T is a common practice for translators to state to the public that the author they are going to introduce, and whom they sometimes traduce, is one of the greatest men of the age, and that already for a long time a general desire has been felt to make the acquaintance of such a master-mind. It would be an insult to French scholars to speak thus of La Bruyère, for the merits of his “Characters” are known; but, for the benefit of those who are not so well acquainted with our author, I may state that he is neither so terse, epigrammatic, sublime, nor profound as either Pascal or La Rochefoucauld are, but that he is infinitely more readable, as he is always trying to please his readers, and now and then sacrifices even a certain depth of thought to attain his object.
La Bruyère takes good care to tell us that he has not imitated any one; Pascal “makes metaphysics subservient to religion, explains the nature of the soul, its passions and vices; treats of the great and serious motives which lead to virtue, and endeavours to make a man a Christian;” La Rochefoucauldʼs “mind, instructed by his knowledge of society, and with a delicacy equal to his penetration, observed that self-love in man was the cause of all his errors, and attacked it without intermission, wherever it was found; and this one thought, multiplied as it were in a thousand different ways by a choice of words and a variety of expression, has always the charm of novelty.”1 Our author, on the contrary, openly declares: “I did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator.”2
What is the plan and idea of the book of “Characters?” Let La Bruyère himself answer this: “Of the sixteen chapters which compose it, there are fifteen wholly employed in detecting the fallacy and ridicule to be found in the objects of human passions and inclinations, and in demolishing such obstacles as at first weaken, and afterwards extinguish, any knowledge of God in mankind; therefore, these chapters are merely preparatory to the sixteenth and last, wherein atheism is attacked, and perhaps routed, wherein the proofs of a God, such at least as weak man is capable of receiving, are produced; wherein the providence of God is defended against the insults and complaints of freethinkers.”3
La Bruyère is not a speculative moralist, but an observer of the manners of men, or, as he likes to call himself a philosopher, and above all a Christian philosopher, such as a friend of Bossuet ought to be. He was the first to make morality attractive, and to paint characters in a literary and delicate manner; he does not dogmatise, and above all shows neither personal hatred nor venom; in other words, to use his own expressions, he “gives back to the public what it lent”4 him.
Underneath the literary man people often look for the man, with all his passion, his likes and dislikes; hence the many “Keys” of the “Characters,” published during the authorʼs lifetime and after his death, in which all kinds of allusions were attempted, and all sorts of hypothetical explanations ventured on.
Of the concocters of the “Keys” La Bruyère speaks as follows:
“They make it their business, if possible, to discover to which of their friends or enemies these portraits can apply; they neglect everything that seems like a sound remark or a serious reflection, though almost the whole book consists of them; they dwell upon nothing but the portraits or characters, and after having explained them in their own way, and after they imagine they have found out the originals, they publish to the world long lists, or, as they call them, ‘Keys,’ but which are indeed ‘false keys,’ and as useless to them as they are injurious to the persons whose names are deciphered, and to the writer who is the cause of it, though an involuntary one.”5
And yet some of these “Keys” have been of great use to modern commentators, and served to elucidate several traits in the “Characters” which otherwise would not have been discovered.
It would be ridiculous to deny that La Bruyère never had any particular personage in view in delineating a certain character, but, as he himself says: “If I might be allowed to be a little vain, I should be apt to believe that my “Characters” have pretty well portrayed men in general, since they resemble so many in particular; and since every one thinks he finds there his neighbour or his countryman. I did indeed paint after the life, but did not always mean to paint, in my book of “Characters,” one individual or another. I did not hire myself out to the public to draw only such portraits as should be true and like the originals, for fear that sometimes they would be thought incredible, and appear feigned or imaginary ones. Becoming yet more difficult I went farther, and took one lineament from one person and one from another, and from these several lineaments, which might be found in one and the same person, I drew some likely portraits, studying not so much to please the reader by describing the characters of certain people, or, as the malcontents would say, by satirising them, as to lay before him what faults he ought to avoid, and what examples to follow.”6
Our author, therefore, did not wish to depict individuals, but men in general; for man is the same in all seasons and at all times, and is swayed by the same motives and passions, though they exercise a different influence in various ages, produce different results amongst many races, and do not even act in precisely the same manner in divers centuries, climates, and under heterogeneous circumstances. He had no intention of presenting a series of historical events,7 but of depicting Frenchmen at the end of the seventeenth century as they lived, breathed, and moved; not animated by violent likes and dislikes, as those of the Ligue or the Fronde were, nor filled by the importance of their own overweening individualities. When we read him, we behold in our mindʼs eye the subdued subjects of Louis XIV., slavishly obeying the “Roi Soleil,” admitting the King can do no wrong, becoming devout to please His Majesty and Madame de Maintenon, inaugurating the reign of courtly hypocrisy, embracing the principle of one religion in one state, and seeing the royal sun gradually decline, and the star of William III. in its ascendancy.
