may be doubted whether any poor woman in Paris worked harder. She
carried with her when she went hence what, through all her conscientious
activity, outward and inward, she had in her own being become; and she
found besides that ample further reward, unknown, which she had thus
grown capable of receiving.
Henri Frederic AMIEL, who lived an almost silent life of sixty
years--not quite silent, for he piped a volume or two of ineffectual
verse--became a bruit of marvel and of praise soon after his death,
through the publication from his "Journal Intime" ["Private Journal"] of
a select number of his "Thoughts" found recorded there. How permanent a
glow may prove to be the brightness of fame for Amiel thus suddenly
outbursting, time only will decide. Already two very opposite opinions
find expression concerning his merit--one applausive to the point almost
of veneration, the other very freely irreverent.
Both these two contradictory opinions admit of being apparently
justified from the text of his "Journal." Take the following for an
example on one side:
Is not mind simply that which enables us to merge finite reality in
the infinite possibility around it? Or, to put it differently, is not
mind the universal virtuality, the universe latent? If so, its zero
would be the germ of the infinite, which is expressed mathematically
by the double zero (00).
The foregoing sentence is unintelligible enough to make, probably, the
impression of pretty pure jargon on most minds. But in truth the amount
of such writing in Amiel's "Journal" is proportionally very small.
Another line of entries in the "Journal" tending to reflect
disparagement upon the writer consists of reiterated confessions on
Amiel's part of morbid weakness of will, with habits of helpless morbid
introspection, which, disappointing the hopes of his friends,
practically shut him up his whole life long in a well-nigh total
sterility of genius. On this count of the indictment against Amiel it is
quite impossible to defend him. He was inexcusably non-productive. His
"Journal" itself shows that its author should have done more than that.
This book, admirably translated into English by Mrs. Humphrey Ward,
exhibits Amiel in the character of a man who always thought and felt and
spoke and wrote on the side of what was pure and good and noble. He was
a profoundly religious soul. As the years went on with him, and he
became more and more the passive prey of his own eternally active
thought, there appear to be registered some decline from the simplicity,
and some corruption from the wholesomeness, of his earlier religious
experience. In fact, he at last seems to let go historical Christianity
altogether, still clinging, however, pathetically to God, as Father, all
the time that he regards God's fatherly providence over the world as
only a subjective beautiful illusion of faith existing in his own
imaginative mind!
Amiel judges the present age and the current tendency of things:
The age of great men is going.... By continual leveling and division
of labor society will become everything and man nothing.... A plateau
with fewer and fewer undulations, without contrasts and without
oppositions--such will be the aspect of human society. The
statistician will register a growing progress, and the moralist a
gradual decline: on the one hand, a progress of things; on the other,
a decline of souls. The useful will take the place of the beautiful,
industry of art, political economy of religion, and arithmetic of
poetry.
He writes to himself a sort of "spiritual letter" that might almost have
been Fenelon's (the date is 1852, he was therefore now thirty-one years
old):
We receive everything, both life and happiness; but the _manner_ in
which we receive, this is what is still ours. Let us, then, receive
trustfully without shame or anxiety. Let us humbly accept from God
even our own nature, and treat it charitably, firmly, intelligently.
Not that we are called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us,
but let us accept ourselves in spite of the evil and the disease.
The first following "thought" is a deep intuition:
There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of
self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably
at its purest in the last.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do
what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Chateaubriand posed all his life as the wearied Colossus, smiling
pitifully upon a pigmy world, and contemptuously affecting to desire
nothing from it, though at the same time wishing it to be believed
that he could if he pleased possess himself of every thing by mere
force of genius.
We are never more discontented with others than when we are
discontented with ourselves.
To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to renounce a good
once and for all costs less than to renew the sacrifice day by day and
in detail.
From entries fourteen years apart in date, we bring together, abridging
them, two expressions of Amiel about Victor Hugo:
His ideal is the extraordinary, the gigantic, the overwhelming, the
incommensurable. His most characteristic words are immense, colossal,
enormous, huge, monstrous. He finds a way of making even child-nature
extravagant and bizarre. The only thing which seems impossible to him
is to be natural.
