chest, which caused a continual fever. It lasted for six days and a
half, with extreme pain. During this period he gave every mark of
patience, gentleness, and firmness. There were no unmanly fears, nor
unchristian negligence. On the fifth day of his illness he dictated a
letter to the confessor of the king, declaratory of his inviolable
attachment to his sovereign, and his entire acquiescence in the
condemnation of his book. He made two requests, both relating to his
diocese: the one, that a worthy successor, opposed to jansenism, should
be given him; the other regarded the establishment of his seminary. From
this time he appeared insensible to what he quitted, and occupied only
by the thought of what he was going to meet. He passed his last hours
surrounded by his friends, and particularly by his beloved nephew, the
marquis de Fénélon[116]; and breathed his last without a pang.
Louis XIV. outlived him but a few months. The duke of Orleans became
regent. France flourished in peace under his regency; while its
aristocracy was corrupted by a state of libertinism and profligacy,
unequalled except in the pages of Suetonius. Had Fénélon lived, would
he not have influenced the regent, whose perverted mind was yet adorned
by talents, and regulated by a sense of political justice?--Would he not
have fostered the child of his pupil, and engrafted virtue in the soul
of Louis XV.? This is but conjecture; futile, except as it may teach us
to make use of the example and precepts of the good and wise, while they
are spared to us. Soon all but their memory is lost in the obscurity and
nothingness of the tomb.
In person, Fénélon was tall and well made; a paleness of countenance
testified his studious and abstemious habits; while his expressive eyes
diffused softness and gentle gaiety over his features. His manners
displayed the grace and dignity, the delicacy and propriety, which
belong to the well-born, when their understandings are cultivated by
learning, and their hearts enlarged by the practices of virtue.
Eloquent, witty, judicious, and pleasing, he adapted himself to the time
and person with whom he conversed, and was admired and beloved by all.
His character is sufficiently detailed in these pages;--his benevolence,
generosity, and sublime elevation above all petty and self-interested
views. It may be said, that his piety was too softening and ideal; yet
in practice it was not so. His nephew, brought up under his care, and
embued with his principles of religion, was a gallant soldier, and
believed that it was the duty of a subject to die for his king; and,
acting on this belief, fell at the battle of Raucoux. A religion that
teaches toleration, active charity, and resignation, inculcates the
lessons to which human nature inclines with most difficulty, and which,
practised in a generous, unprejudiced manner, raise man to a high pitch
of excellence. "I know not," says a celebrated writer, "whether God
ought to be loved for himself, but I am sure that this is how we must
love Fénélon." An infidel must have found piety amiable, when it
assumed his shape. The artless simplicity of his character prevented his
taking pride in his own virtues[117]: he felt his weaknesses; he
scarcely deplored them; he laid them meekly at the feet of God; and,
praying only that he might learn to love him better, believed that in
the perfection of love he should find the perfection of his own nature.
The chevalier Ramsay, a Scotch baronet, gives us, in his life, a
delightful account of his intimate intercourse. Ramsay was troubled by
scepticism on religious subjects, and applied to the archbishop of
Cambray for enlightenment, which he afforded with a zeal, patience, and
knowledge, both of his subject and human nature, which speedily brought
his disciple over to Catholicism. Ramsay delights to expatiate on the
virtues and genius of his admirable friend. He penetrated to the depths
of his heart, and read those internal sentiments which Fénélon never
expressed in writing. "Had he been born in a free country," Ramsay
afterwards wrote to Voltaire, "he would have displayed his whole genius,
and given a full career to his own principles, never known." That, of
all men, Fénélon must have entertained feelings too sublime, in their
abnegation of self, to please a despotism, both of church and state, we
can readily believe.[118]
Kind and gentle to all, lending himself with facility to every call made
on him; polite, from the pure source of politeness, benevolence of
heart;--every one was welcomed, every one satisfied. A friend one day
made excuses for interrupting him in a work he was desirous of
finishing: "Do not distress yourself," he replied: "you do more good to
me by interrupting me, than I should have done to others by working."