The notes of the present edition are necessary, I imagine, to assist in illustrating the life of a past age, for “no usages or customs are perennial, but they vary with the times.... Nothing can be more opposed to our manners than all these things; but the distance of time makes us relish them.” The “Characters” themselves, as well as the notes, represent a “history of ... times,” when the usual custom was “the selling of offices; that is to say, the power of protecting innocence, punishing guilt, and doing justice to the world, bought with ready money like a farm.” They will also make my readers acquainted with “a great city,” which at the end of the seventeenth century was “without any public places, baths, fountains, amphitheatres, galleries, porticoes, or public walks, and this the capital of a powerful kingdom; they will be told of persons whose whole life was spent in going from one house to another; of decent women who kept neither shops nor inns, yet had their houses open for those who would pay for their admission,8 and where they could choose between dice, cards, and other games, where feasting was going on, and which were very convenient for all kinds of intercourse. They will be informed that people crowded the street only to be thought in a hurry; that there was no conversation nor cordiality, but that they were confused, and, as it were, alarmed by the rattle of coaches which they had to avoid, and which drove through the streets as if for a prize at some race. People will learn, without being greatly astonished, that in times of public peace and tranquillity, the inhabitants went to church and visited ladies and their friends, whilst wearing offensive weapons; and that there was hardly any one who did not have dangling at his side wherewith to kill another person with one thrust.”9
La Bruyère, though a shrewd observer, has the daring of an innovator, but always remains very guarded in his language. When now and then his feelings get the better of him, he expresses his opinions like a man, and attacks the vices of his age with a boldness which none of his contemporaries has surpassed. Nearly the whole of his chapter “Of the Gifts of Fortune” is an attack on the financiers; in the chapter “Of the Great,” he certainly does not flatter the courtiers, whilst he himself never pretends to be anything else but “a plebeian,”10 and almost always sides with his own class. If he flatters the king, it is because he thinks him necessary to the state, and, perhaps, also because he wishes to have a defender against the many enemies his book had raised up. He was, moreover, very cautious, and in the endless alterations he made in the various editions of the “Characters,”11 published during his lifetime, he but seldom envenomed the barb he had shot, or boasted of it if he did so.12 Though he touched on all the passions of men, he did not set one class against another, a task which was left to the so-called philosophical authors of the eighteenth century.
The style of La Bruyère has been praised by competent judges for its conciseness and picturesqueness; he always employs the right word in the right place, is correct in his expressions, varied in his thoughts, highly imaginative, and, therefore, maybe called a perfect literary artist.13 A few words and expressions, which I have noticed, have become antiquated, or have changed their meaning, but the “Characters” will still, I think, be read for many ages, be found very entertaining, and, what cannot be said of the works of every classical French author, will be better liked the more they are read. If sometimes one of the characters is portrayed with too many details, it is because it is taken not from one man, but composed of a series of shrewd and clever observations made on different personages; and hence our author calls them “Characters,” and not “portraits.”
Since La Bruyèreʼs death many editions of the “Characters” have appeared; I have collated and compared the best of them, amongst which those edited by Mons. G. Servois and Mons. A. Chassang have laid me under great obligations. I am indebted to these two editions for many of the notes, and for a few to those of MM. Destailleur and Hémardinquer.
Several imitations of the “Characters” have also been published, amongst others a Petit la Bruyère, ou Caractères et mœurs des enfants de ce siècle, and a Le la Bruyère des domestiques, précédé de considérations sur Pétat de domesticité en général, both by that voluminous author, Madame de Genlis, a Le la Bruyère des jeunes gens, and a similar work for jeunes demoiselles, which attract the attention by the oddity of their titles.
La Bruyèreʼs “Characters” have also been translated several times into English.
1. A translation seems to have been published in London as early as 1698.14
2. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from M. Bruyèreʼs French version by Eustace Budgell, Esq., London, 1699; and another edition of the same work published in 1702.15
3. The “Characters of Theophrastus,” together with the Characters of the Age, by La Bruyère, with a prefatory discourse and key: London, 1700.16
4. The “Characters, or the Manners of the Age,” by Monsieur de la Bruyère of the French Academy, made English by several hands, with the “Characters of Theophrastus,” translated from the Greek, and a prefatory discourse to them, by Monsieur de la Bruyère, the third edition, corrected throughout, and enlarged, with the Key inserted in the margin: London, Leach, 1702.