He does not see that pride is a limitation of the mind, and that a
pride without limitations is a littleness of soul. If he could but
learn to compare himself with other men, and France with other
nations, he would see things more truly, and would not fall into these
mad exaggerations, these extravagant judgments. But proportion and
fairness will never be among the strings at his command. He is vowed
to the Titanic; his gold is always mixed with lead, his insight with
childishness, his reason with madness. He cannot be simple; the only
light he has to give blinds you like that of a fire. He astonishes a
reader and provokes him, he moves him and annoys him. There is always
some falsity of note in him, which accounts for the _malaise_ he so
constantly excites in me. The great poet in him cannot shake off the
charlatan. A few shafts of Voltairean irony would have shriveled the
inflation of his genius and made it stronger by making it saner. It is
a public misfortune that the most powerful poet of a nation should not
have better understood his _role_, and that, unlike those Hebrew
prophets who scourged because they loved, he should devote himself
proudly and systematically to the flattery of his countrymen. France
is the world; Paris is France; Hugo is Paris; peoples, bow down!
Amiel had a just perception of the immense healing virtue lodged in
happiness:
What doctor possesses such curative resources as those latent in a
spark of happiness or a single ray of hope?
A vent of frank French distaste for the German type of book. Amiel had
been reading the great nineteenth-century philosopher Lotze:
The noise of a mill-wheel sends one to sleep, and these pages without
paragraphs, these interminable chapters, and this incessant
dialectical clatter, affect me as though I were listening to a
word-mill. I end by yawning like any simple non-philosophical mortal
in the face of all this heaviness and pedantry. Erudition and even
thought are not everything. An occasional touch of _esprit_, a little
sharpness of phrase, a little vivacity, imagination, and grace, would
spoil neither.
He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being
magnanimous.
The following shows a good heart as well as a wise head:
The errand-woman has just brought me my letters. Poor little woman,
what a life! She spends her nights in going backwards and forwards
from her invalid husband to her sister, who is scarcely less helpless,
and her days are passed in labor. Resigned and indefatigable, she goes
on without complaining, till she drops.
Lives such as hers prove something.... The kingdom of God belongs not
to the most enlightened but to the best; and the best man is the most
unselfish man. Humble, constant, voluntary self-sacrifice--this is
what constitutes the true dignity of man.... Society rests upon
conscience and not upon science. Civilization is, first and foremost,
a moral thing.
He first passes judgment on Goethe, and then afterward checks himself:
He [Goethe] has so little soul. His way of understanding love,
religion, duty, and patriotism has something mean and repulsive in it.
There is no ardor, no generosity, in him. A secret barrenness, an
ill-concealed egotism, makes itself felt through all the wealth and
flexibility of his talent.
One must never be too hasty in judging these complex natures.
Completely lacking as he is in the sense of obligation and of sin,
Goethe nevertheless finds his way to seriousness through dignity.
Greek sculpture has been his school of virtue.
Under date 1874, Amiel asks a question and answers it. He had before
said, "My creed has melted away":
_Is_ there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of
our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for
educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual
knowledge of the laws of nature? Scarcely. But what this faith makes
objective we may hold as subjective truth.... What he [the moral
being] cannot change he calls the will of God, and to will what God
wills brings him peace.
A melancholy fall from his earlier state! A whole sky between such
conscious false motions toward self-deceiving and the victory which
overcomes the world, even our faith. Amiel had now definitely lost his
health.
Toward the end, occurs this striking and illuminating word about one of
the worst of human passions:
Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely
love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object
loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its
own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most
passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting,
and vain ego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The
contrast is perfect.
Doubting Amiel still thinks that Christ is better than Buddha:
Sorrow is the most tremendous of all realities in the sensible world,
but the transfiguration of sorrow, after the manner of Christ, is a
more beautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow,
after the method of Cakyamouni [Buddha].