Though of a sensitive and vivacious temperament, he was never betrayed
into any show of temper. During the first years of his exile, when he
severely felt his estrangement from the refined and enlightened society
of the capital, and from friends dear to his heart, he was still equable
and cheerful; always alive to the interests of others, never
self-engrossed. He had the art of adapting himself to the capacities and
habits of every one:--"I have seen him," says Ramsay, "in a single day,
mount, and descend all ranks; converse with the noble in their own
language, preserving throughout his episcopal dignity; and then talk
with the lowly, as a good father with his children, and this without
effort or affectation."
If he were thus to his acquaintance, to the friends whom he loved, he
was far more. From the divine love which he cherished, as the source of
every virtue, sprung a spirit of attachment pure, tender, and generous.
His own sentiments with regard to friendship, when he expatiates on it,
in a letter to the duke of Burgundy, are conceived in the noblest and
most disinterested sense. In practice, he was forbearing and delicate;
he bore the faults of those around him, yet seized the happy moment to
instruct and amend. He felt that self-love rendered us alive to the
imperfections of another; and that want of sympathy arose from being too
self-engrossed. He knew it was the duty of a friend to correct faults;
but he could wait patiently for years to give one salutary lesson. In
the same spirit, he begged his friends not to be sparing in their
instructions to him. His great principle was, that all was in common
with friends. "How delightful it would be," he sometimes said, "if every
possession was a common one; if each man would no longer regard his
knowledge, his virtues, his enjoyments, and his wealth, as his own
merely. It is thus, that in heaven, that the saints have all things in
God, and nothing in themselves. It is a general and infinite beatitude,
whose flux and reflux causes their fulness of bliss. If our friends
below would submit to the same poverty, and the same community of all
things, temporal and spiritual, we should no longer hear those chilling
words _thine_ and mine; we should all be rich and poor in unity." The
death of one he loved could move him to profound grief; and he could
say--"Our true friends are at once our greatest delight and greatest
sorrow. One is tempted to wish that all attached friends should agree to
die together on the same day: those who love not, are willing to bury
all their fellow-creatures, with dry eyes and satisfied hearts; they are
not worthy to live. It costs much to be susceptible to friendship; but
those who are, would be ashamed if they were not; they prefer suffering
to heartlessness." Religion alone could bring consolation:--"Let us
unite ourselves in heart," he wrote, "to those whom we regret; he is not
far from us, though invisible; he tells us, in mute speech, to hasten to
rejoin him. Pure spirits see, hear, and love their friends in the common
centre." Such are the soothing expressions of Fénélon; and such as
these caused d'Alembert to remark, "that the touching charm of his
works, is the sense of quiescence and peace which he imparts to his
reader; it is a friend who draws near, and whose soul overflows into
yours: he suspends, at least for a time, your regrets and sufferings. We
may pardon many men who force us to hate humanity, in favour of
Fénélon who makes us love it."
Most of his works are either pious or written for the instruction of his
royal pupil. The duke de Beauvilliers had copies of most of those
letters and papers, addressed to the duke of Burgundy, which Louis XIV.
destroyed. Among these, his directions with regard to the conscience of
a king, is full of enlightened morality.
He had a great love for all classic learning. His Telemachus is full of
traits which show that he felt all the charm of Greek poetry. He was
made member of the French academy the 31st of March, 1693, in the place
of Pelisson. His oration on the occasion was simple and short. He
afterwards addressed his Dialogues on Eloquence to the academy. These
prove the general enlightenment of his mind, and the justice of his
views. His remarks on language are admirable. When he speaks of tragedy,
he rises far above Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, in his conception of
the drama; in that, as in every other species of composition, he tried
to bring back his countrymen to simplicity and nature. He desired them
to speak more from the heart, less from the head. He shows how what the
French falsely deemed to be delicacy of taste, took all vivid colouring
and truth from their pictures, giving us a high enamel, in place of
vigorous conception and finished execution. He gives just applause to
Molière; his only censure is applied to the Misanthrope: "I cannot
pardon him," he says, "for making vice graceful, and representing virtue
as austere and odious." All his works are essentially didactic; and they
have the charm which we must expect would be found in the address of one
so virtuous and wise, and calm, to erring passion-tost humanity.