5. The Works of Monsieur de la Bruyère, containing: I. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus; II. The Characters, or the Manners of the Present Age; III. M. Bruyèreʼs Speech upon his Admission into the French Academy; IV. An Account of the Life and Writings of M. Bruyère, by Monsieur Coste, with an original Chapter of the Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe, Esq. This translation seems to have been very successful, for the sixth edition, the only one I have seen, was published in two volumes in 1713: London, E. Curll.
6. The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, by H. Gaily: London, 1725.
7. The Works of M. de la Bruyère, in two volumes, to which is added the Characters of Theophrastus, also The Manner of Living with Great Men, written after the manner of Bruyère, by N. Rowe, Esq.: London, J. Bell, 1776.
I have consulted the edition mentioned in No. 2, and printed in 1702, in which the attacks of La Bruyère on William III. in the Chapter “Of Opinions,” §§ 118 and 119, are omitted; the sixth edition of the “Characters,” given in No. 5, and published in 1713; and the edition referred to in No. 7.
In the “Advertisement concerning the new edition” of 1713, printed with the “Characters,” it is stated, “We procured the last English edition to be compared verbatim with the last Paris edition (which is the ninth), and ... all the Supplemental Reflections ... we got translated, and added to this present edition; and that it might be as complete as possible, we have not scrupled to translate even those parts which at first sight may perhaps disoblige some who have a just veneration for the memory of our Glorious Deliverer, the late King William.” La Bruyèreʼs speech upon his admission into the French Academy was in this edition “made English by M. Ozell.”
In the edition of 1776, the “parts” reflecting on William III. are again omitted. It greatly differs from the one of 1713, and is dedicated to the Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Lincoln, Auditor of the Exchequer, Knight of the most noble order of the Garter, &c. &c.
Many faults may be found in the old translations, but I have endeavoured to amend them; and I never scrupled to adopt any expressions, turn of thought, or even page of any or every translation of my predecessors, whenever I found I could not improve upon them.
Translations of the “Characters” have appeared in several other languages; four of these were published in German, the last one printed in 1872, whilst already the final chapter of La Bruyèreʼs book “Of Freethinkers” had come out in a German dress in 1739; moreover, La Bruyèreʼs book has been translated twice into Italian, once into Spanish, and once into Russian.
The imitations of the “Characters” into English are—
1. “The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age, being the modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City,” by Boyer: London, 1692 and 1702.
2. The Chapter “Of the Manner of Living with Great Men,” written after the method of M. Bruyère, by N. Rowe, mentioned already.
3. Imitations of the Characters of Theophrastus: London, 1774.
I imagine that the author of the “English Theophrastus” was M. Abel Boyer, the compiler of the well-known dictionary, born at Castres in 1664, who fled to England at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and died at Chelsea in 1729.
The direct influence of La Bruyèreʼs writings on English literature is not easily to be traced. Swift may, possibly, have studied him, though he never mentions him,17 and so may, perhaps, Anthony Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury,18 “who spoke French so fluently, and with so perfect an accent, that in France he was often mistaken for a native.”19 I venture to think that Addison and Steele were also acquainted with our Frenchman;20 but the English author who in expression, turn of thought, art of delineating character, and in his mixture of seriousness and familiarity, is most like him, is a doctor of divinity, R. South, Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ Church, and yet he wrote before La Bruyère, and therefore cannot have imitated him.21
I am not aware La Bruyère knew English, though his successor at the French Academy states that he spoke several foreign languages;22 he was well acquainted with German, Italian, and I think also Spanish; nor do I know if any of Dr. Southʼs sermons were published separately before La Bruyère wrote, and if he, therefore, could have seen them. I should imagine he never read any of them.
Six portraits, which adorn these volumes, have been specially etched for this edition by M. B. Damman, whilst the portrait of La Bruyère, and the vignettes at the head of each chapter, have been drawn and etched by M. V. Foulquier.
In the biographical memoir of La Bruyère, I have only stated what is known of him, which is very little.
HENRI VAN LAUN.
OF
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE.
