fashion the mind and to fortify the soul is what I like best. Above
all it gives me an extreme satisfaction to read in company with an
intelligent person, for in this way one is kept constantly reflecting
on what one reads, and the reflections thus exchanged form a species
of conversation than which no other in the world is so agreeable or so
useful. I give a sound opinion about works in verse and prose which
are submitted to me, but perhaps I allow myself too much freedom in
expressing that opinion. Another fault of mine is that I am sometimes
too scrupulously delicate and too severely critical. I do not dislike
to listen to argument, and sometimes I am glad to take my share in the
discussion, but I usually support my opinion with too much heat, and
when any one pleads an unjust cause in my presence, sometimes, in my
zeal for logic, I myself become exceedingly illogical. My sentiments
are virtuous, my inclinations are honest, and I am so intensely
anxious to act in all things as a gentleman should, that my friends
cannot do me a greater favour than to warn me sincerely of my faults.
Those who know me rather intimately, and who have been so kind as to
give me their counsels in this direction, are aware that I have ever
received them with all imaginable joy and with all the submission of
mind which they could possibly desire."
All this, and what remains, show that in the character of La
Rochefoucauld action had abruptly receded in favour of analysis, and
the brutality of civil war in the woods had given place to the
refinement of endless conversation by the fireside corner. The old
swashbuckler turned from the illusions of the camp to the most
exquisite of peaceful associations, and he regarded women from a
totally new point of view. It was the age of the _salons_, and La
Rochefoucauld tells us why it was that he became their sedulous
associate. He says, "When women are intelligent, I like their
conversation better than that of men. There is a certain suavity in
their talk which is lacking in that of our sex, and it seems, in
addition, that they explain themselves with more precision, and give a
more agreeable turn to what they say." In other words, La
Rochefoucauld had, by 1658, become a complete, and indeed the most
competent and highly finished example of the new social intelligence
which was to be found in France. We must dwell for one rapid moment on
what that new spirit was.
The seventeenth century in France, liberated from the weight of
internecine wars and political tyrannies, had now thrown itself with
ardour into the civilized arts, and had, in particular, developed a
love of moral disquisition. All the talk which presently became
fashionable about virtue and the higher life was a reaction against
the horrors of the Fronde. The advance of social refinement was very
rapid, and, especially in Paris, there was a determined and
intelligent movement in the direction of the amelioration of manners
and a studied elegance of life. M. Rébelliau has pointed out that it
was precisely at this moment that a great number of new words, and
among them _délicate, distinguer, moraliste, ménagements, finesse_ and
many others, were accepted as part of the French language. These
served immediately to enrich the vocabulary of the men and women who
were anxious to push further and deeper their investigations into
psychological analysis. With this social tendency to dissect the human
heart and to seize its most secret movements, was combined the
religious and, as we may put it, protestant fashion of the hour, in
the spirit of Port Royal. To be a moralist was almost in itself to be
a Jansenist, and we see the author of the "Maximes" presently claiming
to be, after a fashion, evangelical.
There is so little said about theology, in the direct sense, in the
writings of La Rochefoucauld, that his various French critics have
given perhaps too little thought to his religious tendencies. They
have treated him as though he were the enemy of a pious life. But if
we examine that contention from the standpoint provided for us by our
own Puritan habit of thought, we must recognize that there was
something positively pious about the bitter philosopher of the
"Maximes." He was trying, let us never forget, to discover a
scientific form of morals, and hardly enough attention has been given
to the prominence which he gave to a searching analysis of conscience.
He found little to help him in the court religion of the age, but he
was immensely impressed with the Jansenist conception of the frailty
and worthlessness of the natural man. Hence, his persistency in
cultivating almost exclusively the society of those men and women of
Port Royal with whom we might suppose that he had very little in
common. But, quite recently, a discovery has been made, which is not
only of special interest to us as Englishmen, but which throws a
further light on the evangelical or puritan tendency of the author of
the "Maximes."
