the
historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble
materials, or those great men to their historians.
(13.) A heap of epithets is but a sorry commendation. Actions alone,
and the manner of relating them, speak a manʼs praise.
(14.) The whole genius of an author consists in giving accurate
definitions and in painting well. Only Moses,[49] Homer, Plato, Virgil,
Horace, excel all other writers in their expressions and their imagery:
to express truth is to write naturally, forcibly, and delicately.
(15.) People have been obliged to do with style what they have done
with architecture; they wholly abandoned the Gothic style, which the
barbarians introduced in their palaces and temples,[50] and brought
back the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. That which was only seen
amongst the ruins of ancient Rome and time-honoured Greece has become
modernised, and now shines forth in our porticoes and colonnades. So,
in writing, we can never arrive at perfection, and, if possible,
surpass the ancients, but by imitating them.
How many centuries have elapsed before men were able to come back to
the taste of the ancients in arts and sciences, and, finally, took up
again a simple and natural style.
A man[51] feeds on the ancients and intelligent moderns; he squeezes
and drains them as much as possible; he stuffs his works with them;
and when at last he becomes an author and thinks he can walk alone, he
lifts up his voice against them, and ill-treats them, like those lusty
children, grown strong through the healthy milk on which they have been
fed, and who beat their nurses.
An author of modern times usually proves the ancients inferior to us in
two ways: by reason and examples. The reason is his own opinion, and
the examples are his own writings.[52]
He confesses that the ancients, though they are unequal and incorrect,
have a great many beautiful passages; he quotes them, and they are so
fine, that his criticism is read only for their sake.
Some able men declare in favour of the ancients against the moderns;
but we doubt them, as they seem to be judges in their own cause, for
their works are so exactly written after the model of antiquity, that
we cannot accept their authority.[53]
(16.) We ought to like to read our works to those who know how to
correct and appreciate them.
He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings,
is a rank pedant.
An author ought to receive with the same moderation all praises and all
criticisms on his productions.
(17.) Amongst all the various expressions which can render our
thoughts, there is but one which is correct. We are not always so
fortunate as to hit upon it in writing or speaking, but, nevertheless,
such a one undoubtedly exists, and all others are weak, and do not
satisfy a man of culture who wishes to make himself understood.
A good author, who writes carefully, often finds that the expression he
has been looking for some time, and which he did not know, proves, when
found at last, to be the most simple, the most natural, and the one
which was most likely to present itself to him spontaneously at first.
Fanciful authors often touch up their works. As their temper is not
always the same, and as it varies on every occasion, they soon grow
indifferent about those very expressions and terms they liked so much
at first.
(18.) The same common-sense which makes an author write good things,
makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
A shallow mind thinks his writings divine; a man of sense imagines he
writes tolerably well.
(19.) Aristus says, “I was prevailed upon to read my works to
Zoilus,[54] and I did so. At first he liked them, before he had leisure
to disapprove of them; he commended them coldly in my presence, and
since then, has not said one word in their favour to any one. I excuse
him, and desire no more from any author; I even pity him for listening
to so many fine things which were not his own.”
Those men who through their rank are exempt from an authorʼs jealousy,
have either other passions or necessities to distract them, and to
make them indifferent towards other menʼs conceptions. Almost no one,
whether through disposition, inclination, or fortune, is willing to
relish the delight that a perfect piece of work can give.
(20.) The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of
being deeply moved by very fine things.
(21.) Many people perceive the merit of a manuscript which is read to
them, but will not declare themselves in its favour until they see what
success it has in the world when printed, or what intelligent men will
say about it. They do not like to risk their opinion, and they want to
be carried away by the crowd, and dragged along by the multitude. Then
they say that they were amongst the first who approved of that work,
and the general public shares their opinion.[55]
Such men lose the best opportunities of convincing us that they are
intelligent, clever, and first-rate critics, and can really discover
what is good and what is better. A fine work falls into their hands;
it is an authorʼs first book, before he has got any great name; there
is nothing to prepossess any one in his favour, and by applauding his
writings one does not court or flatter the great. Zelotes,[56] you are
not required to cry out: “This is a masterpiece; human intelligence
never went farther; the human speech cannot soar higher; henceforward
we will judge of no oneʼs taste but by what he thinks of this book.”
Such exaggerated and offensive expressions are only employed by
postulants for pensions or benefices, and are even injurious to
what is really commendable and what one wishes to praise. Why not
merely say—“Thatʼs a good book?” It is true you say it when the whole
of France has approved of it, and foreigners as well as your own
countrymen, when it is printed all over Europe, and has been translated
into several languages, but then it is too late.
(22.) Some people, after having read a book, quote certain passages
which they do not thoroughly understand, and moreover completely change
their character by what they put in of their own. Those passages, so
mutilated and disfigured that they are nothing else but their own
expressions and thoughts, they expose to censure, maintain them to be
bad, and the world agrees with them; but the passage such critics think
they quote, and in reality do not, is not a bit the worse for it.[57]
(23.) “What is your opinion about Hermodorusʼ book?”—“That it is
wretchedly written,” replies Anthymus.—“Wretchedly written! what do
you mean, sir?”—“Just what I say,” he continues; “it is not a book,
at least it does not deserve to be talked about”—“Have you read
it?”—“No,” replies Anthymus. Why does he not add that Fulvia and
Melania have condemned it without reading, and that he is a friend of
those two ladies?
(24.) Arsène,[58] from the height of his own wisdom, contemplates men,
and from the eminence he beholds them seems frightened as it were at
their littleness. Commended, extolled, and raised to the skies by
certain persons who have reciprocally promised to admire one another,
he fancies, though he has some merit, that he has as much as any man
can have, which he never will; his mind being occupied and filled with
sublime ideas, he scarcely finds time to pronounce certain oracles;
raised by his character above human judgments, he leaves to vulgar
souls the merit of leading a regular and uniform life, being answerable
for his variations to none but to a circle of friends who worship them.
They alone know how to judge, to think, to write, and they only ought
to write; there is no literary work, though ever so well received
by the world and universally liked by men of culture, which he does
approve of, nay, which he would condescend to read; he is incapable of
being corrected by this picture, which will not even be read by him.
(25.) Theocrines[59] knows a good many useless things; he is singular
in his sentiments, and less profound than methodical; he only exercises
his memory, is absent-minded, scornful, and seems continually laughing
to himself at those whom he thinks his inferiors. By chance I one day
read him something of mine: he heard it out, and then spoke about some
of his own writings. “But what said he of yours?” youʼll ask me. “I
have told you already; he spoke to me only of his own.”
(26.) The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing
by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and
allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.
(27.) Experience tells us, that if there are ten persons who would
strike a thought or an expression out of a book, we could easily
find a like number who would insist upon its being put back again.
The latter will exclaim: “Why should such a thought be suppressed?
it is new, fine, and wonderfully well expressed.” The former, on the
contrary, will maintain, “that they would have omitted such an idea,
or have expressed it in another way.” “In your work,” say the first,
“there is a very happy phrase which depicts most naturally what you
meant to say.” The second maintain “that a certain word is venturesome,
and moreover does not give the precise meaning you perhaps desired to
give.” It is about the same thought and the same word those people
argue; and yet they are all critics, or pass for such. What then can an
author do but venture, in such a perplexity, to follow the advice of
those who approve of the passage.
(28.) A serious-minded author is not obliged to trouble his head about
all the foolish sayings, the obscene remarks, and bad words that are
uttered, or about the stupid constructions which some men put on
certain passages of his writings; much less ought he to suppress them.
He is convinced that let a man be never so careful in his writings, the
insipid jokes of wretched buffoons are an unavoidable evil, since they
often only turn the best things into ridicule.
(29.) If certain men of quick and resolute mind are to be believed,
words would even be superfluous to express feelings; signs would be
sufficient to address them, or we could make ourselves be understood
without speaking. However careful you may be to write closely and
concisely, and whatever reputation you may have as such, they will
think you diffuse. You must allow them to supply everything and write
for them alone. They understand a whole phrase by reading the first
word, and an entire chapter by a single phrase. It is sufficient for
them to have heard only a bit of your work, they know it all and
understand the whole. A great many riddles would be amusing reading to
them; they regret that the wretched style which delights them becomes
rare, and that so few authors employ it. Comparisons of a river flowing
rapidly, though calmly and uniformly, or of a conflagration which,
fanned by the winds, spreads afar in a forest, where it devours oaks
and pine-trees, gives to them not the smallest idea of eloquence. Show
them some fireworks[60] to astonish them, or a flash of lightning to
dazzle them, and they will dispense with anything fine or beautiful.
(30.) What a prodigious difference is there between a fine work and one
that is perfect or regular. I am not aware whether a single one of the
latter kind still exists. It is perhaps less difficult for uncommon
minds to hit upon the grand and the sublime than to avoid all kinds of
errors. The _Cid_, at its first appearance, was universally admired; it
rose in spite of power and politics, which attempted in vain to crush
it. People of rank and the general public, though always divided in
their opinions and feelings, were in favour of it; they learned it by
heart so as to anticipate the actors who were performing it. The _Cid_,
in short, is one of the finest poems ever written, and one of the best
criticisms on any subject is that on the _Cid_.[61]
(31.) When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your
mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for
any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly
manner.[62]
(32.) Capys,[63] who sets up for a judge of style and fancies he writes
like Bouhours[64] and Rabutin,[65] disagrees with public opinion, and
is the only person who says that Damis[66] is not a good author. Damis
is of the same opinion as a large number of people, and says artlessly,
as well as the public, that Capys is a dull writer.
(33.) It is the business of a newsmonger to inform us when any book is
published; if it is printed by Cramoisy,[67] and with what type; if
it is well bound, and on what paper, and at what price it is sold; he
ought even to know what the booksellerʼs sign is; but it is foolish in
him to pretend to criticise it.
The highest point a newsmonger can reach is to reason in a vague manner
on politics.
A newsmonger lies down at night quietly, after having received some
information, but it is spoiled overnight, and he is obliged to throw it
away when he wakes in the morning.[68]
(34.) A philosopher[69] wastes his life in observing men, and wears
himself out in exposing vice and folly. If he shapes his thoughts into
words, it is not so much from his vanity as an author as to place
entirely in its proper light some truth he has discovered, that it may
make the desired impression. Yet some readers think they repay him with
interest if they say, with a magisterial air, “that they have read his
book, and that there is some sense in it;” but he does not mind their
praise, for he has not laboured and passed many sleepless nights to
obtain it: he has higher aims, and acts from nobler motives: he demands
from mankind greater and more uncommon results than empty praise, and
even than rewards; he expects them to lead better lives.
(35.) A fool reads a book and does not understand it; a man of ordinary
mind reads it and fancies he perfectly understands it; a man of
intelligence sometimes does not wholly understand it; he perceives
what is really obscure and what is really clear, whilst witlings[70]
imagine those passages obscure which are not so, and think they do not
understand what is really intelligible.
(36.) In vain an author endeavours to obtain admiration by his
works. A fool may sometimes admire him, but then he is only a fool;
an intelligent man has within him the germs of all truth and of all
sentiments; nothing is new to him; he admires few things, but he finds
that many things deserve some praise.
(37.) I question if it be possible to write more clever letters in a
more agreeable manner and in a better style than those of Balzac[71] or
Voiture;[72] but they are void of those sentiments which have swayed
us since their time and originated with the ladies. That sex excels
ours in this kind of writing; from their pens flow naturally those
turns and expressions which often are with us the effects of tedious
labour and troublesome research; they are fortunate in the selection
of their wordings, which they employ so cleverly, that though they are
not new, they have all the charm of novelty, and seem only designed for
the use they put them to; they alone can express an entire sentiment
in a single word, and render a delicate thought as delicately; their
arguments are connected in an inimitable manner, follow one another
naturally, and are only linked together by the sense. If the ladies
wrote always correctly, I might affirm that perhaps the letters of some
of them would be among the best in our language.[73]
(38.) Terentius[74] wanted nothing but to be less cold. What purity!
what preciseness! what polish! what elegance! what characters! Molière
wanted nothing but to avoid the vulgar tongue and barbarisms and to
write elegantly.[75] What fire! what artlessness! what original and
good jokes! how well he imitates manners! what imagery! and how he
lashes what is ridiculous! But what an author might have been formed of
these two comic writers!
(39.) I have read Malherbe and Théophile.[76] They both understood
nature, with this difference: the first, in a nervous and uniform
style, displays at one and the same time whatever is beautiful, noble,
ingenuous and simple, and depicts or describes it; the other, without
choice or accuracy, with a loose and uneven pen, some times overloads
his descriptions, goes into too many details, and analyses too much;
sometimes he imagines certain things,[77] exaggerates, outstrips what
is true in nature, and becomes a romancer.
(40.) In both Ronsard[78] and Balzac, each in their kind, are found a
sufficient number of good and bad things to form after them very great
men either in verse or prose.
(41.) Marot,[79] by his phraseology and style, seems to have written
after Ronsard wrote; there is very little difference, except in a few
words, between the style of the former and our present style.
(42.) Ronsard and his contemporaries have done more harm than good to
style; they delayed its progress towards perfection, and exposed it
to the danger of being always defective and of never becoming perfect
again. It is astonishing that Marotʼs works, which are so natural and
easy, have not made of Ronsard, so full of rapture and enthusiasm, a
greater poet than he or Marot ever were; and that, on the contrary,
Belleau, Jodelle, and du Bartas[80] were soon followed by a Racan[81]
and a Malherbe, and that the French language was no sooner vitiated
than it recovered.
[Illustration: MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE]
(43.) Marot and Rabelais[82] are inexcusable for scattering so much
filth in their writings: they both had genius and originality enough
to be able to do without it, even for those who seek rather what is
comical than what is admirable in an author. Rabelais above all is
incomprehensible: his book is a mystery, a mere chimera; it has a
lovely womanʼs face, with the feet and tail of a serpent or of some
more hideous animal; it is a monstrous jumble of delicate and ingenious
morality and of filthy depravation. Where it is bad, it excels by far
the worst, and is fit only to delight the rabble; and where it is good,
it is exquisite and excellent, and may entertain the most delicate.
(44.) Two writers have condemned Montaigne[83] in their works. I am
of their opinion, and believe him not always free from blame; but it
seems that none of these two can see anything good in him. One of these
thinks too little to enjoy an author who thinks a great deal; the other
thinks with too much subtlety to be pleased with thoughts that are
natural.[84]
(45.) A grave, solemn, and correct style will go a long way. Amyot and
Coëffeteau[85] are read, but who else of their contemporaries? The
phraseology and the expression of Balzac have become less antiquated
than those of Voiture; but if the style, the intelligence, and
originality of the latter are not modern nor in anything resemble our
present writers, it is because it is easier not to pay any attention to
him than to imitate him, and because the few who follow him could never
overtake him.
(46.) The H ... G ...[86] is distinctly less than nothing, and there
are a good many works like it. There is as much trickery required to
grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it; a man would
never know the peopleʼs taste if he did not venture sometimes on some
great piece of silliness.
(47.) We perceive that an opera is an outline of a magnificent
spectacle, of which it serves to give an idea.
I cannot understand how the opera, with such perfect music and quite a
regal expenditure, has been able to tire me.[87]
There are some passages in an opera which make us long for others; it
sometimes happens we wish it was all over: this is the fault of the
decorations, or of a want of action or interest.
An opera is not even to this day a poem, for it contains nought but
verses; nor is it a spectacle, since machinery has disappeared through
the dexterous management of Amphion and his kindred;[88] it is a
concert of voices assisted by instruments. We deceive ourselves and
acquire a bad taste when we state, as has been done, that machinery is
only an amusement fit for children and suitable for puppet-shows.[89]
Machines increase and embellish poetical fiction and maintain among
the spectators that gentle illusion in which the entire pleasure
of a theatre consists, to which it also adds a feeling of wonder.