His Telemachus has become, to a great degree, a mere book of instruction
to young persons. In its day, it was considered a manual for kings,
inculcating their duties even too strictly, and with too much regard for
the liberties of the subject. In every despotic country, where it is
considered eligible that the sovereign should be instructed and the
people kept in ignorance, this work is still invaluable, if such a one
can be found; but, in a proper sense, it cannot, except in Turkey and
Russia. There is much tyranny, but the science of politics is changed:
the welfare of nations rests on another basis than the virtues and
wisdom of kings;--it rests on knowledge, and morals of the people. The
proper task of the lawgiver and philanthropist is to enlighten nations,
now that masses exert so great an influence over governments. A king, as
every individual placed in a conspicuous situation, must be the source
of much good and evil, happiness or misery, within his own circle; but
in England and France the influence of the people is so direct as to
demand our most anxious endeavours to enlighten them; while, in
countries where yet they have no voice in government, the day is so near
at hand when they shall obtain it, that it is even more necessary to
render them fit to exert it; so that when the hour comes, they shall not
be fierce as emancipated slaves,--but, like free men, just, true, and
patient. This change has operated to cast Telemachus into shade; and the
decay of Catholicism has spread a similar cloud over Fénélon's
religious works; but the spirit of the man will preserve them from
perishing. His soul, tempered in every virtue, transcends the priestly
form it assumed on earth; and every one who wishes to learn the lessons
taught by that pure, simple, and entire disinterestedness, which is the
foundation of the most enlightened wisdom and exalted virtue, must
consult the pages of Fénélon. He will rise from their perusal a wiser
and a better man.
[Footnote 103: Plato's Symposium.]
[Footnote 104: Among such, how beautifully is the following thought
expressed: "On voit tous les dieux de la terre dégradés et abimés
dans l'éternité, comme les fleuves demeurent sans nom et sans gloire,
mêlés dans l'océan avec les rivières les plus inconnues." More known
is the apostrophe on the sudden death of Henrietta of England, duchess
of Orleans, when his audience wept, as he exclaimed, "O nuit
désastreuse, nuit effroyable, où retentit tout-à-coup, comme un
éclat de tonnerre, cette accablante nouvelle, madame se meurt, madame
est morte!" D'Alembert praises yet more the conclusion of his oration on
the great Condé, when he took leave for ever of the pulpit, and,
addressing the hero whom he was celebrating, said, "Prince, vous mettrez
fin à tous ces discours. Au lieu de déplorer la mort des autres, je
veux désormais apprendre de vous à rendre la mienne sainte; heureux,
si averti par ces cheveux blancs du compte que je dois rendre de mon
administration, je réserve au troupeau, que je dois nourrir de la
parole de vie, les restes d'une voix qui tombe, et d'un ardeur qui
s'eteint." "The touching picture," says D'Alembert, "which this address
presents of a great man no more, and of another great man about to
disappear, penetrates the soul with a soft and profound melancholy, by
causing us to contemplate the vain and fugitive splendour of talents and
reputation, the misery of human nature, and the folly of attaching
ourselves to so sad and short a life."]
[Footnote 105: D'Alembert well remarks, that the criterion by which to
judge of kings, is the men in whom they place confidence. He enumerates
those most trusted and favoured by Louis XIV. The dukes de Montauzier
and Beauvilliers, governors to his son and grandson; Bossuet and
Fénélon, their preceptors; with Huet and Fleury, men of learning and
rare merit, under them. Added to these selections for one especial
object, we may name Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg, Colbert, and Louvois,
as his generals and ministers; and when we also recollect the
appreciation he displayed for Boileau, Racine, Molière, and others, we
may conclude that this monarch deserved much of the applause bestowed on
him. Had madame de Maintenon been a woman of enlightened and noble mind,
and added to her persuasive manners and the charms of her intellect a
knowledge of the true ends of life, and have induced Louis to seek right
in the study of good, instead of the dicta of churchmen, his latter days
had been as glorious as his first, and it would not have remained for
evermore a stain on the French church, that his persecutions and bigotry
sprung from his confidence in its clergy. We are told, indeed, that she
exerted herself meritoriously on occasion of the choice of Fénélon.
Louis did not perceive the merit of this admirable man, calling him a
mere bel-esprit. Madame de Maintenon advocated his being chosen
preceptor, from his being the most virtuous ecclesiastic at court; a
consideration which persuaded the king.]
