The maxims of this noble author are in the hands of every one. To those
who choose to derive every motive and every action from the solitary
principle of _self-love_, they are inestimable. They form one continued
satire on human nature; but they are not reconcilable to the feelings of
the man of better sympathies, or to him who passes through life with the
firm integrity of virtue. Even at court we find a Sully, a Malesherbes,
and a Clarendon, as well as a Rouchefoucault and a Chesterfield.
The Duke de la Rochefoucault, says Segrais, had not studied; but he was
endowed with a wonderful degree of discernment, and knew the world
perfectly well. This afforded him opportunities of making reflections,
and reducing into maxims those discoveries which he had made in the
heart of man, of which he displayed an admirable knowledge.
It is perhaps worthy of observation, that this celebrated French duke
could never summon resolution, at his election, to address the Academy.
Although chosen a member, he never entered, for such was his timidity,
that he could not face an audience and deliver the usual compliment on
his introduction; he whose courage, whose birth, and whose genius were
alike distinguished. The fact is, as appears by Mad. de Sévigné, that
Rochefoucault lived a close domestic life; there must be at least as
much _theoretical_ as _practical_ knowledge in the opinions of such a
retired philosopher.
Chesterfield, our English Rochefoucault, we are also informed, possessed
an admirable knowledge of the heart of man; and he, too, has drawn a
similar picture of human nature. These are two _noble authors_ whose
chief studies seem to have been made in _courts_. May it not be
possible, allowing these authors not to have written a sentence of
apocrypha, that the fault lies not so much in _human nature_ as in the
satellites of Power breathing their corrupt atmosphere?