There is no need of flights, or cars, or changes when _Bérénice_ or
_Pénélope_[90] are represented, but they are necessary in an opera, as
the characteristic of such a spectacle is to enchant the mind as well
as the ear and the eye.
(48.) Some busybodies[91] have erected a theatre and machinery,
composed ballets, verses, and music; theirs is the whole spectacle,
even to the room where the performance was held, from the roof to the
very foundation of the four walls. Who has any doubt that the hunt
on the water,[92] the delights of “La Table,”[93] the marvels of the
Labyrinth[94] were also invented by them? I think so, at least, by the
agitation they are in and by the self-satisfied air with which they
applaud their success. Unless I am deceived, they have not contributed
anything to a festival so splendid, so magnificent, and so long kept
up, and which one person planned and paid for; so that I admire two
things: the ease and quietness of him who directed everything, and the
fuss and gesticulations of those who did nothing.[95]
(49.) The critics, or those who, thinking themselves so, decide
deliberately and decisively about all public representations, group
and divide themselves into different parties, each of whom admires a
certain poem or a certain music and damns all others, urged on by a
wholly different motive than public interest or justice. The ardour
with which they defend their prejudices damages the opposite party as
well as their own set. These men discourage poets and musicians by a
thousand contradictions, and delay the progress of arts and sciences,
by depriving them of the advantages to be obtained by that emulation
and freedom which many excellent masters, each in their own way and
according to their own genius, might display in the execution of some
very fine works.[96]
(50.) What is the reason that we laugh so freely in a theatre but are
ashamed to weep? Is it less natural to be melted by what excites pity
than to burst into laughter at what is comical? Is it the alteration of
our features that checks us? It is more visible in immoderate laughter
than in the most passionate grief; and we avert our faces when we
laugh or weep in the presence of people of rank, or of all those whom
we respect. Is it because we are reluctant to let it be seen we are
tender-hearted, or to show any emotion, especially at an imaginary
subject, and by which it seems we are imposed upon? But without quoting
those austere men, or those who do not care for the opinions of the
world,[97] who think that excessive laughter or tears betray weakness,
and who forbid both, what is it that we look for in tragedy? Is it to
laugh? Is truth not depicted there as vividly as in comedy? And have we
not to feel that those things are realities in either case before we
are moved? Or is it so easily to be pleased, and is no verisimilitude
needed? It is not thought odd to hear a whole theatre ring with
laughter at some passage of a comedy, but, on the contrary, it implies
that it was funny, and very naturally performed; therefore the extreme
restraint every one puts on himself not to shed tears and the affected
laughter with which one tries to disguise them, clearly prove that the
natural result of lofty tragedy should be to make us all weep without
concealment and publicly, and without any other hindrance than wiping
our eyes; moreover, after we have agreed to indulge in our passion,
it will be found there is often less room to fear we should weep in a
theatre than that we should be tired out there.
(51.) Tragedy, from its very beginning, oppresses the spectatorʼs
feelings, and, whilst being acted, scarcely allows him liberty to
breathe and leisure to recover, or if it leaves him some respite,
it is only to be plunged again into fresh abysses and new alarms.
Through pity he is led to terror, or reciprocally through terror to
pity; it leads him through tears, sobs, uncertainty, expectation,
fear, surprises and horror to a catastrophe. It should not, therefore,
be a collection of pretty sentiments, tender declarations, gallant
conversations, agreeable pictures, soft words, or something comical
enough to produce laughter, followed, in truth, by a final scene
in which the “mutineers” do not listen to reason,[98] and in which
for decencyʼs sake there is at last some blood spilled, and some
unfortunate manʼs life taken.[99]
(52.) It is not sufficient for the manners of the stage not to be
bad; they should be decent and instructive. Some comical subjects are
so low, so mean, or even so dull and so insignificant, that a poet
should not be permitted to write about them, nor could an audience by
any possibility be diverted by them. A peasant or an intoxicated man
may furnish some scenes for a farce writer; but they can scarcely be
personages of true comedy; for how can they be the basis of the main
action of a comedy? Perhaps it may be said that “such characters are
natural.” Then, according to a similar rule, the attention of an entire
audience may be occupied by a lackey whistling, or a sick person on his
bed-chair, or by a drunken man snoring and being sick; for can anything
be more natural?[100] An effeminate dandy rises late, spends part of
the day at his toilet, looks at himself in the glass, perfumes himself,
puts patches on his face, receives his letters and answers them. But
such a character brought on the stage, made to stop for any length of
time, during one or two acts, and depicted as natural and as like the
original as possible, will be as dull and as tedious as it well can
be.[101]
(53.) Plays and novels, in my opinion, may be made as useful as they
are pernicious. They exhibit so many grand examples of constancy,
virtue, tenderness and disinterestedness; so many fine and perfect
characters, that when young people cast their eyes on what they see
around them and find nothing but unworthy objects, very much inferior
to those they just admired, it is not to be wondered at that they
cannot have the least inclination for them.
(54.) Corneille cannot be equalled where he is excellent; he shows
then original and inimitable characteristics, but he is unequal. His
first plays[102] are uninteresting and heavy, and did not lead us to
expect that he would afterwards soar to such a height, just as his
last plays make us wonder at his fall from such a pinnacle. In some of
his best pieces there are unpardonable errors in the characters of the
drama[103]—a declamatory style which arrests the action and delays it,
and such negligence in his versification and in his expressions that
we can hardly understand how so great a man could be guilty of them.
His highest individual quality is his sublime genius, to which he is
beholden for some of the most beautiful verses ever read; for the plots
of his plays, in which he sometimes ventures to transgress the rules
of the ancients; and finally, for his catastrophes. In this he does
not always follow the taste of the Greeks and their grand simplicity;
on the contrary, he delights in crowding the stage with events, which
he almost always disentangles successfully; and is above all to be
admired for his great variety and the little similarity of his plots
in the large number of dramas he has written. It seems that Racineʼs
plays are more like one another, and that they lead up a little more
to the same ending; but he is uniform, lofty in style, and everywhere
the same, as well in the plots and incidents of his plays, which are
sound, regular, rational and natural, as in his versification, which is
correct, rich in its rhythm, elegant, melodious,[104] and harmonious.
He is an exact imitator of the ancients, whom he carefully follows
in their distinctness and simplicity of action, and like Corneille,
not lacking the sublime and marvellous, the moving and the pathetic.
Where can we find greater tenderness diffused than in _Le Cid_,
_Polyeucte_, and _Les Horaces_?[105] What grandeur do we not observe in
Mithridates, lʼorus, and Burrhus![106] Both poets were well acquainted
with terror and pity, those favourite passions of the ancients, which
the dramatic authors were fond of producing on the stage; as Orestes
in the _Andromaque_ of Racine, _Phèdre_ of the same author, as well as
_Œdipus_ and the _Horatii_ of Corneille clearly prove. If, however,
it is allowable to draw some comparison between them, and distinguish
what are the peculiarities of each of them, as is generally discovered
in their writings, I should probably say: Corneille enthralls us by his
characters and ideas; Racineʼs coincide with ours; the one represents
men as they ought to be, the other as they are. There is in the first
more of what we admire and what we ought even to imitate; and in the
second more of what we perceive in others or feel within ourselves.
Corneille elevates, surprises, controls and instructs us; Racine
pleases, affects, moves and penetrates us. The former employs the most
beautiful, the most noble, and the most commanding arguments; the
latter depicts the most praiseworthy and the most refined passions.
One is full of maxims, rules, and precepts; the other of taste and
feeling. Our mind is kept more occupied by Corneilleʼs tragedies, but
by Racineʼs we are more softened and moved. Corneille is more moral,
Racine more natural.[107] The one seems to imitate Sophocles, the
other Euripides.[108]
(55.) What the people call eloquence is the facility some persons have
of speaking alone and for a long time, aided by extravagant gestures,
a loud voice, and powerful lungs. Pedants also will not recognise
eloquence except in public orations, and can see no distinction between
it and a heap of figures, the use of big words and flowing periods.
It seems that logic is the art of making some truth prevail, and that
eloquence is a gift of the soul which renders us master of the hearts
and minds of other men, so that we suggest to them, or persuade them,
to do whatever we please.
Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kind of writings; it
is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is
least expected.
Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to its part.
What is the sublime? It does not appear to have been defined. Is it
a figure of speech? Does it spring from figures, or at least from
some figures of speech?[109] Does the sublime enter into all kinds of
writings, or are grand subjects only fit for it?[110] Can an eclogue
display anything but fine simplicity, and familiar letters as well as
conversation anything but great delicacy? Are simplicity and delicacy
not the sublime of those works of which they are the perfection? What
is this sublime? Where does it begin?[111]
Synonyms are several words or various phrases which are the precise
equivalents of each other. An antithesis is an opposition of two truths
which throw light on one another. A metaphor or a comparison borrows
from a foreign matter a sensible and natural image of a truth.[112]
A hyperbole exaggerates truth to enable the mind to understand it
better. The sublime paints nothing but the truth, and that only in
noble subjects; it depicts all its causes and effects; it is the
most meritorious expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds
cannot find the only right expression, and, therefore, use synonyms.
Young men are dazzled by the lustre of an antithesis, and employ it.
Sensible people, who delight in exact imagery, of course, are led away
by comparisons and metaphors. Sharp people, full of fire, and carried
away by a lively imagination beyond all bounds and accuracy, cannot be
satiated with hyperboles. As for the sublime, even among the greatest
geniuses, only the highest can reach it.
(56.) Every author who wishes to write clearly should put himself in
the place of his readers, examine his own work as something new to
him, which he reads for the first time, is not at all concerned in,
and which has been submitted to his criticism; and then be convinced
that no one will understand what is written merely because the author
understands it himself, but because it is really intelligible.
(57.) People write only to be understood, but they should, at least, in
their writings produce very beautiful things. They ought to have a pure
style, and, in truth, employ a suitable phraseology; moreover, their
phrases should express noble, intense, and solid thoughts, and contain
a very fine meaning. A pure and clear style is thrown away on a dry,
barren subject, without either spirit, use, or novelty. What avails
it to any reader to understand easily and without any difficulty some
frivolous and puerile subject, not seldom dull and common, when he is
less in doubt about the meaning of the author than tired with his work?
If we aim at being profound in certain writings, if we affect a polite
turn, and sometimes too much delicacy, it is merely because we have a
good opinion of our readers.
(58.) The disadvantage of reading books written by people belonging to
a certain party or a certain set is that they do not always contain the
truth. Facts are disguised, the arguments on both sides are not brought
forward in all their strength, nor are they quite accurate; and what
wears out the greatest patience is that we must read a large number of
harsh and scurrilous reflections, tossed to and fro by serious-minded
men, who consider themselves personally insulted when any point of
doctrine or any doubtful matter is controverted. Such works possess
this peculiarity, that they neither deserve the prodigious success they
have for a certain time, nor the profound oblivion into which they fall
afterwards, when the rage and contention have ceased, and they become
like almanacks out of date.[113]
(59.) It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of
others not to write at all.
(60.) Some persons have been writing regularly for the last twenty
years; they have faithfully observed all rules of composition, enriched
the language with new words, thrown off the yoke of Latinism, and given
to style a pure French phraseology; they have almost recovered that
harmony which Malherbe and Balzac first discovered, and which since
then so many authors allowed to be lost; they have, in short, given to
our style all the clearness it is capable of, and this will gradually
lead to it becoming easily understood.[114]
(61.) There are some artists[115] or men of ability whose intelligence
is as extensive as the art or science they profess; they repay with
interest, through their genius and inventive powers, what they borrowed
from it and from its first principles; they stray from art to ennoble
it, and deviate from its rules if they do not make use of them to
attain the grand and the sublime; they walk alone and unaccompanied,
but they soar very high and are very penetrating, always certain of
the advantages sometimes to be obtained by irregularity, and assured
of their success. Careful, timorous, and sedate minds not alone
never obtain those advantages, but they do not admire them nor even
understand them, and are much less likely to imitate them; they dwell
peaceably within the compass of their sphere, go up to a certain point,
which is the limit of their capacity and knowledge, but penetrate no
farther, because they see nothing beyond it; they are at best but the
first of a second class and excel in mediocrity.
(62.) If I may venture to say so, there are certain inferior or
second-rate minds, who seem only fit to become the receptacle,
register, or storehouse of all the productions of other talents;[116]
they are plagiarists, translators, compilers; they never think,
but tell you what other authors have thought; and as a selection
of thoughts requires some inventive powers, theirs is ill-made and
inaccurate, which induces them rather to make it large than excellent.
They have no originality, and possess nothing of their own; they only
know what they have learned, and only learn what the rest of the world
does not wish to know; a useless and dry science, without any charm
or profit, unfit for conversation, nor suitable to intercourse, like
a coin which has no currency. We are astonished when we read them, as
well as tired out by their conversation or their works. The nobility
and the common herd mistake them for men of learning, but intelligent
men rank them with pedants.
(63.) Criticism is often not a science but a trade, requiring more
health than intelligence, more industry than capacity, more practice
than genius. If it is exercised by a person of less discernment than
culture, and treats of certain subjects, it will spoil the readerʼs
judgment as well as that of the author criticised.
(64.) I would advise an author who can only imitate,[117] and who is
modest enough to tread in the footsteps of other men, to choose for his
models writings that are full of intelligence, imagination, or even
learning: if he does not come up to his originals, he may at least come
somewhat near them, and be read. He ought, on the contrary, to avoid,
as a rock ahead, the imitation of those authors who have a natural
inclination for writing, employ phrases and figures of speech which
spring from the heart, and who draw, if I may say so, from their inmost
feelings all they express on paper. They are dangerous models, and
induce those who endeavour to follow them to adopt a cold, vulgar, and
ridiculous style. Indeed, I should laugh at a man who would seriously
imitate my tone of voice, or endeavour to be like me in the face.
(65.) A man born a Christian and a Frenchman is constrained when he
uses satire, for he is forbidden to exercise it on great subjects;
sometimes he commences to write about them, but then turns to trifling
topics, which he enhances by the splendour of his genius and style.[118]
(66.) The turgid and puerile style of Dorilas and Handburg[119]
should always be avoided. In certain writings, on the contrary, a man
sometimes may be bold in his expressions, and use metaphorical phrases
which depict his subject vividly, whilst pitying those who do not feel
the pleasure there is in employing and understanding them.
(67.) He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers
himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection,
and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our
contemporaries refuse us.
(68.) We ought never to turn into ridicule a subject that does not lend
itself to it; it spoils our taste, vitiates our judgment as well as
other menʼs; but we should perceive ridicule where it does exist, show
it up delicately, and in a manner which both pleases and instructs.
(69.) “Horace or Boileau have said such a thing before you.”—“I take
your word for it, but I have used it as my own. May I not have the same
correct thought after them, as others may have after me?”
[Illustration]
II.
OF PERSONAL MERIT.
(1.) What man is not convinced of his inefficiency, though endowed with
the rarest talents and the most extraordinary merit, when he considers
that at his death he leaves a world that will not feel his loss, and
where so many people are ready to supply his place?
(2.) All the worth of some people lies in their name; upon a closer
inspection it dwindles to nothing, but from a distance it deceives us.
(3.) Though I am convinced that those who are selected to fill various
offices, every man according to his talents and his profession, perform
their duties well, yet I venture to say that perhaps there are many
men in this world, known or unknown, who are not employed, and would
perform those duties also very well. I am inclined to think so from the
marvellous success of certain people, who through chance alone obtained
a place, and from whom until then no great things were expected.
How many admirable men, of very great talent, die without ever being
talked about! And how many are there living yet of whom one does not
speak, nor ever will speak!