Amiel was a naturally noble spirit, not equal to making for himself the
career that he needed. But the right career, made for him, would have
left to history and to literature a very different man from the writer
of Amiel's "Journal."
The very latest conspicuous French candidate for renown as a writer of
_pensees_ is Joseph ROUX, a rural Roman Catholic priest, and a man still
living. Out of a volume of his "Thoughts" lately translated and
published in America under the title of "Meditations of a Parish
Priest," we show the following specimen of literary criticism peculiarly
pertinent to the subject of the present chapter:
Pascal is somber, La Rochefoucauld bitter, La Bruyere malicious,
Vauvenargues melancholy, Chamfort acrimonious, Joubert benevolent,
Swetchine gentle.
Pascal seeks, La Rochefoucauld suspects, La Bruyere spies,
Vauvenargues sympathizes, Chamfort condemns, Joubert excuses,
Swetchine mourns.
Pascal is profound, La Rochefoucauld penetrating, La Bruyere
sagacious, Vauvenargues delicate, Chamfort paradoxical, Joubert
ingenious, Swetchine contemplative.
_Pensee_-writing has gained such headway in France, there is so much
literary history behind it there, and it is in itself so fascinating a
form of literary activity, that, in that country at least, the fashion
will probably never pass away.
XXV.
EPILOGUE.
How much author's anguish of self-tasking and of self-denial, in
exploration, study, selection, rejection, condensation, retrenchment, to
say nothing of the anxiety to be clear in expression, to be true, to be
proportionate, to be just, finally, too, to be entertaining as well as
instructive--this little book has cost the producer of it, no one is
likely ever to guess that has not tried a similar task with similar
application of conscience himself.
For instance, to name Ronsard, the brilliant, the once sovereign
Ronsard--lately, after so long occultation of his orb, come, through the
romanticists of to-day, or shall we write "of yesterday"? almost to
brightness again--to name this poet, without at least giving in specimen
the following celebrated sonnet from his hand, which, for the sake of
making our present point the clearer, we may now show in a neat version
by Mr. Andrew Lang (but why should Mr. Lang, in his fourth line, change
Ronsard's "fair" to "young"?):
When you are very old, at evening
You'll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, "Ah well, ah well-a-day!
When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing."
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,
Albeit with her weary task foredone,
But wakens at my name, and calls you one
Blest, to be held in long remembering.
I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid
On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,
While you beside the fire, a grandame gray,
My love, your pride, remember and regret;
Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,
And gather roses while 'tis called to-day:
--then, for another instance, to pass over Boileau and not bring forward
from him even so much as the following characteristic epigram, wherein
this wit and satirist pays his sarcastic respects to that same poet
Cotin whom (pp. 81 ff.) we showed Moliere mocking under the name of
"Trissotin" (here we must do our own translating):
In vain, with thousandfold abuse,
My foes, through all their works diffuse,
Have thought to make me shocking to mankind;
Cotin, to bring my style to shame,
Has played a much more easy game,
He has his verses to my pen assigned--
to achieve, we say, these abstinences, and abstinences such as these,
was a problem hard indeed to solve.
The result of all is before the reader; and, good or bad, it is, we are
bound to confess, the very best that, within the given limits, we could
do. Such students of our subject as we may fortunately have succeeded in
making hungry for still more knowledge than we ourselves supply, we can
conscientiously send, for further partial satisfaction of their desire,
to that series of books, already once named by us, which has lately been
published at Chicago, under the title, "The Great French Writers."
Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co. have done a true service to the cause of
letters in general, and in particular to the cause of what may be called
international letters, in reproducing this series of books. They are
good books, they are well translated, and they appear in handsome form.
Madame de Sevigne, Montesquieu, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and three names
that, together with all of their several kinds, economists,
philosophers, historians, we here have been obliged to omit, Turgot,
Victor Cousin, Thiers, are in the list of authors treated in the volumes
thus far issued.