OR a long time it has generally been taken for granted that our author first saw the light at Dourdan, a small town in the department of Seine-et-Oise, but it has only lately been discovered that he was born in Paris in the month of August 1645. His father, Louis de la Bruyère, was contrôleur des rentes de la ville, a sort of town-tax collector, whilst his mother, Elizabeth Hamonin, belonged to a respectable family of Parisian burgesses. His grandfather and great-grandfather on the fatherʼs side, declared partisans of the Ligue, were both exiled from France when Henri IV. came to the throne. Perhaps, therefore, the feelings our author entertained for the people may be explained by atavism. A younger brother of his father and our authorʼs godfather, a very wealthy man, and most likely a money-lender, as well as interested in the farming of certain taxes, seems to have produced no favourable impression on his god-son, for the latter always attacks the farmers of the revenue.
Jean de la Bruyère was educated at the Oratorians in Paris, and two years before his father died, in the month of June 1664, took his degree of licentiate at law at the University of Orléans. He became an advocate, but in 1673, when twenty-eight years old, he forsook the bar, and bought for about 24,000 livres the post of trésorier des finances in the Caen district, in Normandy. There were fifteen trésoriers at Caen, of whom only some were obliged to reside there, but all became ennobled by virtue of their office, and received as non-residents a yearly salary of about 2500 livres. La Bruyère had bought this treasurership of a certain Joseph Metezeau, said to have been a relative by marriage of Bossuet, but this is not at all proved; and in 1686, about two years before he was going to publish the “Characters,” and when already he had been for some time one of the teachers of the Duke de Bourbon, a grandson of the Prince Louis de Condé, he sold again his post for 18,000 livres to Charles-François de la Bonde, Seigneur dʼIberville.
On the recommendation of Bossuet, La Bruyère, in 1684, had been appointed teacher of history to the Duke de Bourbon; and remained with the Condés for twelve years, until the day of his death. He instructed his pupil not only in history, but also in geography, literature, and philosophy; yet his lessons appear to have produced no great impression, and moreover, they did not last very long, for the youthful duke married in 1685 a daughter of Madame de Montespan and Louis XIV.,23 and La Bruyère received then the appointment of écuyer gentilhomme to Henri Jules, Duke of Bourbon, the father of his former pupil.
Why La Bruyère ever accepted the post of teacher, and afterwards of “gentleman in waiting,” cannot be elucidated at the present time; he may have suffered reverses of fortune, which compelled him to gain a livelihood, but in any case he made the best use of his residence with a noble family, by studying the personages whose vices and ridicules he so admirably portrayed. Living with the Condés at their hotel at Paris, at their country seats at Chantilly and Saint Maur, or when they were visiting the Court, at Versailles, Marly, Fontainebleau, or Chambord, amidst the noble and high-born of the land, without being considered one of them, he had the best opportunity of penetrating the characters of those men who strutted about in gaudy trappings, and lorded it over the common herd, whilst soliciting offices or dignities; and for observing that these men were neither superior in feelings nor intellect to the “common people.”24
All his reflections and observations he arranged under a certain number of headings, called the whole of them “Characters,” and read some passages to a few of his friends, who seem not to have been greatly smitten by them. But this did not discourage La Bruyère; he translated into French the “Characters” of Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher of the peripatetic school, the successor of Aristotle as the head of the Academy, who seems to have lived until about the year 285 B.C., wrote a prefatory discourse to them, in which he displayed more satirical power than in any of his other works,25 and resolved to publish his translation, and to print as a kind of appendix his own “Characters” at the end of it. One day,26 whilst La Bruyère was sitting in the shop of a certain bookseller, named Michallet, which he visited almost daily, and was playing with the shopkeeperʼs little daughter, he took the manuscript of the “Characters” out of his pocket, and told Michallet he might print it if he liked, and keep the profits, if there were any, as a dowry for his child. The bookseller hesitated for some time, but finally published it, and the sale of it was so large that he brought out one edition after another as quick as he could.
It is certain that the publication of the “Characters” in 1688 made its author many enemies, but he calmly pursued the even tenor of his way, and increased the number of his paragraphs during the remaining portion of his life.27
In 1691 he endeavoured to be elected a member of the French Academy, and to become the successor of Benserade,28 but failed, thanks to the number of his enemies, amongst whom probably Fontenelle and Thomas Corneille, the nephew and brother of the great poet Pierre Corneille, were the most active; yet in 1693 he was elected without having made the usual visits to the Academicians to solicit their votes,29 though his friends, Racine, Boileau, the secretary of state, de Pontchartrain,30 and others, used all their influence to ensure his nomination.
The speech he delivered at his reception seems not to have given general satisfaction, for La Bruyère defended the partisans of the classical and attacked those of the modern school, proclaimed Boileau a judicious critic, and hardly admitted Corneille to be the equal of Racine. This speech, preceded by a very satirical preface,31 in which he ridiculed his enemies under the name of “Theobalds,” was published with the eighth edition of the “Characters.”