[Footnote 106: Voltaire asserts that this idea is a mistake. He assures
us (Siècle de Louis XIV., chap. 32.) that the marquis de Fénélon, the
archbishop's nephew, declared the contrary, and related that the writing
of Telemachus was his uncle's recreation, when exiled at Cambray.
Voltaire considers this statement supported by his notion that no priest
would have made the loves of Calypso and Eucharis the subject of a work
to be placed in a young prince's hands. His assertion, however, is
liable to many objections. Fénélon was exiled in 1697. Telemachus was
put into a printer's hands in Paris in 1698; and was published in
Holland in 1699, the year in which the brief of the pope, condemning the
Maxims of the Saints, was issued. This interval, which did not include,
when the months are numbered, more than a year and a half, was employed
by the archbishop in composing replies to Bossuet's attacks; and we
discover no moment of leisure for Telemachus. Nothing can be more futile
than Voltaire's other objection. The loves of Calypso and Eucharis are,
indeed, touched with the tenderness and warmth that characterised
Fénélon, but are such as he would consider exemplifying the
temptations and corruptions of a court, and suited both to warn his
pupil against them, and to show him the path of escape. Fénélon was in
the habit of composing fables for the instruction of the prince, while a
child, and dialogues for the same purpose, as he advanced in age. There
is every reason to believe that he prepared Telemachus to be put into
his hands at the dawn of manhood. This idea is the great charm of the
work. It excuses its monitorial tone; it explains the nature of the
instruction it conveys. It is a monument of the principles of government
and morals which he deemed adapted to the sovereign of a great kingdom.
As merely a work written to amuse himself, it is pedantic, and, in
parts, almost childish; as a manual for the young and ardent prince, who
was destined to succeed Louis XIV., to consult when entering into life,
it is the best book that was ever written.]
[Footnote 107: Le Tellier, archbishop of Rheims, remarked on this, that
Fénélon did right, thinking as he did; and he did right, with his
opinions. The worldly-mindedness of Le Tellier was so open as to cause
him to say good things himself, and to be the cause of them in others.
It was he who said of our James II., "There is a good man, who lost
three kingdoms for a mass." He said no man could be honest under five
hundred a year. Inquiring of Boileau concerning a man's probity, the
satirist replied, "He wants an hundred a year of being an honest man."]
[Footnote 108: A letter of Fénélon is preserved, addressed to Louis
XIV., and written before he was made archbishop. This letter predicts
all the disasters that afterwards befel France; it speaks of the wrongs
and sufferings of the people, and the misrule of the ministers, with
freedom, vigour, and truth. There can be no doubt that the king never
saw it. He would never have forgiven such interference with his measures
or censures of the people about him. The language of truth would have
been so odious that the speaker of it would never have been archbishop.
The dislike of the king arose from another circumstance. After his
elevation to the see of Cambray, Louis heard his peculiar sentiments
discussed, and began to fear that the lessons of so good and pious a man
would form a prince whose austere virtue and contempt for vain-glory
would be a censure on his own reign--so filled with useless sanguinary
wars--and magnificent pleasures, paid for by the misery of his people.
That he might form a judgment on the subject, he had conversation with
the new prelate upon his political principles. Fénélon, full of his
own ideas, disclosed to the king a portion of that theory afterwards
detailed in Telemachus. The king, after this conversation, said he had
discoursed with the most clever, but most chimerical author in his
kingdom This story is told by Voltaire in his "Age of Louis XIV." It was
related to him by cardinal de Fleury, and M. Malezieux. The latter
taught geometry to the duke of Burgundy, and learnt from his pupil the
judgment of his royal grandfather. The letter to the king, alluded to
above, is to be found in the notes to D'Alembert's "_Éloge de
Fénélon._"]
[Footnote 109: Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VI.]
[Footnote 110: D'Alembert, in his Éloge de Fénélon, pronounces these
works on quietism to be his best. "Let us pardon this active and tender
mind," he says, "for having lavished so much fervour and eloquence on
such a subject. He spoke of the delight of loving; as a celebrated
writer says, 'I know not if Fénélon were a heretic in asserting that
God deserved to be loved for himself, but I know that Fénélon deserves
to be thus loved.'" Bossuet felt his power, and said of him, as Philip
IV. had said of Turenne, "That man made me pass many a wakeful night."
And a lady having asked him if the archbishop of Cambray had the talents
that were attributed to him, Bossuet replied, "Ah, madam, he has
sufficient to make me tremble." Nettled by this talent, Bossuet was
driven to attack his adversary by abuse. "Monseigneur," replied
Fénélon, "why do you use insults for argument? Do you then consider my
arguments insults?" We must in justice record a noble reply of Bossuet
to the king: "What should you have done," said Louis, "if I had not
supported you in your outcry against Fénélon?" "Sire," replied the
bishop, "my cry would have been yet louder."]