A careful scholar, M. Ernest Jouy, was led by a passage in a
seventeenth-century MS. to make investigations which seem to have
proved that La Rochefoucauld was acquainted with an English book of
edification and even that he deigned to make use of it in the
fashioning of his famous "Maximes." This was "The Mystery of
Self-Deceiving," published in 1615 by a semi-nonconformist Puritan
divine, Daniel Dyke, minister of Coggeshall in Essex, and translated
obscurely into French by a certain Vernulius. Of the original work
Fuller wrote, "It is a book which will be owned for a truth while men
have any badness in them, and will be owned as a treasure whilst they
have any goodness in them." It is, certainly, an amazing thing to find
that this clumsy old treatise of English divinity was apparently
possessed as a treasure by the most elegant and the most sceptical of
Frenchmen.
La Rochefoucauld may be conceived as saying to the practical divines
of Port Royal, "Your work is confused and thwarted by the vast
prevalence of rubbish under which morals are concealed. I will help
you to force the people who talk so glibly of humanity and pity, of
rectitude and amiability, to dissect the real bodies of egotism to
which they give those names. I put Man in the pillory of
self-judgment; it is for you to deal evangelically with what remains
of his temperament when he comes down out of the ordeal."
To do this, La Rochefoucauld prepared, with infinite patience and with
the conscientiousness of a great literary artist, his sheaf of
Maxim-arrows, ready to shoot them, one by one, into the gross heart of
_amour-propre_. What, then, were the reflexions which, now settled in
Paris, and secure from the rough world in the recesses of Mme de
Sablé's _salon_, the Duke began to fashion and to polish? A maxim is a
formula, which comprehends the whole truth on a particular subject.
Coleridge says, in his "Table Talk," that a maxim is a conclusion upon
observation of matters of fact; we may add that it is final, it goes
as far as it can possibly go, and contains the maximum of truth in the
minimum of verbiage. If we take some of the most cynical and savage
maxims of La Rochefoucauld we may see that conciseness could proceed
no further: for instance, "Virtue is a rouge that women add to their
beauty"; or "Pride knows no law and self-love no debt"; or "The
pleasure of love is loving." The ingenuity of man has not devised a
mode of saying those particular things as exactly in fewer words. They
reach the maximum of conciseness, and are therefore called maxims.
It is very unusual in the history of literature to be able to point to
a man of genius as the positive founder of a class of work. When we
look closely into the matter, we are sure to find that there was an
obscure predecessor, a torch-bearer who lighted up the path. Even
Shakespeare has Marlowe in front of him, and in front of Marlowe are
Greene and Peele. Several poets were inspired by the story of the fall
of the rebel angels before Milton took up "Paradise Lost" and seized
that province as his own by conquest. In like manner, La Rochefoucauld
seems to us in a general view, and seemed indeed to his own Parisian
contemporaries, to have invented a new art in the production of his
"Maximes." But, in truth, he was not the pioneer, and he seems to have
spent months, and even years, in a sort of apprenticeship to two
authors who have not survived in French literature as he has. So far
as we can make out, the real creator of the maxim in French was
Jacques Esprit (1611-1678), the Abbé Esprit as he was called, although
he was never a priest, and had a legitimate wife and family. He was a
young man from Béziers in Provence, who came to Paris under the
protection of Chancellor Séguier, soon became a member of the French
Academy, and enjoyed a steady social and literary success.
There seems little doubt that Esprit was known early to La
Rochefoucauld, for he was familiar in the family of the Duke and
Duchess of Longueville, and later the governor of their children. He
enjoyed the confidence of the _salons_ from an early date. There is
some reason to suppose that Esprit had begun to write maxims before La
Rochefoucauld's return from exile, and certainly before Mme de Sablé's
retreat to Port Royal in 1659. It is very noticeable in La
Rochefoucauld's letters to Esprit--most of which belong to the year
1660--that he treats the academician--who was of plebeian birth and
not many months older than himself--with extreme deference. The Duke
adopts the style of a pupil to a master, and he submits his sketches
or experiments in maxim-making to Esprit for a severe criticism, which
he accepts, and for advice, which he adopts. The probability seems to
be that Esprit introduced the fashion for writing maxims to Mme de
Sablé, who was fascinated by it, recommended it to La Rochefoucauld,
and then pointed Esprit out as the acknowledged master of the art, who
could give invaluable technical advice.
There was a sort of collaboration. We find La Rochefoucauld writing to
Esprit, "I shall be much obliged if you will show _our_ last sentences
to Mme de Sablé; it may perhaps induce her to write some of her own."