(4.) A man without eulogists and without a set of friends, who
is unconnected with any clique, stands alone, and has no other
recommendations but a good deal of merit, has very great difficulty in
emerging from his obscurity and in rising as high as a conceited noodle
who has a good deal of influence!
(5.) No one hardly ever thinks of the merit of others, unless it is
pointed out to him. Men are too engrossed by themselves to have the
leisure of penetrating or discerning character, so that a person
of great merit and of greater modesty may languish a long time in
obscurity.
(6.) Genius and great talents are often wanting, but sometimes only
opportunities. Some people deserve praise for what they have done, and
others for what they would have done.
(7.) It is not so uncommon to meet with intelligence as with people who
make use of it, or who praise other personsʼ intelligence and employ it.
(8.) There are more tools than workmen, and of the latter more bad
than good ones. What would you think of a man who would use a plane to
saw, and his saw to plane?
(9.) There is no business in this world so troublesome as the pursuit
of fame: life is over before you have hardly begun your work.
(10.) What is to be done with Egesippus who solicits some employment?
Shall he have a post in the finances or in the army? It does not
matter much, and interest alone can decide it, for he is as able to
handle money or to make up accounts as to be a soldier. “He is fit for
anything,” say his friends, which always means that he has no more
talent for one thing than for another, or, in other words, that he is
fit for nothing. Thus it is with most men; in their youth they are
only occupied with themselves, are spoiled by idleness or pleasure,
and then wrongly imagine, when more advanced in years, that it is
sufficient for them to be useless or poor for the commonwealth to be
obliged to give them a place or to relieve them. They seldom profit by
that important maxim, that men ought to employ the first years of their
lives in so qualifying themselves by their studies and labour, that
the commonwealth itself, needing their industry and their knowledge as
necessary materials for its building up, might be induced, for its own
benefit, to make their fortune or improve it.
It is our duty to labour in order to make ourselves worthy of filling
some office: the rest does not concern us, but is other peopleʼs
business.
(11.) To make the most of ourselves through things which do not depend
on others but on ourselves alone, or to abandon all ideas of making the
most of ourselves, is an inestimable maxim and of infinite advantage
when brought into practice, useful to the weak, the virtuous, and
the intelligent, whom it renders masters of their fortune or their
ease; hurtful to the great, as it would diminish the number of their
attendants, or rather of their slaves, would abate their pride, and
partly their authority, and would almost reduce them to the pleasures
of the table and the splendour of their carriages; it would deprive
them of the pleasure they feel in being entreated, courted, solicited;
of allowing people to dance attendance on them, or of refusing
any request; of promising and not performing; it would thwart the
disposition they sometimes have of bringing fools forward and of
depressing merit when they chance to discern it; it would banish from
courts plots, parties, trickery, baseness, flattery, and deceit; it
would make a court, full of agitation, bustle, and intrigue, resemble
a comedy, or even a tragedy, where the wise are only spectators; it
would restore dignity to the several conditions of men, serenity to
their looks, enlarge their liberty, and awaken in them their natural
talents as well as a habit for work and for exercise; it would excite
them to emulation, to a desire for renown, a love for virtue; and
instead of vile, restless, useless courtiers, often burdensome to the
commonwealth, would make them clever administrators, exemplary heads of
families, upright judges or good financiers, great commanders, orators,
or philosophers; and all the inconvenience any of them would suffer
through this would be, perhaps, to leave to their heirs less treasures,
but excellent examples.
(12.) In France a great deal of resolution, as well as a widely
cultivated intellect, are required to decline posts and offices, and
thus consent to remain in retirement and to do nothing. Almost no one
has merit enough to play this part in a dignified manner, or solidity
enough to pass their leisure hours without what is vulgarly called
“business.” There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a
philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and
reading should be called “work.”
(13.) A man of merit, and in office, is never troublesome through
vanity. The post he fills does not elate him much, because he thinks
that he deserves a more important one, which he does not occupy, and
this mortifies him. He is more inclined to be restless than to be
haughty or disdainful; he is only uncomfortable to himself.
(14.) It goes against the grain of a man of merit continually to dance
attendance, but for a reason quite the opposite of what some might
imagine. His very merits make him modest, so that he is far from
thinking that he gives the smallest pleasure by showing himself when
the prince passes, by placing himself just before him, and by letting
him look at his face; he is more apt to fear being importunate, and
he needs many arguments based on custom and duty to persuade himself
to make his appearance; while, on the contrary, a man who has a good
opinion of himself, and who is usually called a conceited man,[120]
likes to show himself, and pays his court with the more confidence as
it never enters into his head that the great people by whom he is seen
may think otherwise of him than he thinks of himself.
(15.) A gentleman[121] repays himself for the zeal with which he
performs his duty by the pleasure he enjoys in acting thus, and does
not regret the praise, esteem, and gratitude which he sometimes does
not receive.
(16.) If I dared to make a comparison between two conditions of life
vastly different, I would say that a courageous soldier applies himself
to perform his duty almost in the same manner as a tyler goes about his
work; neither the one nor the other seeks to expose his life, nor are
diverted by danger, for to them death is an accident of their callings,
but never an obstacle. Thus the first is scarcely more proud of having
appeared in the trenches, carried some advanced works or forced some
intrenchment, than the other of having climbed on some high roof, or on
the top of a steeple. Both have but endeavoured to act well, whilst an
ostentatious man gives himself endless trouble to have it said that he
has acted well.
(17.) Modesty is to merit what shade is to figures in a picture; it
gives it strength and makes it stand out. A plain appearance is to
ordinary men their proper garb; it suits them and fits them, but it
adorns those persons whose lives have been distinguished by grand
deeds; I compare them to a beauty who is most charming in _négligé_.
Some men, satisfied with themselves because their actions or works have
been tolerably successful, and having heard that modesty becomes great
men, affect the simplicity and the natural air of truly modest people,
like those persons of middling size who stoop, when under a doorway,
for fear of hurting their heads.
(18.) Your son stammers; do not think of letting him make speeches;
your daughter, too, looks as if she were made for the world, so never
immure her among the vestals.[122] Xanthus, your freedman, is feeble
and timorous; therefore do not delay, but let him instantly leave
the army and the soldiers.[123] You say you would promote him, heap
wealth on him, overwhelm him with lands, titles, and possessions: make
the most of your time, for in the present age they will do him far
more credit than virtue. “But this will cost me too much,” you reply.
“Ah, Crassus, do you speak seriously? Why, for you to enrich Xanthus,
whom you love, is no more than taking a drop of water from the Tiber;
and thus you prevent the bad consequences of his having entered a
profession for which he was not fit.”
(19.) It is virtue alone which should guide us in the choice of our
friends, without any inquiry into their poverty or riches; and as we
are resolved not to abandon them in adversity, we may boldly and freely
cultivate their friendship even in their greatest prosperity.
(20.) If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are
scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
(21.) If it be a happiness to be of noble parentage, it is no less so
to possess so much merit that nobody inquires whether we are noble or
plebeian.
(22.) From time to time have appeared in the world some extraordinary
and admirable men, refulgent by their virtues, and whose eminent
qualities have shone with prodigious brilliancy, like those uncommon
stars of which we do not know why they appear, and know still less what
becomes of them after they have disappeared. These men have neither
ancestors nor posterity; they alone are their whole race.
(23.) A sensible mind shows us our duty and the obligation we lie under
to perform it, and if attended with danger, to perform it in spite of
danger; it inspires us with courage or supplies the want of it.
(24.) He who excels in his art, so as to carry it to the utmost height
of perfection, goes in some measure beyond it, and becomes the equal
of whatever is most noble and most transcendental: thus V ... is an
artist, C ... a musician, and the author of _Pyrame_ a poet; but
Mignard is Mignard, Lulli is Lulli, and Corneille is Corneille.[124]
(25). A man who is single and independent, and who has some
intelligence, may rise above his fortune, mix with the world, and
be considered the equal of the best society, which is not so easily
done if encumbered. Marriage seems to place everybody in their proper
station of life.
(26.) Next to personal merit, it must be owned that from eminent
dignities and lofty titles men derive the greatest distinction and
lustre; and thus a man who will never make an Erasmus[125] is right
when he thinks of becoming a bishop.[126] Some, to spread their fame,
heap up dignities, decorations,[127] bishoprics, become cardinals,
and may want the tiara; but what need for Trophime[128] to become a
cardinal.
(27.) You tell me that Philemonʼs[129] clothes blaze with gold, but
that metal also shone when they were in the tailorʼs shop. His clothes
are made of the finest materials; but are those same materials less
fine in the warehouse or in the whole piece? But then the embroidery
and trimmings make them still more magnificent. I praise, therefore,
the skill of his tailor. Ask him what oʼclock it is, and he pulls out
a watch, a masterpiece of workmanship; the handle of his sword is an
onyx,[130] and on his finger he wears a large diamond which dazzles
our eyes and has no flaw. He wants none of all those curious nicknacks
which are worn more for show than service, and is as profuse[131] with
all kinds of ornaments as a young fellow who has married a wealthy old
lady. Well, at last you have excited my curiosity: I should, at least,
like to see all this finery: send me Philemonʼs clothes and jewels; but
I do not wish to see him.
You are mistaken, Philemon, if you think you will be esteemed a whit
the more for your showy coach, the large number of rogues who follow
you, and those six horses that draw you along; we mentally remove all
splendour which is not properly yours, to reach you personally, and
find you to be a mere conceited noodle.
Not but that a man is sometimes to be forgiven who, on account of his
splendid retinue, his rich clothes, and his magnificent carriage,
thinks himself of more noble descent and more intelligent than he
really is; for he sees this opinion expressed on the countenances and
in the eyes of those who speak to him.[132]
(28.) At court, and often in the city, a man in a long silken cassock
or one of very fine cloth,[133] with a broad cincture tied high
upon his stomach, shoes of the finest morocco leather, and a little
skull-cap of the same material, with well-made and well-starched bands,
his hair smoothed down, and with a ruddy complexion; who, besides,
remembers some metaphysical distinctions, explains what is the _lumen
gloriæ_, and what it is to behold God face to face,[134] is called a
doctor.[135] A man of humble mind, who is immured in his study, who
has meditated, searched, compared, collated, read or written all his
lifetime, is a man of learning.[136]
(29.) With us a soldier is brave, a lawyer learned; we proceed no
farther. Among the Romans a lawyer was brave and a soldier learned; a
Roman was a soldier and a lawyer.
(30.) A hero seems to have but one profession, namely, to be a soldier,
whilst a great man is of all professions—a lawyer, a soldier, a
politician or a courtier; put them both together and they are not worth
an honest man.[137]
(31.) In war it is very difficult to make a distinction between a hero
and a great man, for both possess military virtues. It seems, however,
that the first should be young, daring, unmoved amidst dangers and
dauntless, whilst the other should have extraordinary sense, great
sagacity, lofty capacities, and a long experience. Perhaps Alexander
was but a hero, and Cæsar a great man.[138]
(32.) Æmilius[139] was born with those qualities which the greatest
men do not acquire without guidance, long study, and practice. He had
nothing to do in his early years but to show himself worthy of his
innate talents, and to give himself up to the bent of his genius. He
has done and performed deeds before he knew anything; or rather, he
knew what was never taught him. I dare say it: many victories were
the sport of his childhood. A life attended by great good fortune
as well as by long experience, would have gained renown by the mere
actions of his youth.[140] He embraced all opportunities of conquest
which presented themselves, whilst his courage and his good fortune
created those which did not exist; he was admired for what he has
done, as well as for what he could have done. He has been looked upon
as a man incapable of yielding to an enemy, or giving way to numbers
or difficulties; as a superior mind, never wanting in expediency or
knowledge, and seeing things which no one else could see; as one who
was sure to lead to victory when at the head of an army; and who
singly was more valuable than many battalions; as one who was great in
prosperity, greater when fortune was against him,—the being compelled
to raise a siege[141] or to beat a retreat have gained him more honour
than a victory, and they rank before his gaining battles or taking of
towns,—as one full of glory and modesty. He has been heard to say, “I
fled,” as calmly as he said, “We beat the enemy;” he was a man devoted
to the State,[142] to his family, to the head of that family;[143]
sincere towards God and men, as great an admirer of merit as if he had
not been so well acquainted with it himself; a true, unaffected, and
magnanimous man, in whom none but virtues of an inferior kind were
wanting.[144]
(33.) The offspring of the gods,[145] if I may express myself so, are
beyond the laws of nature, and, as it were, an exception to them. They
expect almost nothing from time or age; for merit, in them, precedes
years.[146] They are born well informed, and reach manhood before
ordinary men abandon infancy.
(34.) Short-sighted men, I mean those whose minds are limited and
never extend beyond their own little sphere, cannot understand that
universality of talent one sometimes observes in the same person. They
allow no one to possess solid qualities when he is agreeable; or, when
they think they have perceived in a person some bodily attractions,
such as agility, elasticity, and skill, they will not credit him with
the possession of those gifts of the mind, perspicacity, judgment, and
wisdom; they will not believe what is told in the history of Socrates,
that he ever danced.
(35.) There exists scarcely any man so accomplished, or so necessary
to his own family, but he has some failing which will diminish their
regret at his loss.
(36.) An intelligent man, of a simple and straightforward character,
may fall into some snare, for he does not think that anybody would
spread one for him or select him in order to deceive him. This
assurance makes him less cautious, and he is caught by some rogues
through this failing. But the latter will not be so successful when
they attempt it a second time; such a man can only be deceived once.
If I am a just man, I will be careful not to offend any one, but above
all not to offend an intelligent man, if I have the smallest regard for
my own interests.
(37.) There exists nothing so subtle, so simple, and so imperceptible
which is not revealed to us by a something in its composition. A
blockhead cannot enter a room, nor leave it, nor sit down, nor rise,
nor be silent, nor stand on his legs like an intelligent man.
(38.) I made the acquaintance of Mopsus[147] through a visit he made
me without knowing me previously; he asks people whom he does not know
to present him to others to whom he is equally unknown; he writes
to ladies whom he only knows by sight. He introduces himself into a
company of highly respectable people, though he is a perfect stranger
to them, and without waiting till they address him, or feeling that
he interrupts them, he often speaks, and that in an absurd manner.
Another time he enters a public meeting, sits down anywhere, without
paying any regard to others or to himself; and if removed from a place
destined for a Minister of State, he goes and seats himself in the seat
of a duke and peer of the realm; he is the laughing-stock of the whole
company, yet the only person who keeps his countenance. He is like a
dog that is driven out of the kingʼs chair and jumps into the pulpit.
He looks with indifference, without any embarrassment or without any
shame, upon the worldʼs opinion; he and a blockhead have the same
feelings of modesty.
(39.) Celsus[148] is not of a very high birth, but he is allowed to
visit the greatest men in the land; he is not learned, but he is
acquainted with some learned men; he has not much merit, but he knows
people who have a great deal of it; he has no abilities, but he has a
tongue that serves him to be understood, and feet that carry him from
one place to another. He is a man made to run backwards and forwards,
to listen to proposals and to talk about them, to do this officially,
to exceed the duties of his post, and even to be disowned; to reconcile
people who fall out the first time they see one another; to succeed
in one affair and fail in a thousand; to arrogate all the honour of
success to himself, and cast all the blame of a failure on others.
He knows all the scandal and the tittle-tattle of the town; he does
nothing but only repeats and hears what others do; he is a newsmonger,
he is even acquainted with family secrets, and busies himself about
the greatest mysteries; he tells you the reason why a certain person
was banished and another has been recalled; he knows why and wherefore
two brothers have quarrelled,[149] and why two ministers have fallen
out.[150] Did he not predict to the former the sad consequences of
their misunderstanding? Did he not tell the latter their union would
not last long? Was he not present when certain words were spoken? Did
he not enter into some kind of negotiation? Would they believe him?