An interesting doubt may, in retrospect of all, be submitted, without
author's solution supplied, to entertain the speculation of the wisely
considerate reader. Let the earlier still living French literature, that
part of the whole body, we mean, ending, say, with the date of
Montesquieu, which, in a rough approximate way, may be described as
dominated by the spirit of classicism--let this be compared with the
later French literature, that section in which the leaven of romanticism
has strongly worked, and do you find existing an important fundamental
difference in intimate quality between the one and the other? Is the
later literature of a certain softer fiber, a more yielding consistence,
than characterizes the earlier? Does the earlier present a harder, more
quartz-like structure, a substance better fitted to resist yet for ages
to come the slow but tireless tooth of time?
INDEX.
The merest approximation only can be attempted in hinting here the
pronunciation of French names. In general, the French distribute the
accent pretty evenly among all the syllables of their words. We mark an
accent on the final syllable chiefly in order to correct a natural
English tendency to slight that syllable in pronunciation. In a few
cases we let a well-established English pronunciation stand. N notes a
peculiar nasal sound, ue, a peculiar vowel sound, having no equivalent in
English.
Ab'e-lard, Pierre (1079-1142), 13.
Academy, French, 16, 62, 119, 238, 264.
AEs'chy-lus, 77, 118, 127, 128.
AEsop, 69.
Alembert. _See_ D'Alembert.
Al-ex-an'der (the Great), 12, 103.
AM'I-EL, Henri Frederic, 313-318.
Am-y-ot' (am-e-o'), Jacques (1513-1593), 14.
An-ac're-on, 256.
Anderson, Melville B., 281.
An'ge-lo, Michael, 120, 282.
Ariosto, 208.
Ar-is-toph'a-nes, 32.
Ar-nauld' (ar-no'), Antoine (1612-1694), 94.
Arnold, Matthew, 248, 276, 291, 298, 299.
Arthur (King), 12.
Attwell, Henry, 309.
Au'-gus-tine, St., Latin Christian Father, 67.
Au-gus'tus (the emperor), 103.
Bacon, Francis, 43, 53.
Baker, Jehu, 185.
BAL'ZAC, Honore de (1799-1850), 174, 275, 293-298, 303.
Bal'zac, Jean Louis Guez de (1594-1654), 15, 16.
Beau-mar-chais' (bo-mar-sh'a), Pierre Augustin Caron de (1732-1799),
239.
BE-RAN-GER (ba-roN-zha'), Pierre Jean de (1780-1857), 13, 256-263.
Ber-si-er' (ber-see-a'), Eugene, 157
Bismarck, 244.
Boi-leau'-Des-pre-aux'(bwae-lo-da-pra-o'), Nicolas (1636-1711), 14, 17,
18, 67, 68, 127, 128, 130, 285, 311, 319.
Bolton, A. S., 57.
BOS-SU-ET' (bo-sue-a'), Jacques Benigne (1627-1704), 16, 17, 62, 63,
100, 127, 129, 137-142, 153, 154, 157, 158, 161, 162, 184, 286-293,
311.
BOUR-DA-LOUE', Louis (1632-1704), 10, 17, 63, 111, 115, 137, 140,
142-148, 150, 151, 291, 292.
Bryant, William Cullen, 69, 70.
Bryce, James, 192.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 189.
Buffon (bue-foN), Georges Louis Leclerc de (1707-1788), 238, 309.
Bur'gun-dy, Duke of (1682-1712), 133, 136, 159, 160, 161, 164, 165.
Burke, Edmund, 43, 61, 192.
Burns, Robert, 256.
Bussy (bues-se'), Count, 106.
By'ron, Lord, 43, 307.
Caesar, Julius, 48, 103.
Calas (cae-lae'), Jean, 211.
Calvin, John (1509-1564), 13.
Carlyle, Thomas, 209, 212.
Catherine (Empress of Russia), 237.
Cham-fort' (shaeN-for'), Sebastien Nicolas (1741-1794), 69, 261, 318.
Char-le-magne (shar-le-man), 12.
Charles I. (of England), 129, 139.
Charles IX. (of France), 53.
CHA-TEAU-BRI-AND'(shae-to-bre-aeN') Francois Auguste de (1768-1848), 10,
18, 159, 175, 226, 229, 248-255, 276, 311, 315.
