Chapter IV: Epilogue: 288 (3)

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

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

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

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

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

What effectively quiet satire in these few words!--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How incisive the following!--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following is much less exhilarating:--

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

This, also:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

Here is a good saying:--

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

There is worldly wisdom also here:--

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

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

The consciousness of our strength makes our strength greater.

So much for Vauvenargues.

VI.

LA FONTAINE.

1621-1695.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VII.

MOLIERE.

1623-1673.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M. JOUR. That Latin is quite right.

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

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

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

M. JOUR. And what may this logic be?

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

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

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

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

PROF. PHIL. Will you learn moral philosophy?

M. JOUR. Moral philosophy?

PROF. PHIL. Yes.

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

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

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

PROF. PHIL. Would you like to learn physics?

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

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

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

PROF. PHIL. Very good.

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

PROF. PHIL. Very well.

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

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

M. JOUR. Oh, no! not verse.

PROF. PHIL. You only wish prose?

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

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

M. JOUR.Why?

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

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

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

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

PROF. PHIL. Prose.

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

PROF. PHIL. Yes, sir.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BELISE. Ah! what a pretty beginning!

ARMANDE. What a charming turn it has!

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

ARM. We must yield to _prudence fast asleep_.

BEL. _Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe_ is full of charms for
me.

PHIL. I like _luxuriously_ and _magnificently_: these two adverbs
joined together sound admirably.

BEL. Let us hear the rest.

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

ARM. _Prudence fast asleep._

BEL. _To lodge one's foe._

PHIL. _Luxuriously_ and _magnificently_.

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

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

ARM.Give us time to admire, I beg.

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

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

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

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

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

ARM. My heart is also in love with _whate'er men say_.

BEL. I am of your opinion: _whate'er men say_ is a happy
expression.

ARM. I wish I had written it.

BEL. It is worth a whole poem.

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

ARM. _and_ BEL. Oh! Oh!

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

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

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

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

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

TRISS. Ah! ah!

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

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

ARM. Ah! once more, _whate'er men say_, I beg.

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

PHIL., ARM., _and_ BEL. _Whate'er men say!_

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

PHIL., ARM., _and_ BEL. _Chamber decked so gay!_

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

PHIL., ARM., _and_ BEL. That _ingrate_ fever!

TRISS. Bold she assails your lovely life.

PHIL. _Your lovely life!_

ARM. _and_ BEL. Ah!

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

PHIL., ARM., _and_ BEL. Ah!

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

PHIL. Ah! It is quite overpowering.

BEL. I faint.

ARM. I die from pleasure.

PHIL. A thousand sweet thrills seize one.

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

BEL. _No more ado, with your own arm_

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

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

BEL. One promenades through them with rapture.

PHIL. One treads on fine things only.

ARM. They are little lanes all strewn with roses.

TRISS. Then, the sonnet seems to you--

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

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

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

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

HEN. No. I do not listen.

PHIL. Ah! Let us hear the epigram.

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

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

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

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

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

TRISS. For order, I prefer peripateticism.

PHIL. For abstractions, I love platonism.

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

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

TRISS. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.

ARM. I like his vortices.

PHIL. And I, his falling worlds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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