Did they mind what he said? To whom do you talk about those things?
Who has had a greater share in all court intrigues than Celsus? And
if it were not so, or if he had not dreamed or imagined it to be so,
would he think of making you believe it? Would he put on the grave and
mysterious look of a man newly returned from an embassy?
(40.) Menippus[151] is a bird decked in various feathers which are
not his. He neither says nor feels anything, but repeats the feelings
and sayings of others; it is so natural for him to make use of other
peopleʼs minds that he is the first deceived by it, and often believes
he speaks his own mind or expresses his own thoughts when he is but
the echo of some man he just parted with. He is bearable[152] for a
quarter of an hour, but a moment after he flags, degenerates, loses the
little polish his shallow memory gives him, and shows he has nothing
more left.[153] He alone ignores how very far he is from the sublime
and the heroic; and having no idea of the extent of his intelligence,
ingenuously believes that he possesses as much as it is possible
for any man to have, and accordingly assumes the air and manners of
one who has nothing more to wish for nor to envy any one. He often
soliloquises, and so little conceals it, that the passers-by see him
and think he is always making up his mind, or is finally deciding some
matter or other. If you bow to him at a certain time, you perplex
him as to whether he has to return the bow or not; and, whilst he is
deliberating, you are already out of his sight. His vanity, which has
made him a gentleman, has raised him above himself, and made him what
naturally he is not. When you behold him, you can judge he has nothing
to do but to survey himself, so that he may perceive everything he
wears suits him, and that his dress is not incongruous; he fancies all
menʼs eyes are upon him, and that people come to look on him one after
another.
(41.) A man who has a palace of his own, with apartments for the
summer and the winter season, and yet sleeps in an _entresol_ in the
Louvre,[154] does not act thus through modesty; another, who, to
preserve his elegant shape, abstains from wine and eats but one meal
a day, is neither sober nor temperate; whilst it may be said of a
third, who, importuned by some poor friend, finally renders him some
assistance, that he buys his tranquillity, but by no means that he is
liberal. It is the motive alone that gives merit to human actions, and
disinterestedness perfects them.
(42.) False greatness is unsociable and inaccessible; as it is sensible
of its weakness, it conceals itself, or at least does not show itself
openly, and only allows just so much to be seen as will carry on the
deceit, so as not to appear what it really is, namely, undoubtedly
mean. True greatness, on the contrary, is free, gentle, familiar, and
popular; it allows itself to be touched and handled, loses nothing by
being seen closely, and is the more admired the better it is known. Out
of kindness it stoops to inferiors, and recovers, without effort, its
true character; sometimes it unbends, becomes negligent, lays aside
all its superiority, yet never loses the power of resuming it and of
maintaining it; amidst laughter, gambols, and jocularity it preserves
its dignity, and we approach it freely, and yet with some diffidence.
It is noble, yet sympathetic, whilst inspiring respect and confidence,
and makes us view princes as of lofty, nay, of very lofty rank, without
making us feel that we are of inferior condition.[155]
(43.) A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so
exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favour cannot satisfy him. He
sees nothing good and sufficiently efficient in such a poor superiority
to engage his affections and to render it deserving of his cares and
his desires; he has to use some effort not to despise it too much. The
only thing that might tempt him is that kind of honour which should
attend a wholly pure and unaffected virtue; but men but rarely grant
it, so he does without it.
(44.) A man is good who benefits others: if he suffers for the good he
does, he is still better; and if he suffers through those to whom he
did good, he has arrived at such a height of perfection that nothing
but an increase of his sufferings can add to it; if he dies through
them, his virtue cannot stand higher; it is heroic, it is complete.
[Illustration]
III.
OF WOMEN.
(1.) The male and female sex seldom agree about the merits of a woman,
as their interests vary too much. Women do not like those same charms
in one another which render them agreeable to men: many ways and means
which kindle in the latter the greatest passions, raise among them
aversion and antipathy.
(2.) There exists among some women an artificial grandeur depending on
a certain way of moving their eyes, tossing their heads, and on their
manner of walking, which does not go farther; it is like a dazzling wit
which is deceptive, and is only admired because it is superficial. In a
few others is to be found an ingenuous, natural greatness, not beholden
to gestures and motion, which springs from the heart, and is, as it
were, the result of their noble birth; their merit, as unruffled as it
is efficient, is accompanied by a thousand virtues, which, in spite
of all their modesty, break out and display themselves to all who can
discern them.
(3.) I have heard some people say they should like to be a girl, and a
handsome girl, too, from thirteen to two-and-twenty, and after that age
again to become a man.
(4.) Some young ladies are not sensible of the advantages of a happy
disposition, and how beneficial it would be to them to give themselves
up to it; they enfeeble these rare and fragile gifts which Heaven has
given them by affectation and by bad imitation; their very voice and
gait are affected; they fashion their looks, adorn themselves, consult
their looking-glasses to see whether they have sufficiently changed
their own natural appearance, and take some trouble to make themselves
less agreeable.
(5.) For a woman to paint herself red or white is, I admit, a smaller
crime than to say one thing and think another; it is also something
less innocent than to disguise herself or to go masquerading, if she
does not pretend to pass for what she seems to be, but only thinks of
concealing her personality and of remaining unknown; it is an endeavour
to deceive the eyes, to wish to appear outwardly what she is not; it is
a kind of “white lie.”
We should judge of a woman without taking into account her shoes and
head-dress, and, almost as we measure a fish, from head to tail.[156]
(6.) If it be the ambition of women only to appear handsome in their
own eyes and to please themselves, they are, no doubt, right in
following their own tastes and fancies as to how they should beautify
themselves, as well as in choosing their dress and ornaments; but if
they desire to please men, if it is for them they paint and besmear
themselves, I can tell them that all men, or nearly all, have agreed
that white and red paint makes them look hideous and frightful; that
red paint alone ages and disguises them, and that these men hate as
much to see white lead on their countenances as to see false teeth in
their mouths or balls of wax to plump out their cheeks;[157] that they
solemnly protest against all artifices women employ to make themselves
look ugly; that they are not responsible for it to Heaven, but, on the
contrary, that it seems the last and infallible means to reclaim men
from loving them.
If women were by nature what they make themselves by art; if they were
to lose suddenly all the freshness of their complexion, and their faces
to become as fiery and as leaden as they make them with the red and the
paint they besmear themselves with, they would consider themselves the
most wretched creatures on earth.
(7.) A coquette is a woman who never yields to the passion she has for
pleasing, nor to the good opinion she entertains of her own beauty; she
regards time and years only as things that wrinkle and disfigure other
women, and forgets that age is written on her face. The same dress,
which formerly enhanced her beauty when she was young, now disfigures
her, and shows the more the defects of old age; winning manners and
affectation cling to her even in sorrow and sickness; she dies dressed
in her best, and adorned with gay-coloured ribbons.
(8.) Lise[158] hears that people make fun of some coquette for
pretending to be young and for wearing dresses which no longer suit a
woman of forty. Lise is as old as that, but years for her have less
than twelve months; nor do they add to her age; she thinks so, and
whilst she looks in the glass, lays the red on her face and sticks on
the patches, confesses there is a time of life when it is not decent to
affect a youthful appearance, and, indeed, that Clarissa with her paint
and patches is ridiculous.
(9.) Women make preparations to receive their lovers, but if they are
surprised by them, they forget in what sort of dress they are, and
no longer think of themselves. They are in no such confusion with
people for whom they do not care; they perceive that they are not well
dressed, bedizen themselves in their presence, or else disappear for a
moment and return beautifully arrayed.
(10.) A handsome face is the finest of all sights, and the sweetest
music is the sound of the voice of the woman we love.
(11.) Fascination is despotic; beauty is something more tangible and
independent of opinion.
(12.) A man can feel his heart touched by certain women of such perfect
beauty and such transcendent merit that he is satisfied with only
seeing them and conversing with them.
(13.) A handsome woman, who possesses also the qualities of a man of
culture, is the most agreeable acquaintance a man can have, for she
unites the merits of both sexes.
(14.) A young lady accidentally says many little things which are
clearly convincing, and greatly flatter those to whom they are
addressed. Men say almost nothing accidentally; their endearments are
premeditated; they speak, act, and are eager to please, but convince
less.
(15.) Handsome women are more or less whimsical; those whims serve as
an antidote, so that their beauty may do less harm to men, who, without
such a remedy, would never be cured of their love.
(16.) Women become attached to men through the favours they grant them,
but men are cured of their love through those same favours.
(17.) When a woman no longer loves a man, she forgets the very favours
she has granted him.
(18.) A woman with one gallant thinks she is no coquette; she who has
several thinks herself but a coquette.
A woman avoids being a coquette if she steadfastly loves a certain
person, but she is not thought sane if she persists in a bad choice.
(19.) A former gallant is of so little consideration that he must give
way to a new husband; and the latter lasts so short a time that a fresh
gallant turns him out.
A former gallant either fears or despises a new rival, according to the
character of the lady to whom he pays his addresses.
Often a former gallant wants nothing but the name to be the husband of
the woman he loves; if it was not for this circumstance he would have
been dismissed a thousand times.
(20.) Gallantry in a woman seems to add to coquetry. A male coquette,
on the contrary, is something worse than a gallant. A male coquette and
a woman of gallantry are pretty much on a level.
(21.) Few intrigues are secret; many women are not better known by
their husbandsʼ names than they are by the names of their gallants.
(22.) A woman of gallantry strongly desires to be loved; it is enough
for a coquette to be thought amiable and to be considered handsome.
This one seeks to form an engagement; that one is satisfied with
pleasing. The first passes successively from one engagement to another;
the second has at one and the same time a great many amusements on her
hands. Passion and pleasure are predominant in the first; vanity and
levity in the second. Gallantry is a weakness of the heart, or perhaps
a constitutional defect; coquetry is an irregularity of the mind.
A woman of gallantry is feared; a coquette is hated. From two such
characters might be formed a third worse than any.
(23.) A weak woman is one who is blamed for a fault for which she
blames herself; whose feelings are struggling with reason, and who
should like to be cured of her folly, but is never cured, or not till
very late in life.
(24.) An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a giddy
woman is one who is already in love with another person; a flighty
woman neither knows if she loves or whom she loves; and an indifferent
woman is one who loves nobody.
(25.) Treachery, if I may say so, is a falsehood told by the whole
body; in a woman it is the art of arranging words or actions for the
purpose of deceiving us, and sometimes of making use of vows and
promises which it costs her no more to break than it did to make.
A faithless woman, if known to be such by the person concerned, is but
faithless; if she is believed faithful, she is treacherous.
The benefit we obtain from the perfidy of women is that it cures us of
jealousy.
(26.) Some women in their lifetime have a double engagement to keep,
which it is as difficult to violate as to conceal; in the one nothing
is wanting but a legal consecration, and in the other nothing but the
heart.
(27.) If we were to judge of a certain woman by her beauty, her youth,
her pride, and her haughtiness, we could almost assert that none but
a hero would one day win her. She has chosen to fall in love with a
little monster deficient in intelligence.[159]
(28.) There are some women past their prime, who, on account of their
constitution or bad disposition, are naturally the resource of young
men not possessing sufficient wealth. I do not know who is more to be
pitied, either a woman in years who needs a young man, or a young man
who needs an old woman.[160]
(29.) A man who is looked upon with contempt at court, is received
amongst fashionable people[161] in the city, where he triumphs over a
magistrate in all his finery,[162] as well as over a citizen wearing
a sword; he beats them all out of the field and becomes master of the
situation; he is treated with consideration and is beloved; there is
no resisting for long a man wearing a gold-embroidered scarf[163] and
white plumes; a man who talks to the king and visits the ministers.
He kindles jealousy amongst men as well as amongst women; he is
admired and envied; but in Versailles, four leagues from Paris, he is
despised.[164]
(30.) A citizen is to a woman who has never left her native province
what a courtier is to a woman born and bred in town.
(31.) A man who is vain, indiscreet, a great talker and a mischievous
wag, who speaks arrogantly of himself and contemptuously of others,
who is boisterous, haughty, forward, without morality, honesty, or
common-sense, and who draws for facts on his imagination, wants
nothing else, to be adored by many women, but handsome features and a
good shape.
(32.) Is it for the sake of secrecy, or from some eccentricity, that a
certain lady loves her footman and Dorinna her physician?[165]
(33.) Roscius treads the stage with admirable grace: yes, Lelia, so he
does; and I will allow you, too, that his limbs are well shaped, that
he acts well, and very long parts, and that to recite perfectly he
wants nothing else, as they say, but to open his mouth. But is he the
only actor who is charming in everything he does? or is his profession
the noblest and most honourable in the world? Moreover, Roscius cannot
be yours; he is anotherʼs, or, if he were not, he is pre-engaged.
Claudia waits for him till he is satiated with Messalina. Take
Bathyllus, then, Lelia. Where will you find, I do not say among the
knights you despise, but among the very players, one to compare with
him in rising so high whilst dancing or in cutting capers? Or what do
you think of Cobus, the tumbler, who, throwing his feet forward, whirls
himself quite round in the air before he lights on the ground? But,
perhaps, you know that he is no longer young? As for Bathyllus, you
will say, the crowd round him is still too great, and he refuses more
ladies than he gratifies. Well, you can have Draco, the flute-player;
none of all his profession swells his cheeks with so much decency as he
does whilst playing on the hautboy or the flageolet; for he can play
on a great number of instruments; and he is so comical that he makes
even children and young women laugh. Who eats or drinks more at a meal
than Draco? He makes the whole company intoxicated, and is the last
to remain comparatively sober. You sigh, Lelia. Is it because Draco
has already made his choice, or because, unfortunately, you have been
forestalled? Is he at last engaged to Cesonia, who has so long pursued
him, and who has sacrificed for him such a large number of lovers,
I might even say, the entire flower of Rome? to Cesonia, herself
belonging to a patrician family, so young, so handsome, and of so noble
a mien? I pity you, Lelia, if you have been infected with this new
fancy which possesses so many Roman ladies for what are called public
men, whose calling exposes them to the public gaze. What course will
you pursue, then, since the best of their kind are already engaged?
However, Brontes, the executioner,[166] is still left; everybody speaks
of his strength and his skill; he is young, broad-shouldered and
brawny, and, moreover, a negro, a black man.[167]
(34.) A woman of fashion looks on a gardener as a gardener, and on a
mason as a mason; but other women, who live more secluded, look upon
a mason and a gardener as men. Anything is a temptation to those who
dread it.[168]
(35.) Some ladies are[169] liberal to the Church as well as to their
lovers; and being both gallant and charitable, are provided with seats
and oratories within the rails of the altar, where they can read their
love-letters, and where no one can see whether they are saying their
prayers or not.
(36.) What kind of a woman is one who is “spiritually directed”? Is she
more obliging to her husband, kinder to her servants, more careful of
her family and her household, more zealous and sincere for her friends?
is she less swayed by whims, less governed by interest, and less fond
of her ease? I do not ask if she makes presents to her children who
already are opulent, but if, having wealth enough and to spare, she
provides them with the necessaries of life, and, at least, gives them
what is their due? Is she more exempt from egotism, does she dislike
others less, and has she fewer worldly affections? “No,” say you, “none
of all those things.” I repeat my question again: “What kind of a woman
is one who is ‘spiritually directed?’” “Oh! I understand you now; she
is a woman who has a spiritual director.”[170]
(37.) If a father-confessor and a spiritual director cannot agree
about their line of conduct, what third person shall a woman take to be
arbitrator?
(38.) It is not essential that a woman should provide herself with a
spiritual director, but she should lead such a regular life as not to
need one.