And to the lady he writes, "Here are all my maxims which you have not
yet seen, but as nothing is done for nothing, I beg you to send me in
return the receipt for the carrot soup which we had when Commander de
Souvré dined at your house," The three maximists consulted one
another, polished up one another's sentences, and suggested subjects
which were first discussed round the dinner-table or in the summer
parlour and then worked up, sometimes by all three conjointly, to the
highest pitch of perfection. It was probably Esprit by whom many of
the original suggestions were started, indeed it is he who seems to
have first laid down the formula that "the mind is the servant and
even the dupe of the instincts," which both Pascal and La
Rochefoucauld were presently to expand in such brilliant forms. But it
is quite an error to presume, as some writers have done, that there
was a kind of factory for maxims, out of which sentences were turned
which really belonged to no one in particular. The "Maximes" of Mme de
Sablé and those of the Abbé Esprit--the latter contained in a
Jansenist volume called "The Falsity of Human Virtues"--were published
independently, but in the same year, 1678. Any one who has the
patience to refer to these works may satisfy himself that Mme de
Sablé, as an artist, is superior to Esprit, but immeasurably inferior
to La Rochefoucauld, who is the one unapproachable master of the
maxim.[3]
[Footnote 3: A good deal of the prejudice which successive
critics, and (very mischievously) Brunetière in particular,
have shown with regard to the character of La Rochefoucauld,
is due, in my opinion, to the influence of Victor Cousin,
who published, in 1854, a disjointed and diffuse, but in
many ways brilliantly executed volume on Mme de Sablé.
Cousin, who examined, for the first time, a vast array of
MS. sources, deliberately lowered the value of La
Rochefoucauld in order to enhance the merit of the lady, of
whom the learned academician wrote like a lover. Even Esprit
was thrown into the scale to lighten the weight of the
Duke's originality. Cousin was borne gaily on the stream of
his heroine-worship, and others less profoundly acquainted
with the facts have let themselves be carried with him. But
it is time that we should cease to imitate them in this.]
For six or seven years the Duke worked away at the polishing of his
incomparable epigrams, and it was not until October 27, 1665, that the
little famous book made its anonymous appearance. The importance of
the work was perceived immediately in the close circle of the _salons_
which regulated literary opinion in Paris. For half a century past
Frenchmen had been regarding with jealous attention the causes and
effects of human passion, culminating, for the moment, in the treatise
written by Descartes for the daughter of the Queen of Bohemia. The
Jansenists and the Jesuits, the playwrights, the novelists, Hobbes and
Spinoza, all pursued, along widely different paths, those illusive
secrets of the human heart which had escaped the notice of earlier
generations. But La Rochefoucauld reduced the desultory psychology of
his predecessors to a system, so that for us the moralizing tendencies
of the seventeenth century in France seem to have found their final
expression less in the sob of Pascal's conscience than in the resigned
ironic nonchalance of La Rochefoucauld, who, as Voltaire so admirably
says, "dissolves every virtue in the passions which surround it."
Perhaps what the "Maximes" most resembled was the then
recently-published analysis of egotism in "Leviathan." But the cool
and atrocious periods of what Sir Leslie Stephen calls "the unblushing
egotism" of Hobbes have really little in common with the sparkling
rapier-strokes of La Rochefoucauld, except that both these moralists--
who may conceivably have met and compared impressions in Paris--
combined a resolute pessimism about the corruption of mankind with an
epicurean pursuit of happiness.
The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld were atoms of gold sifted through the
mesh of discussions at the dinner-table, around the fire in winter,
under the hawthorns and lilacs which Mme de Sévigné describes, in
endless talk between two or more trained and intelligent persons,
along the course of which thought oscillated from extreme to extreme,
until at last the company dispersed, leaving La Rochefoucauld to
capture and to fix the essential result of all that desultory
conversation. It is not impossible for us to conjecture the general
character of this brilliant and illusive talk. It had one central aim,
more or less clearly perceived, namely the desire to reach a Latin
standard of perfection. It sought to exchange for the romantic
barbarism which had underlain so much that was picturesque in the
sixteenth century--a barbarism which had come down from the late
Middle Ages, and which was really a dissolution of strong things
outworn--to exchange for this a preciousness of quality as against
mere rude bulk. It desired to introduce depth of purpose in the place
of chaotic moral disorder, originality in place of a frenzied and
incoherent eccentricity, and to found a solid structure upon a basis
of intellectual discipline.