[Footnote 111: Poor madame Guyon, thus thrown over by both, suffered
much persecution, and was frequently imprisoned. After her liberation
from the Bastille she lived in obscurity; but Fénélon always regarded
her with affection and respect. She was an enthusiast, full of
imagination and talent, and though in error, yet ever declared herself
an obedient daughter of the catholic church.]
[Footnote 112: His pastoral letter is, at length, as follows:--"Nous
nous devons à vous sans réserve, mes très chers frères, puisque nous
ne sommes plus à nous, mais au troupeau qui nous est confié: c'est
dans cet esprit que nous nous sentons obligés de vous ouvrir ici notre
cœur et de continuer à vous faire part de ce qui nous touche sur le
livre des Maximes des Saints. Enfin notre très saint père le pape a
condamné ce livre avec les vingt-trois propositions qui en ont été
extraites, par un bref daté du 12 Mars. Nous adhérons à ce bref, mes
très chers frères, tant pour le texte du livre que pour les
vingt-trois propositions, simplement, absolument, et sans ombre de
restriction.
"Nous nous consolerons, mes très chers frères, de ce qui nous humilie,
pouvu que le ministère de la parole que nous avons reçu du Seigneur
pour votre sanctification n'en soit point affobli, et que non obstant
l'humiliation du pasteur, le troupeau croisse en grace devant Dieu.
"C'est donc de tout notre cœur que nous vous exhortons à une
soumission sincère et à une docilité sans réserve, de peur qu'on
n'altère insensiblement la simplicité de l'obéissance, dont nous
voulons, moyennant la grace de dieu, vous donner l'exemple jusqu'au
dernier soupir de notre vie.
"A Dieu ne plaise qu'il ne soit jamais parlé de nous, si ce n'est pour
se souvenir qu'un pasteur a cru dévoir être plus docile que la
dernière brebis de son troupeau, et qu'il n'a mis aucune borne à son
obéissance. Donné à Cambrai, ce 9 Avril, 1699."]
[Footnote 113: Historie de la Vie de M. de Fénélon, par le chevalier
Ramsay.]
[Footnote 114: We cannot refrain from quoting Bourdaloue's remarks on
the disputes of these two prelates, which are quoted by Mr. Butler, in
his life of Fénélon. "There is not a luminary in the heavens that does
not sometimes suffer eclipse; and the sun, which is the greatest of
them, suffers the greatest and most remarkable. Two circumstances in
them particularly deserve our consideration; one, that in these
eclipses, the sun suffers no substantial loss of light, and preserves
its regular course; the other, that during the time of its eclipse, the
universe contemplates it with most interest and watches its variation
with most attention. The faults of Fénélon and Bossuet, in their
unfortunate controversy, are entitled to the same benign consideration.
The lustre of their characters attracted universal attention, and made
their errors the more observable, and the more observed. But the eclipse
was temporary, and the golden flood remained unimpaired."]
[Footnote 115: Most of the applications made of the personages are
stupid enough, and we are convinced, that though Fénélon might have
referred to the Dutch, when he wrote of the Phenicians, and even have
shadowed forth an ideal likeness of Louis XIV. in Sesostris, and perhaps
of Louvois in Protesilaus, and of Pomponne in Philocles,--he had no
thought of the king's mistresses, Montespan and Fontanges, nor of madame
de Maintenon, when he wrote of Calypso, Eucharis, and Antiope. In
addition to these allusions, we are told that Pygmalion meant Cromwell;
Baleazer, Charles II.; Narbal, Monk; and Idomeneus, James II. The first
of these is absurd. Still, as we have said, without portraying
individuals, Fénélon very likely referred to certain questions of
policy, and to the actual state of some neighbouring countries, in
sketching the government and people of some of the lands which
Telemachus visited.]