(39.) If a woman should tell her father-confessor, among her other
weaknesses, those which she has for her director, and the times she
wastes in his company, perhaps she might be enjoined as a penance to
leave him.
(40.) Would I had the liberty of shouting, as loud as I could, to those
holy men who formerly suffered by women: “Flee from women; do not
become their spiritual directors, but let others take care of their
salvation!”
(41.) It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and
sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities.
(42.) I have deferred it for a long time, but after all I have suffered
it must come out at last; and I hope my frankness may be of some
service to those ladies who, not deeming one confessor sufficient to
guide them, show no discrimination in the choice of their directors.
I cannot help admiring and being amazed on beholding some people who
shall be nameless; I open my eyes wide when I see them; I gaze on them;
they speak and I listen; then I inquire, and am told certain things,
which I do not forget. I cannot understand how people, who appear to me
the very reverse of intelligent, sensible, or experienced, and without
any knowledge of mankind, or any study of religion and morality, can
presume that Heaven, at the present time, should renew the marvels of
an apostolate, and perform a miracle on them, in rendering such simple
and little minds fit for the ministry of souls, the most difficult and
most sublime of all vocations. It is to me still more incomprehensible
if, on the contrary, they fancy themselves predestined to fill a
function so noble and so difficult, and for which but few people are
qualified, and persuade themselves that in undertaking it they do but
exercise their natural talents and follow an ordinary vocation.
I perceive that an inclination of being intrusted with family secrets,
of being useful in bringing about reconciliations, of obtaining various
appointments, or of procuring places to people,[171] of finding all
doors of noblemenʼs houses open, of eating frequently at good tables,
of driving about the town in private carriages, of making pleasant
excursions to charming country-seats, of seeing several persons of
rank and quality concern themselves about our life and health, and of
employing for others and ourselves every worldly interest,—I perceive,
I say so again, that for the sake of those things solely has been
invented the specious and inoffensive pretence of the care of souls,
and an inexhaustible nursery of spiritual directors planted in this
world.
(43.) Devotion[172] with some people, but especially with women, is
either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be
followed. Formerly such women divided the week in days for gambling,
for going to a theatre, a concert, a fancy-dress ball, or a nice
sermon. On Mondays they went and lost their money at Ismenaʼs; on
Tuesdays their time at Climèneʼs, and on Wednesday their reputation at
Célimèneʼs; they knew overnight what amusements were going on the next
day, and the day after that; they thus enjoyed the present, and knew
what pleasures were in store for them; they wished it were possible to
unite them all in one day, for this was then the sole cause of their
uneasiness and all they had to think about; and if they sometimes went
to the Opera, they regretted they had not gone to any other theatre.
But with other times came other manners; now, they exaggerate their
austerity and their solitude; they no longer open their eyes, which
were given them to see; they do not make any use of their senses, and
what is almost incredible, but little of their tongues; and yet they
think, and that pretty well of themselves and ill enough of others;
they compete with each other in virtue and reformation in a jealous
kind of way; they do not dislike being first in their new course of
life, as they were in the career they lately abandoned out of policy or
disgust. They used gaily to damn themselves through their intrigues,
their luxury and sloth, and now their presumption and envy will damn
them, though not so merrily.[173]
(44.) Hermas, were I to marry a stingy woman, she will be sure not
to ruin me; if a woman fond of gambling, she may enrich me; if a
woman fond of learning, she may teach me; or if prim and precise, she
will not fly into a rage; if a passionate one, she will exercise my
patience; if a coquette, she will endeavour to please me; if a woman of
gallantry, she will perhaps be so gallant as to love me; but tell me,
Hermas, what can I expect if I were to marry a devout woman[174] who
would deceive Heaven, and who really deceives herself?
(45.) A woman is easily managed if a man will only give himself the
trouble. One man often manages a great many; he cultivates their
understanding and their memory, settles and determines their religious
feelings, and undertakes even to regulate their very affections. They
neither approve nor disapprove, commend or condemn, till they have
consulted his looks and his countenance. He is the confidant of their
joys and of their sorrows, of their desires, jealousies, hatred, and
love; he makes them break with their gallants, embroils and reconciles
them with their husbands, and is useful during the intervals. He looks
after their business, solicits for them when they have lawsuits, and
goes and sees the judges;[175] he recommends them his physician, his
tradesmen, his workmen; he tries to find them a residence, to furnish
it, and he orders also their carriages. He is seen with them when they
drive about in the streets, and during their walks, as well as in their
pew at church and their box at the theatre; he goes the same round of
visits as they do, and attends on them when they go to the baths, to
watering-places, and on their travels; he has the most comfortable
apartment at their country-seat. He grows old, but his authority does
not decline; a small amount of intelligence and the spending of a good
deal of leisure time suffice to preserve it; the children, the heirs,
the daughter-in-law, the niece, and the servants, are all dependent on
him. He began by making himself esteemed, and ends by making himself
feared. This old and necessary friend dies at last without being
regretted, and about half a score of women he tyrannised over recover
their liberty at his death.
(46.) Some women have endeavoured to conceal their conduct under a
modest exterior; but the most any one of them has obtained by the
closest and most constant dissimulation has been to have it said, “One
would have taken her for a Vestal virgin.”
(47.) It is a proof positive that a woman has an unstained and
established reputation if it is not even sullied by the familiar
intercourse with some ladies who are unlike her, and if, with all the
inclination people have to make slanderous observations, they ascribe a
totally different reason to this intimacy than similarity of morals.
(48.) An actor overdoes his part when on the stage; a poet amplifies
his descriptions; an artist who draws from life heightens and
exaggerates passions, contrasts, and attitudes; and he who copies
him, unless he measures with a pair of compasses the dimensions and
the proportions, will make his figures too big, and all parts of
the composition of his picture by far larger than they were in the
original. Thus an imitation of sagacity becomes pretentious affectation.
There is a pretended modesty which is vanity, a pretended glory which
is levity, a pretended grandeur which is meanness, a pretended virtue
which is hypocrisy, and a pretended wisdom which is affectation.
An affected and pretentious woman is all deportment and words; a
sensible woman shows her sense by her behaviour. This one follows her
inclination and disposition, that one her reason and her affections;
the one is formal and austere, the other is on all occasions exactly
what she ought to be. The first hides her weaknesses underneath
a plausible outside; the second conceals a rich store of virtue
underneath a free and natural air. Affectation and pretension shackle
the mind, yet do not veil age or ugliness, but often imply them;
common-sense, on the contrary, palliates the imperfections of the body,
ennobles the mind, gives fresh charms to youth, and makes beauty more
dangerous.
(49.) Why should men be blamed because women are not learned? What
laws, edicts, or regulations prohibit them from opening their eyes,
from reading and remembering what they have read, and from introducing
this in their conversation and in their writings? Is their ignorance,
on the contrary, not owing to a custom introduced by themselves; or to
the weakness of their constitution, or to the indolence of their mind,
or the care of their beauty, or to a certain flightiness which will
not allow them to prosecute any continuous studies, or to a talent and
aptitude they only have for needlework, or to an inattention caused
by domestic avocations, or to a natural aversion for all serious and
difficult things, or to a curiosity quite distinct from that which
gratifies the mind, or to a wholly different pleasure from that of
exercising the memory? But to whatever cause men may ascribe this
ignorance of women, they may consider themselves happy that women, who
rule them in so many things, are inferior to them in this respect.
We look on a learned woman as we do on a fine piece of armour,
artistically chiselled, admirably polished, and of exquisite
workmanship, which is only fit to be shown to connoisseurs, of no use
whatever, and no more apt to be used for war or hunting than a horse
out of a riding-school is, though it may be trained to perfection.
Whenever I find learning and sagacity united in one and the same
person, I do not care what the sex may be, I admire; and if you tell
me that a sensible woman hardly thinks of becoming learned, or that
a learned woman is hardly ever a sensible woman, you have already
forgotten what you have just read, namely, that women are prevented
from studying science by certain imperfections. Now you can draw your
own conclusions, namely, that those who have the fewest imperfections
are most likely to have the greatest amount of common-sense, and that
thus a sensible woman bids fairest to become learned; and that a
learned woman could never be such without having overcome a great many
imperfections, and this is the very best proof of her sense.[176]
(50.) It is very difficult to remain neutral when two women, who are
both our friends, fall out through some cause or other in which we are
not at all concerned; we must often side with one or lose both.
(51.) There are certain women who love their money better than their
friends, and their lovers better than their money.
(52.) We are amazed to observe in some women stronger and more violent
passions than their love for men, I mean ambition and gambling. Such
women render men chaste, and have nothing of their own sex but the
dress.[177]
(53.) Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men.
(54.) Most women have hardly any principles;[178] they are led by their
passions, and form their morals and manners after those whom they love.
(55.) Women exceed the generality of men in love; but men are their
superiors in friendship. Men are the cause that women do not love one
another.
(56.) There is some danger in making fun of people. Lise, who is more
or less in years, in trying to render a young woman ridiculous, has
changed so much as to become frightful. She made so many grimaces and
contortions in imitating her, and now has grown so ugly, that the
person she mimicked cannot have a better foil.
(57.) In the city many male and female nincompoops have the reputation
of being intelligent; at court many men who are very intelligent are
considered dolts; and a beautiful woman who has some intelligence will
hardly escape being called “foolish” by other women.
(58.) A man keeps another personʼs secret better than his own; a woman,
on the contrary, keeps her own secrets better than any other personʼs.
(59.) There is no love, however violent, raging in the heart of a young
woman, but there is still some room left for interest and ambition.
(60.) There comes a time when the wealthiest women ought to marry; they
seldom let slip the first opportunity without repenting it for many a
day; it seems that the reputation of their wealth diminishes in the
same proportion as their beauty does. On the contrary, every thing
is favourable to young girls, even menʼs opinions, for they attribute
to them every accomplishment, to render them still more desirable.
(61.) To how many girls has a great beauty been of no other use but to
make them expect a large fortune!
(62.) Handsome girls are apt to gratify the revenge of the lovers
they have ill-treated, by giving their hand to ugly, old, or unworthy
husbands.
(63.) Most women judge of the merits and good looks of a man by the
impression he makes on them, and very rarely allow either of those
qualities to a person who is indifferent to them.
(64.) A man who is anxious to know whether his appearance is changed,
and if he begins to grow old, needs only to consult the eyes of any
fair one he addresses, and the tone of her voice as she converses with
him, and he will then learn what he dreads to know. But it will be a
severe lesson to him!
(65.) A woman who always stares at one and the same person, or who is
for ever avoiding to look at him, makes us conclude but one and the
same thing of her.
(66.) Women are at little trouble to express what they do not feel; but
men are still at less to express what they do feel.
(67.) It sometimes happens that a woman conceals from a man the love
she feels for him, while he only feigns a passion he does not feel.
(68.) Suppose a man indifferent, but intending to declare to a woman
a passion he does not feel, it may be doubted whether it would not be
easier for him to deceive[179] a woman who loves him than one to whom
he is indifferent.
(69.) A man may deceive a woman by a pretended inclination, but then he
must not have a real one elsewhere.
(70.) A man storms and rails at a woman who no longer cares for him,
but he finds consolation; a woman is not so vociferous when she is
forsaken, but she remains unconsolable for a longer time.
(71.) Sloth in women is cured either by vanity or love; though, in
vivacious women, it is an omen of love.
(72.) It is certain that a woman who writes letters full of passion
is agitated, though it is not so sure that she is in love. A deep and
tender passion is more likely to become dejected and silent; and the
greatest and most stirring interest a woman can feel whose heart is no
longer free, is less to convince her lover of her own affection than to
be assured of his love for her.
(73.) Glycera[180] does not love her own sex; she hates their
conversation and their visits; she gives orders to be denied to them,
and often to her male friends, who are not many, whom she treats very
abruptly, keeps within limits, and whom she never allows to transgress
the bounds of friendship. She is absent-minded when they are present,
answers them in monosyllables, and seems to seek every opportunity of
getting rid of them; she dwells alone, and leads a very retired life
in her own house; her gates are better guarded and her rooms are more
inaccessible than those of Montauron or dʼEsmery.[181]
Only Corinna is expected and admitted at all hours, embraced several
times, caressed, and addressed with bated breath, though they are
alone in a small room; whatever she says is attentively listened
to; complaints are poured into Corinnaʼs ears about another person;
everything is told her, though nothing is new to her, for she possesses
the confidence of that other person as well. Glycera is seen with
another lady and two gentlemen at a ball, in the theatre, in the
public gardens, on the road to Venouse,[182] where people eat fruit
early in the season; sometimes alone in a sedan-chair on the way to
the grand suburb,[183] where she has a splendid fruit-garden, or else
at Canidiaʼs[184] door, who possesses so many rare secrets, promises
second husbands to young wives, and tells them also when and under
what circumstances they will obtain them. Glycera appears commonly in
a low and unpretentious head-dress, in a plain morning gown, without
any stays, and in slippers; she is charming in this dress, and wants
nothing but a little colour. People remark, nevertheless, that she
wears a splendid brooch, which she takes special care to conceal from
her husbandʼs eyes. She cajoles and caresses him, and every day invents
some new pretty names for him; the “dear husband” and his wife have but
one bedroom, and would not sleep in any other room. The morning she
spends at her toilet and in writing some urgent letters; a servant[185]
enters, and speaks to her in private; it is Parmenion, her favourite,
whom she upholds against his masterʼs dislike and his fellow-servantsʼ
jealousy. Who, indeed, delivers a message or brings back an answer
better than Parmenion? who speaks less of what should not be mentioned?
who opens a private door with less noise? who is a more skilful guide
up the back-stairs? or more cleverly leads a person out again the same
way?
(74.) I cannot understand how a husband who gives way to his freaks
and his temper, who, far from concealing his bad qualities, shows, on
the contrary, only his worst, who is covetous, slovenly in his dress,
abrupt in his answers, impolite, dull and taciturn, can expect to
defend successfully the heart of a young wife against the attacks of
a gallant who makes the most of dress, magnificence, complaisance,
politeness, assiduity, presents, and flattery.[186]
(75.) A husband seldom has a rival who is not of his own making, and
whom he has not introduced himself to his wife at one time or other; he
is always praising him before her for his fine teeth and his handsome
countenance; he encourages his civilities and allows him to visit at
his house; and next to the produce of his own estate, he relishes
nothing better than the game and the truffles his friend sends him. He
gives a supper, and says to his guests: “Let me recommend this to you;
it is sent by Leander and costs me nothing but thanks.”
(76.) A certain wife seems to have annihilated or buried her husband,
for he is not so much as mentioned in this world;[187] it is doubted
whether such a man be alive or dead. In his family his only use is
to be a pattern of timid silence and of implicit submission. He has
nothing to do with jointure or settlement; if it were not for that,
and his not lying-in, one would almost take him for the wife and her
for the husband. They are for months in the house together without any
danger of meeting one another; in reality they are only neighbours.
The master of the house pays the cook and his assistants, but the
supper is always served in my ladyʼs apartment. Often they have nothing
in common, neither bed, board, nor even the same name; they live in
the Greek or Roman fashion; she keeps her name, and he has his; and
it is only after some time, and when a man has been initiated in the
tittle-tattle of the town, that at last he comes to know that Mr. B ...
and Madam L ... have been man and wife these twenty years.[188]
(77.) Another wife, who does not give her husband any uneasiness on
account of her disorderly behaviour, repays herself for it by worrying
him about her high birth, her connections, the dowry she has brought
him, her enchanting beauty, her merits, and by what some people call
“her virtue.”
(78.) There are few wives so perfect as not to give their husbands at
least once a day good reason to repent of ever having married, or at
least of envying those who are unmarried.
(79.) Dumb and stupefied grief[189] is out of fashion; women weep, are
garrulous, and so concerned about their husbandsʼ death that they do
not forget to harp on every one of the details.