Cicero, 63, 310.
"Classicism," 15, 18, 275, 276.
Claude (klod), Jean (1619-1687), 137.
Coleridge, S. T., 13, 33, 38, 39.
Comines (ko-meen'), Philippe de (1445-1509), 13, 26, 29.
Conde (koN-dae'), Prince of, "The Great Conde" (1621-1686), 112.
Condillac (koN-de-yaek), Etienne Bonnot de (1715-1780), 238.
Condorcet (koN-dor-sa'), Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de
(1743-1794), 100, 101.
Constant (koN-sto'N), Benjamin (1767-1830), 243.
Coquerel (kok-rel'), Athanase Laurent Charles (1795-1868), 157.
CORNEILLE (kor-nal'), Pierre (1606-1684), 10, 16, 17, 19, 64, 65,
117-127, 129, 137, 138, 200, 285, 291, 292.
Cotin (ko-taN') Abbe (17th century), 81, 319.
Cotton, Charles (1630-1687), 40, 43, 45.
Cousin (koo-zaN'), Victor (1792-1867), 101, 290, 291, 320.
Cowper, William, 173.
D'Alembert (dae-laeN-ber'), Jean le Rond (1717-1783), 17, 219, 238.
Dante, Alighieri, 76, 77, 91, 281.
Demosthenes, 63.
Descartes (da-kaert'), Rene (1596-1650), 16, 86, 92.
D'Holbach (dol-bak'), properly, Holbach, Paul Henri Thyry,
(1723-1789), 238.
Dickens, Charles, 33, 116, 295, 296.
DIDEROT (de-dro), Denis (1713-1784), 17, 191, 209, 236, 237, 238, 285.
Dryden, John, 43, 127.
Duclos (due-klo'), Charles Pineau (1704-1772), 238.
"_Ecrasez l'Infame_," 210.
Edward (the Black Prince), 24, 26.
Edwards, President Jonathan, 145.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 43, 45, 52.
Encyclopaedists, 17, 167, 209, 235-239, 249.
Epictetus, 54.
Erasmus, 39, 99.
Euripides, 64, 118, 127, 129.
_Fabliaux_ (fab'le-o'), 12.
Faugere (fo-zher'), Armand Prosper (1810), 101.
Felix, Pere, 157.
Fenelon (fan-loN'), Francois de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715), 17,
134, 137, 153, 158-173, 310, 315.
Flechier (flache-a'), Esprit (1632-1710), 137.
Foix (fwae), Count of, 27, 28.
FROISSART (frwae-sar'), Jean (1337-1410?), 13, 22-29.
Gaillard (ga-yar'), Gabriel Henri (1726-1806), 119.
Gargant'ua, 29, 34-37.
Gibbon, Edward, 118, 241.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 184, 229, 244, 245, 281, 305, 317.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 67, 184, 269.
Grignan (green-yaeN'), Madame de, 108.
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723-1807), 238.
Grimm, Herman, 244.
Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume (1787-1874), 199, 320.
Guyon (ge-yoN') Madame (1648-1717), 161, 172, 173.
Hallam, Henry, 21, 33.
Havet (ae-va') (editor of Pascal's works), 101.
Hawkesworth, Doctor, 169.
Hazlitt, William Carew, 43.
Helvetius (el-va-se-uess'), Claude Adrien (1715-1771), 238.
Henriette, Princess, 129, 139.
Henry of Navarre (Henri IV. of France), 53, 202.
Herodotus, 13, 22, 310.
Holbach. See D'Holbach.
Homer, 14, 31, 32, 77, 206, 208, 310.
Hooker ("The Judicious"), 158.
Horace, 32, 206, 256, 310.
HUGO (ue-go'), VICTOR Marie (1802-1885), 18, 19, 77, 256, 257, 274,
275-285, 315, 316.
Hume, David, 43, 226.
Hutson, Charles W., 21.
Hyacinthe (e'ae'saN), Pere (1827-), 157.
Job, 77, 161, 281.