But in order to carry out this fine scheme, and especially in order
successfully to check that decadence which had alarmed the best minds
in France, there was a pioneer work to be done. It was necessary to
intensify and purify the light of criticism. For this purpose the
conversations of the _salons_ culminated in the lapidary art of La
Rochefoucauld, who was not a creator like Racine and Molière, like
Bossuet and Fenelon, but who prepared the way for these slightly later
builders of French literature by clearing the ground of shams.
Segrais, whose recollections of him are among the most precious which
have come down to us, says that La Rochefoucauld never argued. He had
the Socratic manner, and led others on to expose and expound their
views. His custom was, in the course of the endless talks about morals
and the soul, "to conceal half of his own opinion, and to show tact
with an obstinate opponent, so as to spare him the annoyance of having
to yield." There is something very like this in the "Pensées" of
Pascal. La Rochefoucauld blames himself, in his self-portrait, for
arguing too fiercely, and for being testy with an opponent, but these
faults were not perceived by other people. Doubtless he was aware of
an inward impatience, and succeeded in concealing it by means of that
extreme politeness on which he prided himself.
The "Maximes" are shocking to persons who live in a state of illusion
about themselves, and they were so from the hour of their publication.
They roll up a bitter pill for human vanity. When Mme de La Fayette,
destined to look deeper than any other mortal into the soul of La
Rochefoucauld, read them first in 1663, in company with Mme du Plessis
at the Château de Fresnes, she was terrified and shocked at what she
called the "corruption" which they revealed. She wrote to Mme de
Sablé, who had lent her the manuscript--
"Ah, Madame, how corrupt he must be in mind and heart to be capable of
imagining such things! I am so frightened by it that I should say, if
this were not a matter too serious for jest, that such maxims are
likely to do more to upset him than all the plates of soup he
swallowed at your house the other day."
As the "Maximes" pass from hand to hand, we see the spiritual Mænads
of Port Royal clustering "with a lovely frightened mien" about the
sinister author, while he turns "his beauteous face haughtily another
way," like young Apollo in the Phrygian highlands. The word
"pessimism" was, I believe, unknown until the year 1835, but this is
what Mme de La Fayette and the rest of the Jansenist ladies meant by
"corruption." Perhaps the most celebrated of all the sayings of her
terrible friend is that which declares that "In the misfortunes of our
friends there is always something which gives us no displeasure." She
was about to learn that no one had a nobler practice in friendship
than the cynic who wrote this: "There are good marriages, but no
delicious ones"; Mme de La Fayette's own marriage had been not at all
delicious and not even good. "Gratitude in the majority of men is
simply a strong and secret wish to receive still greater benefits."
Terrifying this must have been to a sentimental and exalted bosom, and
exclusive of all hope until the little word "majority" was observed, a
loophole offered for scared humanity to creep out at.
The design of La Rochefoucauld was to make people ashamed of their
egotism, and so to help them to modify it. He saw France deadened by a
universal sycophancy, and tyrannized over by a court life which made a
lie of everything. He insisted upon the value of individual sincerity,
but in a voice so harsh and bitter, and in such sardonic phrases--as
when he says: "Sincerity is met with in very few people, and is
usually nothing but a delicate dissimulation to attract the confidence
of others"--that the more timid of his auditors shrank from him, as if
he had been Hamlet or Lear. When he dared to suggest that none of
these maxims were intended to refer to the reader himself, but only to
all other persons, he invited the reaction which led Huet, Bishop of
Avranches, to appeal against the morality of the "Maximes," as suited
only to the vices of wicked persons, "improborum hominum vitiis," and
to issue a warning against the too-sweeping cynicism of
Roccapucaldius, as he called the Duke. This was, perhaps, the
beginning of the dead-set against La Rochefoucauld. It encouraged
Rousseau, a century later, to talk of "ce triste livre," and to
declare, in the true romantic spirit, that "Bad maxims are worse than
bad acts." There have always been, and always will be, people who
experience a sort of _malaise_, an ill-defined discomfort, as though
they sat in an east wind, while they read La Rochefoucauld. This is
particularly true of Englishmen, who resent being told that "Our
virtues are often only our vices in disguise," and who also, by the
way, are constitutionally impatient of the French genius for making
what is ugly, and even what is detestable, pleasing by the surface of
style.