(80.) Is it impossible for a husband to discover the art of making his
wife love him?
(81.) An insensible woman is one who has not yet met the person whom
she is to love. In Smyrna there lived a very handsome young lady, named
Emira, yet better known throughout the town for her strict conduct
than for her beauty, and above all, for the indifference she showed
for all men, whom, as she said, she beheld without any danger, and
without any greater emotions than when in the company of her female
friends and her brothers. She could not believe a thousandth part of
all the follies ascribed to love at all times; and those which she saw
herself, seemed to her unaccountable. Friendship was the only feeling
she knew, and her first experience of it was through a youthful and
charming maiden, who pleased her so much that she only thought how to
continue it, never imagining that any other inclination could ever
abate that feeling of esteem and confidence in which she now exulted.
All her conversation was about Euphrosyne, for this was the name of
her faithful friend, and the whole town talked about nothing else but
about her and Euphrosyne; their friendship became a proverb. Emira had
two brothers, both young, and so handsome that all the ladies of the
city were in love with them, whilst she herself loved them as a true
sister. One of the priests of Jupiter, who visited at her fatherʼs
house, fell in love with her, and dared to declare his passion, but
was repelled with scorn. A man of a certain age, who, relying on his
noble birth and large estates, had the same assurance, met with the
same repulse. She boasted of this, however; and even when in the
company of her brothers, the priest, and the old noble, declared she
was insensible to love. It seemed that Heaven reserved severer trials
for her; yet these had no other effect but to render her more vain
and to enhance her reputation as a maiden superior to love. Of three
lovers smitten by her charms in succession, and whose affections she
did not dread, the first, in a fit of passion, stabbed himself at her
feet; the second, despairing of ever succeeding in his suit, went to
seek his death in the wars of Crete; and the third ended his days in
languor and passed his nights without sleep. The man who was to avenge
them had not yet made his appearance. The aged noble, who had not been
fortunate in his suit, was cured of his love by reflecting on his age
and on the character of the young lady to whom he paid his addresses;
however, he wished to visit her sometimes, and received her permission
so to do. One day he introduced to her his youthful son, who united
to a charming countenance manners full of dignity. Emira beheld him
with some interest; but as he remained silent in the presence of his
father, she thought he was wanting in intelligence, and could have
wished him more. He saw her afterwards alone, and conversed long enough
and intelligently; but as he did not look at her much, and talked
still less about her and her beauty, she was surprised and somewhat
indignant that such a nice-looking and clever young man should be so
void of gallantry. She spoke of him to her friend, who expressed a
desire to see him. He, then, only looked at Euphrosyne, and praised
her beauty. At this the unfeeling Emira became jealous; she perceived
that Ctesiphon spoke what he really felt, and that he was not only
capable of gallantry, but even of tenderness. From that time she cooled
towards her friend; yet she wished to see the couple together once
more, to make quite sure that her suspicions were well-founded. The
second interview showed her more than she dreaded to see, and changed
her suspicions into certainty. She now avoided Euphrosyne; she no
longer perceived in her that merit which charmed her before; she lost
all pleasure in her conversation; she loved her no longer; and this
alteration made her aware that love had driven friendship from her
heart. Ctesiphon and Euphrosyne saw each other every day, loved one
another, agreed to marry, and, finally, were married. The news spread
through the town, and was talked about the more as it is not often that
two persons who love one another are married. Emira heard of it, and
became desperate; she now felt all the power of love; she again visited
Euphrosyne only for the pleasure of anew beholding Ctesiphon; but that
young husband still remained a lover, and in his new wife found all the
charms of a mistress; he looked on Emira but as a friend of her who was
dear to him. This unfortunate girl could no longer rest, and refused to
take any nourishment; she got weaker and weaker, and at last her mind
became affected; she mistook her brother for Ctesiphon, and spoke to
him as a lover; she recollected herself, and blushed for her error, yet
soon relapsed into greater errors, for which she did not blush, for she
was no longer aware of them. Now she dreads men, but it is too late;
that is the cause of her madness. She has lucid intervals, but these
are the most painful to her. The youth of Smyrna, who saw her formerly
so proud and so void of feeling, now think that the gods have punished
her too severely.[190]
[Illustration]
IV.
OF THE AFFECTIONS.
(1.) Pure friendship is something which men of an inferior intellect
can never taste.
(2.) Friendship can exist between persons of different sexes, without
any coarse or sensual feelings; yet a woman always looks upon a man
as a man, and so a man will look upon a woman as a woman. Such a
connection is neither love nor pure friendship, but something out of
the common.
(3.) Love arises suddenly, without any warning, through a natural
disposition or through weakness; one glance of the fair transfixes us,
determines us. Friendship, on the contrary, is formed gradually, in
time, through familiarity and long acquaintance. How much intelligence,
kindness of heart and affection; how many good offices and civilities
are required among friends to accomplish in several years what a lovely
face or a fine hand does in a minute.
(4.) Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
(5.) As long as love lasts, it feeds on itself, and sometimes by those
very means which seem rather likely to extinguish it, such as caprice,
severity, absence, jealousy. Friendship, on the contrary, needs every
assistance, and dies from want of attention, confidence, and kindness.
(6.) It is not so difficult to meet with excessive love as with perfect
friendship.
(7.) Love and friendship exclude each other.
(8.) A man who is passionately in love neglects friendship, and one
whose whole feelings are for friendship has none to give to love.
(9.) Love begins with love; and the warmest friendship cannot change
even to the coldest love.
(10.) Nothing is more like the most ardent friendship than those
acquaintances which we cultivate for the sake of our love.
(11.) We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once,
and that is the first time we love. Subsequent inclinations are less
instinctive.
(12.) Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
(13.) Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship
ever to be a violent passion.
(14.) A man who loves so ardently that he wishes he were able to love
ever so many thousand times more than he does, yields in love to none
but to a man who loves more intensely than he could wish.
(15.) If I were to admit that in the ebullitions of a violent passion
one may love another person better than oneself, whom should I please
most—those who love or those who are beloved?
(16.) Men are not seldom inclined to fall in love, but cannot succeed
in their desire; they seek every opportunity of being conquered, but
fail to meet it, and, if I may say so, are compelled to remain at
liberty.
(17.) Those who love too violently at first, soon contribute
individually to their loving one another less, and, finally, to their
not loving one another any longer. It is not so easy to decide who is
most to blame for this rupture, the man or the woman. Women accuse men
of being inconstant, and men retort that women are fickle.
(18.) However particular we may be in love, we pardon more faults in
love than in friendship.
(19.) It is a sweet revenge to a man who loves passionately to make an
ungrateful mistress appear still more so, by his very actions.
(20.) It is a sorry circumstance to love when we have not a fortune
large enough to render those whom we love so happy that there is
nothing more they can wish for.
(21.) If a woman with whom we have been violently in love, and who
has not returned our passion, afterwards renders us some important
services, she will hardly meet with anything but ingratitude.
(22.) A lively gratitude denotes a great esteem and affection for the
person who lays us under some obligation.
(23.) To be in the company of those whom we love satisfies us; it does
not signify whether we dream of them, speak or not speak to them, think
of them or think of indifferent things, as long as we are near them.
(24.) Hatred is nearer to friendship than antipathy is.
(25.) It seems that antipathy changes oftener into love than into
friendship.
(26.) We confide our secret to a friend, but in love it escapes us.
It is possible to enjoy some peopleʼs confidence, and yet not their
affections; he who possesses these needs no trusting, no confidence;
everything is open to him.
(27.) In friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial
to our friends; in those whom we love we discern no faults but those by
which we suffer ourselves.
(28.) The first tiff in love, as the first fault in friendship, is the
only one of which we are able to make good use.
(29.) Methinks that if an unjust, eccentric, and groundless suspicion
has been called jealousy, that other jealousy which is just, natural,
founded on reason and on experience, deserves some other name.
Our natural disposition has no small share in jealousy which does not
always spring from a great passion. Yet it is a paradox for a violent
love not to be esoteric.
Our idiosyncrasy often causes no suffering to any one but to ourselves;
but in jealousy we suffer ourselves and give pain to others.
Those women who do not respect any of our feelings and give us so many
opportunities of becoming jealous, should not be worthy of our jealousy
if we were guided rather by their sentiments and conduct than by our
affections.
(30.) Coolness in friendship and the slackening of its ties, arise not
without cause; in love there is hardly any other cause for our ceasing
to love but that of having loved to excess.
(31.) It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love
at all.
(32.) Love receives its death-wound from aversion, and forgetfulness
buries it.
(33.) We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our
perplexity when alone.
(34.) To cease from loving is a distinct proof that the powers of man
are limited and his affections as well.
It is a weakness to love; it is sometimes another weakness to attempt
the cure of it.
We are cured in the same way as we are comforted, for we cannot always
weep nor love with all our heart.
(35.) There should be within the heart inexhaustible sources of grief
for certain losses. It is seldom that either by our virtue or strength
of mind we overcome a great affliction; we weep bitterly and are deeply
moved, but afterwards we are either so weak or so flighty that we
console ourselves.[191]
(36.) When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very
passionately; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or
she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
(37.) For a long time visits among lovers and professions of love are
kept up through habit, after their behaviour has plainly proved that
love no longer exists.
(38.) To endeavour to forget any one is a certain way of thinking of
nothing else. Love has this in common with scruples, that it becomes
embittered by the reflections and the thoughts that beset us to free
ourselves. If we could do it, the only way to extinguish our passion
would be never to think of it.
(39.) We should like those whom we love to receive all their happiness,
or, if this were impossible, all their unhappiness from our hands.
(40.) To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared
with the necessity of living with one we hate.
(41.) However disinterested we may be with regard to those we love,
we must sometimes constrain ourselves for their sake, and have the
generosity to accept gifts.
A man may freely accept a gift if he feels as great a pleasure in
receiving it as his friend felt in giving it him.
(42.) To give is to act; we do not suffer any pains by our liberality,
nor by yielding to the importunity or necessity of postulants.
(43.) If at any time we have been liberal to those we loved, whatever
happens afterwards, there is no occasion to think of what we have given.
(44.) It has been said in Latin[192] that it costs less to hate than
to love; or, in other words, that friendship is more expensive than
hatred. It is true that we need not be liberal towards our enemies; but
does revenge cost nothing? Or, if it be so pleasing and natural to harm
those we hate, is it less so to do good to those we love? Would it not
be disagreeable and painful for us not to do so?
(45.) There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we
have lately laid under some obligations.
(46.) I do not know whether a benefit conferred upon an ungrateful
person, and thus on a person unworthy of it, does not change its name,
and whether it deserves any gratitude.[193]
(47.) Liberality consists not so much in giving a great deal as in
giving seasonably.
(48.) If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think
of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same
circumstances as those unfortunate people for whom we feel, why are the
latter so sparingly relieved by us in their wretchedness?
It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our
duty to the distressed.
(49.) Experience proves us that if we are effeminate, and indulgent
towards ourselves, and obdurate towards others, we show but one and the
same vice.
(50.) A moiling, toiling man, who shows no mercy to himself, is only
lenient to others by excess of reason.
(51.) Though the charge of maintaining a poor person may be very
burdensome to us, yet a change of fortune, which makes him no longer
our dependent, gives us no great pleasure, in the same way as our joy
at the preferment of a friend is somewhat tempered by the small grudge
we bear him for having become our superior or our equal. Thus we agree
but ill with ourselves, for we should like to have others dependent on
us, but, it must cost us nothing; and we should like to see our friends
prosperous, yet when good fortune comes to them, the first thing we do
is not always to be glad about it.
(52.) People send you invitations, ask you to come to their house,
offer you even board and lodging, nay, their very fortune and their
services; all this costs them nothing; but will they be as good as
their word?
(53.) One faithful friend is enough for a man, and he is very fortunate
to meet with one; yet he cannot have too many which may be of use to
others.
(54.) When we have done all that we can do for certain people in order
to acquire their friendship, and we find we have been unsuccessful,
there is still one resource left to us, which is, not to do anything
more.
(55.) To live with our enemies as if they might one day become our
friends,[194] and to live with our friends as if they might some time
or other become our enemies, is equally opposed to the very nature of
hatred, as well as to the rules of friendship. It may be a political
maxim, it is certainly not a moral one.
(56.) We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have
become our friends, if we had only known them better. We ought to
choose friends of such a high and honourable character that, even
after having ceased to remain our friends, they should not abuse our
confidence, nor make us dread them as our enemies.
(57.) It is pleasant to visit our friends because we like and esteem
them; it is a torture to frequent them because we want them; then we
become applicants.
(58.) We should try and gain the affections of those to whom we wish
to do good rather than of those who could do us some good.[195]
(59.) We do not employ the same means for bettering our position as we
do in pursuing frivolous and fanciful things. We feel a certain kind
of freedom in acting according to our fancy, and, on the contrary, a
certain kind of thraldom in labouring for obtaining a place. It is
natural to desire it ardently and to take little pains to obtain it,
for we think that we deserve it without seeking for it.
(60.) He who knows how to wait for what he desires does not feel very
desperate if he fails in obtaining it; and he, on the contrary, who
is very impatient in procuring a certain thing, takes so much pains
about it, that, even when he is successful, he does not think himself
sufficiently rewarded.
(61.) There are certain people who so ardently and so passionately[196]
desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone
to make them lose it.
(62.) Those things which we desire most never happen at all, or do not
happen at the right time, and under those circumstances when they would
have given us the greatest pleasure.
(63.) We must laugh before we are happy, or else we may die before ever
having laughed at all.
(64.) Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy
ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent
agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few
months.
(65.) How difficult is it to be pleased with any one!
(66.) We imagine that it would be impossible to prevent our feeling
some pleasure if we were present at the death of a wicked man, for then
we could reap the harvest of our hatred, and get from him all that we
could ever hope to get from him, namely, the delight his death causes
us. But when at last this man really dies, and at a time when our
interest will not permit us to rejoice, he dies either too soon or too
late for us.
(67.) It is difficult for a proud man ever to forgive a person who has
found him at fault, and who has good grounds for complaining of him;
his pride is not assuaged till he has regained the advantages he lost
and put the other person in the wrong.
(68.) As our affection increases towards those whom we wish to assist,
so we violently hate those whom we have greatly offended.
(69.) It is as difficult at first to stifle the resentment of a wrong
done to us as to retain it after many years.
(70.) It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and
it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
(71.) It is as much from idleness as from weakness that we allow
ourselves to be controlled.
No man should think of controlling another person all at once, and
without some preliminaries, in some important matter of business which
might be of great consequence to him and to his family; such a person
would at once become aware of the sway and ascendency intended to
be obtained over him, and would throw off the yoke out of shame or
inconsistency. He should be tried first with trifling things, and then
success is certain when attempting greater ones. Some people, who, at
first, scarcely ventured to make a man leave for the country or to let
him return to town, obtained such an influence over him at last, that
he made his will, as they told him, and only left his own son what he
was obliged to leave him.[197]
In order to control a man for any length of time and completely, a
light hand is necessary, so as to let him feel his dependence as little
as possible.
Some people allow themselves to be controlled up to a certain point,
but beyond that they are intractable and ungovernable; suddenly all
influence is lost over their feelings and mind, and neither rough
nor gentle means, force nor address, can reduce them: yet, with this
difference, that some act thus moved by reasoning and conclusive
evidence, and others through inclination and constitution.
There are some men who turn a deaf ear to reason and good advice, and
wilfully go wrong for fear of being controlled.
There are others who allow their friends to control them in trifling
things, and thence presume to control them in things of weight and
consequence.