Johnes, Thomas, 22.
Joinville (zhwaN-veel'), Jean de (1224?-1319?), 13.
JOUBERT (zhoo'bar), Joseph (1754-1824), 65, 307-311.
Julian (The Apostate), 135.
Juvenal, 62.
La Boetie (lae-bo-a-te'), 49, 50.
Laboulaye (la'boo-la'), Edouard Rene Lefebvre, 196.
LA BRUYERE (lae-brue-e-yer'), Jean (1646?-1696), 17, 62-64, 118, 138,
311, 318.
Lacordaire (la-kor-der'), Jean Baptiste Henri (1802-1861), 157.
LA FONTAINE (lae-foN-tan') Jean de (1621-1695), 17, 66-75.
La Harpe (lae-arp), Jean Francois de, 290.
LAMARTINE (lae-mar-ten'), Alphonse Marie Louis de (1790-1869), 18, 159,
175, 229, 263-274, 287, 289, 290, 291.
Lang, Andrew, 280, 319.
Langue d'oc, 11.
Langue d'oil, 11.
Lanier, Sidney, 27.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (lae-rosh-foo-ko'), Francois, Duc de (1613-1680), 17,
43, 55-62, 103, 106, 114.
Longfellow, Henry W., 44.
Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, 316.
Louis IX. (1215-1270) (St. Louis), 12, 13.
Louis XI. (1423-1483), 13.
Louis XIII. (1601-1643), 15, 77, 291.
Louis XIV. (1638-1715) (Quatorze), 15, 17, 106, 130, 133, 136, 137,
138, 142, 143, 148, 149, 157, 159, 166, 167, 170, 291.
Louis XV. (1710-1774), 149, 212.
Louis XVIII. (1755-1824), 249.
Louis Napoleon (1808-1873), 193, 259, 261, 266, 277.
Louis Philippe (1773-1850), 192, 199, 249, 257, 264.
Lucan, 117, 118, 201.
Lucretius, 77, 127.
Luther, Martin, 13, 37.
Machiavelli, 192.
Maintenon (maeN-teh-noN'), Madame de (1635-1719), 130, 136, 142, 161,
162.
Maistre (metr), Joseph Marie de (1753-1821), 255.
Malherbe (mael-erb'), Francois (1555-1628), 15, 18.
Martin (mar taeN'), Henri (1810- ), 138.
MASSILLON (maes-se-yoN'), Jean Baptiste (1663-1742), 10, 17, 115, 137,
142, 147, 148-153, 157, 311.
Matthews, William, 287.
Maury, the Abbe, 290.
McCarthy, Justin, 300.
M'Crie, Thomas, 94.
Menander, 75.
Milton, John, 75, 137, 158, 207, 208.
MOLIERE (mo lei-er') (real name, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673)
17, 19, 67, 75-91, 100, 119, 126, 127, 176, 201, 311, 319.
Moltke, Count von, 194, 244.
Monod (mo'no'), Adolphe, 157.
Monod, Frederic, 157.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 116.
MONTAIGNE (mon-taen'), Michel Eyquem de (1533-1592), 10, 13, 14, 40-54,
56, 61, 103, 190, 214.
Montespan (moN-tess-paN'), Madame de (1641-1707), 109.
MONTESQUIEU (moN-tes-ke-uh'), Charles de Secondat de (1689-1755,), 17,
167, 184-191, 192, 199, 311, 320.
Morley, John, 118, 203, 209, 237.
Motteux, Peter Anthony (1660-1718), 30.
MUSSET (mue-sa'), (1810-1857), Alfred de, 275, 303-307.
Musset, Paul de, 305.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 18, 153, 240, 241, 242, 244, 248, 249, 259, 282.
Nettleton, W. A., 91.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 92.
Nicole (ne-kol'), Pierre (1625-1695), 10, 114, 128.
"Obscurantism" (disposition in the sphere of the intellect to love
darkness rather than light), 210.
Pan-tag'ru-el, 29, 35, 37, 38.
Panurge (pae-nuerzh'), 37, 38.