There is an element of unmercifulness in the candour of La
Rochefoucauld which is distressing to sentimentalists. But this was
characteristic of the age, which looked upon compassion as a frailty,
as a break-down of noble personal reserve. He shall speak on this
matter for himself--
"I am little sensible of pity, and if I had my way, I would avoid it
altogether. At the same time, there is nothing I would not do to
relieve an afflicted person: and I believe as a matter of fact that
one ought to go so far as to express compassion for the misfortunes of
such a man, since the unhappy are so stupid that compassion does them
more good than anything else in the world. But I also hold that one
should confine one's self to professions of pity and be very careful
not to feel any. Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a
well-constituted mind; it can but weaken the heart, and it ought to be
left to people who, carrying nothing out in a logical manner, require
passion to constrain them to do things."
He seems to paint himself in tones of Prussian blue, but we must
really think of him as of a man timid, and at the same time
preternaturally wide-awake, who was determined at all risks not to be
taken at a disadvantage. When he was an old man, when much communing
with Mme de La Fayette had allayed his suspicion of mankind, La
Rochefoucauld said to Mlle de Scudery, "I hope that clemency will come
into fashion, and that we shall see no more men unhappy." [4] He
professed to found politeness on extreme _amour-propre_, but perhaps
in a still closer analysis he would have discovered its basis in
kindness of heart. He resists the temptation to weaken his own
pessimism, just as in his biting sarcasms about love we may trace a
tender soul still bleeding from the wounds which Mme de Longueville's
levity had inflicted on it.[5]
[Footnote 4: Mme de Sévigné told her daughter that she was
sure that if one could peep at the Duke and Mme de La
Fayette "when they were alone with the cat," one would find
all the restraints of society flung aside, and see them
without the mask, their cynicism forgotten, mingling cries
and tears over the sorrows of the world. But neither she nor
any third person would ever see their social discretion thus
betrayed, and she concludes, in her droll way, "C'est une
vision!" In another letter to Mme de Grignan (June 6, 1672)
she says of the Duke, "Il connaît quasi aussi bien que moi
la tendresse maternelle."]
[Footnote 5: There was unquestionably a strong vein of
tenderness running through the stoical character of the
Duke, and if we were more intimately acquainted with his
private life we should probably see many traces of it. Such
traces exist as it is. We have Mme de Sévigné's account of
his reception of the news of the Passage of the Rhine. It
was announced to him, on the 17th of June, 1672, at the
house of Mme de La Fayette, in the presence of Mme de
Sévigné, that in that terrible disaster his eldest son had
been dangerously wounded and his fourth son, the Chevalier,
killed. The tears seemed to start out of the depth of his
heart, and they brimmed his eyes, although his self-command
prevented an outbreak of grief. But there was a further
complication. The young Duke of Longueville was also killed
at the Rhine, and he, as a select circle of intimate friends
were perfectly aware, was really the love-child of La
Rochefoucauld. Mme de Sévigné, having given a superficial
account of the incident, characteristically goes on to say,
"Alas! I am telling a lie; between ourselves, my dear, he
does not feel the loss of the Chevalier so much; it is that
of the young man whom all the world regrets which leaves him
so inconsolable." And again she says: "I saw the secrets of
his heart revealed under this cruel blow; and no one that I
have ever seen surpasses him in courage, in honour, in
tenderness, in balance of mind." This is a tribute not to be
overlooked.]
To understand the wholesome influence which La Rochefoucauld has
exercised on French character, we must keep constantly in sight his
hatred of falsehood. If he is angry and sardonic, it is because he
sees, or thinks he sees, falsehood everywhere masquerading as virtue.
His foremost duty was to pluck the mask from the false virtues which
strutted everywhere through the society and literature of France.
Voltaire recognized nothing else in La Rochefoucauld but this sardonic
misanthropy, this determination to prove that man is guided solely by
self-interest. This Voltaire thought was the _seule vérité_ contained
in the "Maximes," and in a measure he was right. The moralist saw
_amour-propre_ as an Apollyon straddling right across the pathway of
mankind; he saw lies flourish everywhere, and proclaim themselves to
be the truth. The conscience of mankind was seduced or browbeaten by
the impudency of self-love. Thus--
"We have not the courage to say broadly that we ourselves have no
defects, and that our enemies have no good qualities; but as a matter
of fact that is not far from being what we think."