Drance[198] would fain pass for a man who rules his master, though
his master and the world know better. For a man in office to talk
incessantly to his employer, a man of high rank, at improper times and
places, to be always whispering or using certain words with mysterious
intent, to laugh boisterously in his presence, to interrupt him when he
speaks, to interfere when others address him, to treat with contempt
those who come to pay their court to his master, or express impatience
till they are gone, to stand near him in too unconstrained an attitude,
to lean with his back against the chimney-mantel as his master does,
to pluck him by his coat, to tread upon his heels, to affect a certain
familiarity and to take such liberties, are signs of a coxcomb rather
than of a favourite.
An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts
to control others; he wishes reason alone to rule, and that always.
Had I a friend, a man of sense, I should not object to confide in him,
and to be controlled by him in everything, completely and for ever. I
should then be sure of acting rightly without the trouble of thinking
about it, whilst enjoying all the calm of a man swayed by common-sense.
(72.) All passions are deceptive; they conceal themselves as much as
possible from others and from themselves as well. No vice exists which
does not pretend to be more or less like some virtue, and which does
not take advantage of this assumed resemblance.
(73.) We open a book of devotion, and it affects us; we open a book
of gallantry, and that, too, impresses us. If I may say so, it is the
heart alone which reconciles things so opposed to one another, and
allows incompatibilities.
(74.) Men are less ashamed of their crimes than of their weaknesses and
their vanity. The same man who is openly unjust, violent, treacherous,
and a slanderer, will conceal his love or his ambition for no other
reason but to conceal it.
(75.) It rarely happens that a man can say he is ambitious, for if he
has been so once, he remains so; but there comes a time when he admits
he has been in love.
(76.) Men begin with love and end with ambition, and are seldom free
from passion till they die.
(77.) Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the
greatest triumph is to conquer a manʼs own interests.
(78.) A man who is swayed by his feelings is more sociable and
agreeable to converse with than one who is swayed by his intelligence.
(79.) There are certain sublime sentiments, certain noble and lofty
actions, for which we are indebted rather to the kindness of our
disposition than to the strength of our mind.
(80.) There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive
gratitude.
(81.) A man must be completely wanting in intelligence if he does not
show it when actuated by love, malice, or necessity.
(82.) There are certain spots which we admire, others which we love,
and where we long to pass our days.
It seems that our mind, our temper, passions, taste and feelings, are
influenced by the places where we dwell.[199]
(83.) Benevolent persons should be the only ones to be envied, if there
were not a better course open to us, which is, to excel them; thus we
can avenge ourselves pleasantly on those whom we dislike.
(84.) Some people pretend they never were in love and never wrote
poetry; two weaknesses which they dare not own—one of the heart, the
other of the mind.
(85.) During the course of our life we now and then enjoy some
pleasures so inviting, and have some encounters of so tender a nature,
that though they are forbidden, it is but natural to wish that they
were at least allowable. Nothing can be more delightful, except it be
to abandon them for virtueʼs sake.
[Illustration]
V.
OF SOCIETY AND OF CONVERSATION.
(1.) A man must be very inert to have no character at all.
(2.) A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he
pleases or is tiresome; he goes away the very minute before it might
have been thought he stayed too long.
(3.) Mischievous wags are a kind of insects which are in everybodyʼs
way and plentiful in all countries. Real wit is rarely to be met
with, and even if it be innate in a man, it must be very difficult to
maintain a reputation for it during any length of time; for, commonly,
he that makes us laugh does not stand high in our estimation.
(4.) There are a great many obscene minds, yet more railing and
satirical, but very few fastidious ones. A man must have good manners,
be very polite, and even have a great deal of originality to be able to
jest gracefully and be felicitous in his remarks about trifles; to jest
in such a manner and to make something out of nothing is to create.
(5.) If in ordinary conversation we were to pay great attention to
every dull, vain, and puerile remark, we should be ashamed to speak or
even to listen, and we should perhaps condemn ourselves to a perpetual
silence, which would be more injurious to society than idle talk. We
must, therefore, accommodate ourselves to all intellects, bear as a
necessary evil the spreading of false news, of vague reflections on the
Government or on the interests of princes, listen to the enunciation of
fine sentiments which are always the same, and even allow Arontius[200]
to utter wise saws, and Melinda to speak of herself, her nerves, her
headaches, and her want of rest.
(6.) We meet with persons who, in their conversation, or in the little
intercourse we have with them, disgust us with their ridiculous
expressions, the novelty, and, if I may say so, the impropriety of the
phraseology they use, as well as by linking together certain words
which never came together but in their mouths, and were never intended
by their creators to have the meaning they give to them. In their
conversation they neither follow reason nor custom, but only their own
eccentricity; and their desire always to jest, and perhaps to shine,
gradually changes it into a peculiar sort of dialect which at last
becomes natural to them; they accompany this extraordinary language by
affected gesticulations and a conceited kind of pronunciation. They are
all highly delighted with themselves, and with their pleasant wit, of
which, indeed, they are not entirely destitute; but we pity them for
the little they have, and, what is worse, we suffer through it.
(7.) What do you say? What? I do not understand you. Will you be kind
enough to say it again? I understand you still less. Oh, I guess your
meaning at last; you wish to tell me, Acis, that it is cold! Why donʼt
you say so? You wish to let me know that it rains or snows; say at once
that it rains or snows. You think I am looking well, and you wish to
congratulate me; say that you think I am looking well. But youʼll reply
that it is so plain and clear, anybody might have said it. What does
that signify, Acis? Is it so very wrong to be intelligible in speaking,
and to speak as everybody does? There is one thing, Acis, which you,
and men like you, who utter _phébus_[201] want very much; you have not
the smallest suspicion of it, and I know I am going to surprise you. Do
you know what that thing is? It is wit. But that is not all. There is
too much of something else in you, which is the opinion that you have
more intelligence than other men; this is the cause of all your pompous
nonsense, of your mixed-up phraseology, and of all those grand words
without any meaning. The next time I find you addressing anybody, or
entering a room, I shall pull your coat-tails and whisper to you: “Do
not pretend to be witty; be natural, that is better suited to you; use,
if you can, plain language, such as those persons speak whom you fancy
are without wit; then, perhaps, we may think you have some yourself.”
(8.) Who, that goes into society, can help meeting with certain vain,
fickle, familiar, and positive people who monopolise all conversation,
and compel every one else to listen to them? They can be heard in the
anteroom, and a person may boldly enter without fear of interrupting
them; they continue their story without paying the smallest attention
to any comers or goers, or to the rank and quality of their audience;
they silence a man who begins to tell an anecdote, so that they may
tell it themselves according to their fashion, which is the best; they
heard it from Zamet, from Ruccellaï, or from Concini,[202] whom they do
not know, to whom they never spoke in their lives, and whom they would
address as “Your Excellency,” if ever they spoke to any one of them.
They sometimes will go up to a man of the highest rank among those who
are present, and whisper in his ear some circumstance which nobody
else knows, and which they would not have divulged to others for the
world; they conceal some names to disguise the anecdote they relate and
to prevent the real persons being found out; you ask them to let you
have these names, you urge them in vain. There are some things they
must not tell, and some persons whom they cannot name; they have given
their word of honour not to do so; it is a secret, a mystery of the
greatest importance; moreover, you ask an impossibility. You might wish
to learn something from them, but they know neither the facts nor the
persons.[203]
(9.) Arrias has read and seen everything, at least he would lead you
to think so; he is a man of universal knowledge, or pretends to be,
and would rather tell a falsehood than be silent or appear to ignore
anything. Some person is talking at meal-time in the house of a man of
rank of a northern court; he interrupts and prevents him telling what
he knows; he goes hither and thither in that distant country as if he
were a native of it; he discourses about the habits of its court, the
native women, the laws and customs of the land; he tells many little
stories which happened there, thinks them very entertaining, and is
the first to laugh loudly at them. Somebody presumes to contradict
him, and clearly proves to him that what he says is untrue. Arrias is
not disconcerted; on the contrary, he grows angry at the interruption,
and exclaims: “I aver and relate nothing but what I know on excellent
authority; I had it from Sethon, the French ambassador at that court,
who only a few days ago came back to Paris, and is a particular friend
of mine; I asked him several questions, and he replied to them all
without concealing anything.” He continues his story with greater
confidence than he began it, till one of the company informs him that
the gentleman whom he has been contradicting was Sethon himself,
but lately arrived from his embassy.[204]
(10.) In conversation there is a middle course between a certain
backwardness in speaking or a kind of incogitancy which leads us to
wander away from the subject under discussion, so as to make us ask
untimely questions or return silly answers, and between paying too
great attention to the least word said, in order to improve upon it, to
joke about it, to discover in it some mystery hidden to all others, to
find something shrewd and subtle in it, only to have an opportunity of
showing how clever we are.
(11.) Any one who is infatuated with himself and quite convinced he is
very clever, only shows that he has but very little intelligence or
none at all. It is a misfortune for a man to listen to the conversation
of such a person. What a great many affected phrases he has to endure!
How many of those fanciful words which appear of a sudden, live for a
short time, and then are never heard again! If such a person relates
some trifling event, it is not so much to give some information to
his hearers, as merely for the honour of telling it and of telling
it cleverly. He amplifies it till it becomes a romance; he makes the
people connected with it think as he does; he puts his own trivial
expressions in their mouths, and renders them, like himself, very
talkative; he falls then into some parentheses which may pass for
episodes, and by which speaker and hearers forget what the story really
was about. It is difficult to say what might have become of them, had
not somebody fortunately come in to break up the company and put an
end to the narrative.
(12.) Theodectes[205] is heard in the anteroom; the nearer he comes
the more he raises his voice; he enters, he laughs, he shouts, he
vociferates; everybody stops his ears; he is a mere thunderer, and
no less to be dreaded for what he says as for the loud tone in which
he speaks. He becomes quiet and less boisterous only to stammer out
some idle talk and some nonsense. So little regard has he for time,
individuals, or decency, that he offends every one without intending
it; before he has taken a seat he has already insulted the whole
company. When dinner is served, he is the first to sit down, and
always in the place of honour; the ladies are to the right and left
of him, but he eats, drinks, talks, banters, and interrupts every one
at the same time; he has no respect for any one, neither for master
nor guests, and takes advantage of the foolish way they look up to
him. Is it he or Euthydemes who is the host? He assumes all authority
while at dinner; and it is better to give way to him than to quarrel
with him about it. Neither eating nor drinking improve his temper. If
some gambling is going on, and if he wins, he banters his antagonist
and insults him; the laughers are on his side, and there is no sort of
folly they do not overlook in him. At last I leave him and go away,
unable to bear any longer with Theodectes and those who bear with him.
(13.) Troïlus is useful to those who have too much wealth; he eases
them of their onerous superfluity, and saves them the trouble of
hoarding up money, of making contracts, locking trunks, carrying
keys about, and of dreading to be robbed by servants. He assists them
in their pleasures, and afterwards is able to serve them in their
passions; in a short time he regulates and dictates their conduct; he
is the oracle of the house, whose decisions are anxiously expected,
nay, even anticipated and surmised; he orders a slave to be punished,
and he is flogged; another to be freed, and he is set at liberty.
If a parasite does not make him laugh, he perhaps does not please
him, and therefore must be dismissed. The master of the house may
consider himself lucky if Troïlus leaves him his wife and children.
If at table he declares that a certain dish is excellent, the master
and the guests, who did not pay much attention to it, find it also
excellent, and cannot eat enough of it; if, on the contrary, he says
of some other dish that it is insipid, those who were just beginning
to enjoy it dare not swallow the piece they had in their mouths, but
throw it on the floor;[206] every eye is on him, and every one observes
his looks and his countenance before giving an opinion on the wine or
the dishes before them. Do not look for him anywhere else but in the
house of an opulent man, whose adviser he is; there he eats, sleeps,
digests his food, quarrels with his servant, gives audience to those
whom he employs, and puts off his creditors; he lays down the law in
the drawing-room, and receives there the adulation and homage of those
persons, who, more cunning than the rest, only wish to curry favour
with the master through Troïlusʼ intercession. If any one enters who
is unfortunate enough to have a countenance which Troïlus does not
like, he frowns and turns away his head; if a stranger accosts him,
he sits still, and if the latter sits down close to him, he leaves
his seat; if he talks to him, he does not reply, and if he continues
to speak, Troïlus stalks away into another chamber; if the stranger
follows him, he makes for the stairs, and would rather climb from one
storey to another or throw himself out of a window, than encounter
a man whose face and voice he dislikes. Both are very charming in
Troïlus, and he has turned them to good account to insinuate himself or
to overcome a difficulty. At last he considers everything unworthy of
his attention, and he scorns to keep his position[207] or to continue
to please by exercising any of those talents by which he first brought
himself into notice. It is a condescension if sometimes he leaves off
his musings and his taciturnity to contradict, and deigns once a day to
show his wit, though only to criticise. Do not expect him to listen to
what you may have to say, to be courteous, or to commend you, for you
are not even sure that he will permit you to approve him, or allow you
to be polite.[208]
(14.) Do not interrupt a stranger whom you meet by chance in a
stage-coach, at an entertainment, or at any public exhibition; and if
you listen to him, it will not be long before youʼll know who he is;
heʼll tell you his name, his residence, his native country, what his
property is worth, his position, and his fatherʼs, his motherʼs family,
his kindred, his family connections, and even his coat-of-arms; for he
will soon let you know that he is nobly born, and that he has a castle
beautifully furnished, a suitable retinue, and a carriage.[209]
(15.) Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously
study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as
was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases
and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their
behaviour. They call themselves “purists,”[210] and do not venture to
say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be.
Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and
unrestrained; they speak correctly,[211] but they are very tiresome.
(16.) The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out
the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself;
he who goes away pleased with himself and his own wit is also greatly
pleased with you. Most men rather please than admire you; they seek
less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and
applauded; the most delicate of pleasures is to please another person.
(17.) Too much imagination is to be avoided in our conversation and in
our writings, as it often gives rise to idle and puerile ideas, neither
tending to perfect our taste nor to improve our conduct. Our thoughts
should originate from sound sense and reasoning, and always be the
result of our judgment.
(18.) It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to
speak well nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of
all impertinence.
(19.) To say simply that a certain thing is good or bad, and to state
the reasons for its being so, requires some common-sense and power of
expression, which is not so easily found. A much shorter way is to give
oneʼs opinion peremptorily, which is a convincing proof a man is right
in his statement, namely, that the thing is execrable or wonderful.
(20.) Nothing is more displeasing to Heaven and to men than to confirm
everything said in conversation, and even the most trifling subjects,
with long and disgusting oaths. Whether a gentleman merely says “Yes”
or “No,” he deserves to be believed; his reputation swears for him,
adds weight to his words, and obtains for him every confidence.[212]
(21.) He who continually affirms he is a man of honour and honest as
well, that he wrongs no man but wishes the harm he has done to others
to fall on himself, and raps out an oath to be believed, does not even
know how to imitate an honest man.
An honest man, with all his modesty, cannot prevent people saying of
him what a dishonest man says of himself.
(22.) Cléon[213] talks always rather rudely or inaccurately; he does
either the one or the other; but he says he cannot help it, and that it
is his natural disposition to speak just as he thinks.
(23.) There are such things as to speak well, to speak easily, to
speak correctly, and to speak seasonably. We offend against the last
way of speaking if we mention a sumptuous entertainment we have just
been present at before people who have not had enough to eat; if we
boast of our good health before invalids; if we talk of our riches,
our income, and our fine furniture to a man who has not so much as an
income or a dwelling; in a word, if we speak of our prosperity before
people who are wretched; such a conversation is too much for them, and
the comparison which they then make between their condition and ours is
very painful.
(24.) “As for you,” says Euthyphron,[214] “you are rich, or ought to
be so, for you have a yearly income of ten thousand _livres_,[215]
all from land. I think that glorious! charming! and a man could be
happy with much less.” The person who talks in this fashion has fifty
thousand _livres_ a year, and thinks he has not half what he deserves.
He settles what youʼll have to pay, values what you are worth,
determines what you have to spend; and if he thought you deserved a
better fortune, and even such a one as he himself aspires to, he would
be certain to wish it to you. He is not the only man who makes such
wretched estimations or such odious comparisons; the world is full of
Euthyphrons.
(25.) A person inclined to the usual flattery, and accustomed to praise
and exaggeration, congratulates[216]
Theodemus on a sermon he did not hear, and of which no one had, as
yet, given him an account. He extols his genius, his delivery, and,
above all, his excellent memory, when, in truth, Theodemus had stopped
short in the middle of his sermon, and had forgotten what he wished to
say.[217]
(26.) Some abrupt, restless, conceited men, who are unemployed, and
have no manner of business to call them away, will dismiss you from
their presence in a few words, and only think to get rid of you;
you are still speaking to them, and they are already gone and have
disappeared. They are as impertinent as those people who stop you only
to bore you; but the former are perhaps less irksome.
(27.) To speak and to offend is with some people but one and the same
thing; they are biting and bitter; their words are steeped in gall
and wormwood; sneers as well as insolent and insulting remarks flow
from their lips. It had been well for them had they been born mute
or stupid; the little vivacity and intelligence they have prejudices
them more than dulness does others; they are not always satisfied
with giving sharp answers, they often attack arrogantly those who are
present, and damage the reputation of those who are absent; they butt
all round like rams, for rams, of course, must use their horns. We
therefore do not expect, by our sketch of them, to change such coarse,
restless, and stubborn individuals. The best thing a man can do is to
take to his heels as soon as he perceives them, without even turning
round to look behind him.[218]
(28.) There are persons of such a disposition or character that a man
ought never to be compromised with them; of such persons he should
complain as little as possible, and not even be permitted to vanquish
them in arguments.
(29.) When two persons have had a violent quarrel, of whom one is in
the right and the other is in the wrong, the bystanders, for fear
of being appealed to, or through a certain frowardness which always
seemed to me ill-timed, condemn both. This is an important lesson, and
a weighty and necessary reason for going away, even when a coxcomb is
seen in quite another direction, so as to avoid sharing in his disgrace.
(30.) I hate a man whom I cannot accost or salute before he bows to me,
without debasing myself in his eyes, or sharing in the good opinion
he has of himself. Montaigne would say:[219] “I will have elbow-room:
I will be courteous and affable according to my fancy, without fear
or remorse. I cannot strive against my inclination nor go contrary to
my disposition, which leads me to address myself to every one whom I
meet. If such a person is my equal and not my enemy, I anticipate his
courtesy; I ask him about his temper and his health, I offer him my
services without any haggling, and am not always on my guard, as some
people say. That man displeases me who by my knowledge of his habits
and behaviour deprives me of such liberty and freedom.
How should I remember, as soon as I see him afar off, to put on a
grave and important look, and to let him know that I think I am as good
as he, and better? To do this I must call to mind all my good qualities
and points, and his bad ones, so as to compare them together. This is
too much trouble for me, and I am not at all able of showing such an
abrupt and sudden presence of mind; even if I had been successful at
first, I am sure I should give way and lose my head a second time, for
I cannot put any restraint on myself nor assume a certain haughtiness
for any man.”[220]
(31.) We may be virtuous, intelligent, and well-behaved, and yet be
unbearable. By our manners, which we consider of no consequence, the
world often forms either a good or a bad opinion of us; a little care
to appear obliging and polite will prevent its condemning us. The least
thing is enough to make people believe that we are proud, impolite,
haughty, and disobliging; but, on the other hand, still less is needed
to make them esteem us.
(32.) Politeness does not always produce kindness of heart, justice,
complacency, or gratitude, but it gives to a man at least the
appearance of it, and makes him seem externally what he really should
be.
We may define all the essentials of politeness, but we cannot determine
how and where they should be used; they depend on ordinary habits and
customs, are connected with times and places, and are not the same in
both sexes nor in different ranks of life; intelligence alone cannot
find this out; politeness is acquired and perfected by imitation.
Only some persons are naturally disposed to be polite, as others
are in acquiring great talents and solid virtue. Politeness tends,
undoubtedly, to advance merit and to render it agreeable; a man must
have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
The very essence of politeness seems to be to take care that by our
words and actions we make other people pleased with us as well as with
themselves.
(33.) It is an offence against politeness to bestow excessive praise on
a personʼs singing or playing before any other who has sung or played
for you, or to commend another poet in the presence of those who have
read you their verses.
(34.) A man may be giving entertainments and feasts to certain persons,
may make them presents, and let them enjoy themselves, and he may do
this well; but he will do much better by acting according to their
inclinations.
(35.) It is more or less rude to scorn indiscriminately all kinds of
praise; we ought to be proud of that which comes from honest men, who
praise sincerely those things in us which are really commendable.
(36.) An intelligent man, who is naturally proud, abates nothing of his
pride and haughtiness because he is poor; on the contrary, if anything
will mollify him and make him more pliant and sociable, it is a little
prosperity.
(37.) Not to be able to bear with all bad-tempered people with whom the
world is crowded, shows that a man has not a good temper himself: small
change is as necessary in business as golden coin.
(38.) To live with people who have been quarrelling and to whose
complaints you have to listen, is like being in a court of justice
from morning till night listening to pleadings and lawsuits.
(39.) Two persons had all their lives been very intimate with one
another; their incomes were in common, they lived together, and were
never out of one anotherʼs sight. After fourscore years they thought
it was time to part and put an end to their intimacy; they had then
but one day to live, and dared not attempt to pass it together: they
hastened to break before death, as their complacency would hold out no
longer. They would have been good models had they not lived so long,
for had they died one moment sooner, they still would have been good
friends and have left behind them a rare example of perseverance in
friendship.[221]
(40.) Families are often disturbed by mistrust, jealousy, and
antipathy, while outwardly they seem happy, peaceable, and cheerful,
and we suppose they enjoy a tranquillity which does not exist; there
are very few who can bear investigation. The visit you pay only
interrupts a domestic quarrel which awaits but your departure to break
out afresh.
(41.) In all societies common-sense always gives way first. The most
sensible people often are swayed by a most foolish and eccentric
personage; they study his weakness, his temper, his fancies, and put
up with them; they avoid thwarting him, and everybody gives him his
way; when his countenance betrays he is cheerful, he is commended; they
are grateful to him for not being always insufferable; he is feared,
considered, obeyed, and sometimes beloved.
(42.) None but those persons who have had aged relatives, or those who
have them still, and whose heirs they may become, can tell what they
had, or have now, to endure.
(43.) Cleantes[222] is a very worthy man; he has taken unto himself
a wife, who is the best and most sensible person in the world; both,
in their ways, are the life and soul of the company they keep; a more
straightforward and more polite behaviour than theirs is nowhere to
be met with. They are to part to-morrow, and the deed of separation
is already drawn up at the lawyerʼs. Surely they must possess certain
merits which do not harmonise together and certain virtues which are
incompatible.
(44.) A man may be sure of the dowry, the jointure, and his marriage
settlements, but scarcely of the contract the parents have entered
upon to board and lodge the young couple for a certain time;[223] for
that depends on the frail harmony between the mother-in-law and the
daughter-in-law, which often ends the first year of the marriage.
(45.) A father-in-law loves both his son and daughter-in-law, a
mother-in-law her son and not her daughter-in-law; the latter pays her
back in her own coin.
(46.) What a step-mother loves the least in the wide world are her
husbandʼs children; the fonder she is of her husband the worse
step-mother she shows herself.
Step-mothers make of towns and villages complete deserts, and stock the
country with more beggars, vagrants, servants, and slaves, than poverty
does.
(47.) G ... and H ... are neighbours, living in the country;[224]
their lands are contiguous; they dwell in a secluded and solitary spot.
Far from towns and all intercourse with men, we might have thought
that the dread of being completely estranged from the world and from
all society should have kept up their mutual intimacy; but it is
difficult to say what trifling circumstance has caused their being at
variance, renders them implacable, and transmits their hatred to their
descendants. Relatives, or even brothers, never quarrelled about a
thing of less consequence.
Suppose there were but two men on this habitable globe, the sole
possessors of it, who should divide it between them, even then I am
convinced that soon some cause of disagreement would spring up, though
it were only about boundaries.
(48.) It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform
ourselves to other menʼs opinions than to bring them over to ours.
(49.) I am now approaching a little town, and I am already on a hill
whence I discover it. It is built on a slope, a river washes its walls
and then meanders through a lovely meadow; a dense forest shelters it
from cold winds and northern blasts. The weather is so bright that I
can count its towers and steeples, and it seems, as it were, painted on
the slope of the hill. I exclaim: “How agreeable must it be to dwell
underneath such a pure sky and in such a delightful abode!” I enter
the town, and have not spent there above two or three nights when I
feel I am just like its inhabitants; I long to get away from it.
(50.) There is a certain thing which has never yet been seen under the
canopy of heaven, and, in all likelihood, never will be: it is a small
town without various parties, where all the families are united and
all relations visit one another without reserve, where a marriage does
not engender a civil war, where there are no disputes about precedence
at the offertory,[225] the carrying of the censer, or the giving of a
cake to the church to be consecrated and distributed during mass, as
well as about processions and funerals: whence gossiping, falsehoods,
and slandering are banished; where the _bailli_ and the president of
the court, the _élus_ and the _assesseurs_[226] are on speaking terms
together; where the dean is well with the canons, the canons do not
disdain the choristers, and the choristers bear with the singing-boys.
(51.) Country people and fools are apt to get angry, and to fancy you
make fun of them or despise them. You should never venture on the most
innocent and inoffensive joke, unless it be with people of culture or
intelligence.
(52.) A man should not pretend to show his talents in the society of
men of rank; their very rank forbids it; nor with people of inferior
degree who repel you by being always on their guard.
(53.) Men of merit discover, discern, and find out each other
reciprocally; he who would be esteemed should frequent persons who are
themselves estimable.
(54.) He who is of so lofty a rank as to be above repartee, ought never
to joke in a racy kind of way.
(55.) There are some little failings which we freely abandon to
censure, and about which we do not dislike being bantered; when we
banter others we should select failings of the same kind.
(56.) It is a foolʼs privilege to laugh at an intelligent man; he is in
society what a jester is at court—of no consequence whatever.
(57.) Banter is often a proof of want of intelligence.
(58.) You fancy a man your dupe, but if he only pretends to be so, who
is the greatest dupe, you or he?
(59.) If you observe carefully those people who praise nobody, who are
always finding fault, and are never satisfied with any one, you will
discover them to be persons with whom nobody is satisfied.
(60.) The proud and disdainful will find precisely in society the
contrary of what they expect, which is to be esteemed.
(61.) The pleasure of social intercourse amongst friends is kept up
by a similarity of morals and manners, and by slender differences in
opinion about science; this confirms us in our sentiments, exercises
our faculties or instructs us through arguments.
(62.) Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to
pardon each otherʼs little failings.
(63.) How many fine and useless arguments are laid before a person in
great affliction to attempt to soothe him! Things from without which
we call events are sometimes too strong for arguments and nature.
Eat, drink, do not kill yourself with grief, think only to live, are
magnificent admonitions, and impracticable as well. If we say to a man
that it is not wise to unsettle his mind so much, do we not tell him in
reality that he is a fool for being so unfortunate?
(64.) Advice which is necessary in all matters of business, is
sometimes hurtful in social affairs to those who give it, and useless
to the persons to whom it is given. You observe, perhaps, faults in
manners and morals which are either not acknowledged, or, perhaps,
considered virtues; you blot out some passages in a composition which
please the author the most, and in which he thinks he has surpassed
himself. By those means you lose the confidence of your friend without
making him better or wiser.
(65.) Not long since certain persons of both sexes formed a society for
intellectual conversation and interchange of ideas.[227] They left to
the vulgar herd the art of talking intelligibly; an expression used by
them, and which was not very clear, was followed by another still more
obscure, which was improved on by others still more enigmatic, which
were always crowned with prolonged applause, so that at last, by what
they were pleased to call refinements, sentiments, turn and delicacy of
expression, they succeeded in becoming unintelligible to others and to
themselves. Common-sense, judgment, memory, or the smallest capacity
were unnecessary in their conversation; all that was wanted was a
certain amount of intellect, and that not of the right sort, but of a
spurious kind, and in which imagination was too predominant.
(66.) I know it, Theobaldus,[228] you have grown old; but would you
have me think you decline, that you are no longer a poet nor a wit,
that you are now as bad a critic of all kind of writings as you are
a wretched author, and that your conversation is neither ingenuous
nor refined? Your careless and conceited behaviour reassures me, and
convinces me of my error. You are the same to-day as you ever were, and
perhaps better; for if you are so brisk and vivacious at your age, what
name, Theobaldus, did you deserve in your youth, when you were the pet
and the caprice of certain ladies who only swore by you, believed every
word you uttered, and then exclaimed, “It is delightful! What has he
said?”
(67.) We frequently speak hastily in conversation, often through
vanity and natural inclination, seldom with the necessary caution, and
only anxious to reply to what we have not heard; we follow our own
ideas, and explain them without the smallest deference for other menʼs
arguments; we are very far from finding out the truth, as we are not
yet agreed upon what we are looking for. If any man could hear such
conversations and write them down, he would now and then find many good
things said without the smallest result.
(68.) Some time ago a sort of insipid and puerile conversation was in
fashion, which turned on trivial questions about the affections, and
what people please to call passion or tenderness. The reading of some
novels first introduced this talk amongst the most gentlemanly men in
town and at court, but they soon discarded it, and then the citizens
took it up, as well as puns and plays on words.[229]
(69.) Some city ladies are so refined that they do not know or dare not
pronounce the names of streets, squares, and public places, which they
think are not noble enough to be known. They speak of the _Louvre_,
the _Place Royale_, but they use certain circumlocutions and phrases
rather than mention some names; and if, by chance, such a word escapes
them, it is not without some alteration, and after some changes which
reassure them; they are less natural in this than the ladies at court,
who, when they have occasion to speak of the _Halles_, the _Châtelet_,
or the like, simply say the _Halles_ or the _Châtelet_.[230]
(70.) If people pretend sometimes not to remember certain names which
they think obscure, and affect to spoil them in the pronunciation, it
is through the good opinion they have of their own names.
(71.) When we are in a good temper, and when we can talk as we like,
we often say silly things, which, in truth, we do not pretend to be
anything else, and which are considered very good, because they are
very bad.[231] This inferior kind of joking, fit only for the mob, has
already infected a great part of the youth at court. It is true we
need not fear it will spread further, for it is really too insipid and
coarse to thrive in a country which is the centre of good taste and
politeness. However, it should be rendered distasteful to those who
employ it, for though it is never used seriously, yet it continually
takes the place of better things in their mind and in their ordinary
conversation.
(72.) Between saying bad things or saying such good things which
everybody knows, and pretending they are quite new, there is so little
difference that I do not know which to choose.
(73.) “Lucanus[232] has said a pretty thing. There is a fine expression
in Claudianus.[233] There is a certain passage in Seneca;”[234] and
then follow a good many Latin words, often quoted before people who
do not know what they mean, though they pretend to understand them.
The right thing would be to have sense and intelligence ourselves, for
then we might dispense with the ancients, or after having read them
carefully, we might still select the best and quote them pertinently.
(74.) Hermagoras[235] knows not who is king of Hungary, and wonders
that no one talks about the king of Bohemia.[236] Speak not to him of
the wars in Flanders or in Holland,[237] or, at least, you must excuse
him from answering any questions about them; he mixes up all dates; he
neither knows when they began nor ended; battles and sieges are all
new to him; b
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