But if he had bitter enemies he had also warm friends, amongst whom, besides the illustrious men I have already named, must be reckoned: Phélypeaux, the son of de Pontchartrain; the Marquis de Termes; Bossuet, and his nephew the Abbé Bossuet; Fénelon; de Malesieu; Renaudot; de Valincourt; Regnier-Desmarais; La Loubère, and Bouhier, nearly all present or future members of the French Academy; the poet Santeuil, and the historian Caton de Court.
We hardly know anything for certain of the character of La Bruyère except by the glimpses we get now and then in his book, or by what is told of him in some of the letters and writings of his friends and enemies. He was unmarried, and seems to have been a man of a modest disposition, fond of his books and his friends, polite in his manners, and willing to oblige. I imagine he must have felt it sometimes hard to be dependent on so fantastic, suspicious, half-demented a man as was the father of his former pupil, above all, after the death of the great Condé, which took place on the 8th of December 1686,32 and also to have disliked being made now and then the butt of courtiers33 his mental inferiors, but aristocratic superiors; hence he was often silent for fear of being laughed at.34
He was scarcely fifty when, according to some reports, he became suddenly deaf; a few days afterwards, during the night of the 10th of May 1696, he died of an attack of apoplexy at the hotel of the Condés at Versailles.
In 1699 were published some Dialogues sur le Quiétisme, attributed to La Bruyère; but as the editor, the Abbé du Pin, admitted he had partly altered them, as well as added some of his own, it is difficult to judge what was the original share of our author in their composition.
Only twenty-one authenticated letters of La Bruyère are in existence, of which seventeen are in the collection of the Duke dʼAumale, at Twickenham.
“Admonere voluimus, non mordere; prodesse, non lædere;
consulere moribus hominum, non officere.”35
THE subject-matter of this work being borrowed from the public, I now give back to it what it lent me; it is but right that having finished the whole work throughout with the utmost regard to truth I am capable of, and which it deserves from me, I should make restitution of it. The world may view at leisure its picture drawn from life, and may correct any of the faults I have touched upon, if conscious of them. This is the only goal a man ought to propose to himself in writing, though he must not in the least expect to be successful; however, as long as men are not disgusted with vice we should also never tire of admonishing them; they would perhaps grow worse were it not for censure or reproof, and hence the need of preaching and writing. Neither orators nor authors can conceal the joy they feel on being applauded, whereas they ought to blush if they aim at nothing more than praise in their speeches or writings; besides, the surest and least doubtful approbation is a change and regeneration in the morals of their readers and hearers. We should neither write nor speak but to instruct; yet, if we happen to please, we should not be sorry for it, since by those means we render those instructive truths more palatable and acceptable. When, therefore, any thoughts or reflections have slipped into a book which are neither so spirited, well written, nor vivid as others, though they seem to have been inserted for the sake of variety, as a relaxation to the mind, or to draw its attention to what is to follow, the reader should reject and the author delete them, unless they are attractive, familiar, instructive, and adapted to the capacity of ordinary people, whom we must by no means neglect.
This is one way of settling things; there is another which my own interest trusts may be adopted; and that is, not to lose sight of my title, and always to bear in mind, as often as this book is read, that I describe “The Characters or Manners of the Age;” for though I frequently take them from the court of France and from men of my own nation, yet they cannot be confined to any one court or country, without greatly impairing the compass and utility of my book, and departing from the design of the work, which is to paint mankind in general, as well as from the reasons for the order of my chapters, and even from a certain gradual connection between the reflections in each of those chapters. After this so necessary precaution, the consequences of which are obvious enough, I think I may protest against all resentment, complaint, malicious interpretation, false application and censure, against insipid railers and cantankerous readers. People ought to know how to read and then hold their tongues, unless able to relate what they have read, and neither more nor less than what they have read, which they sometimes can do; but this is not sufficient—they must also be willing to do it. Without these conditions, which a careful and scrupulous author has a right to demand from some people, as the sole reward of his labour, I question whether he ought to continue writing, if at least he prefers his private satisfaction to the public good and to his zeal for truth. I confess, moreover, that since the year MDCLXXXX, and before publishing the fifth edition, I was divided between an impatience to cast my book into a fuller and better shape by adding new Characters, and a fear lest some people should say: “Will there never be an end to these Characters, and shall we never see anything else from this author?” On the one hand several persons of sound common-sense told me: “The subject-matter is solid, useful, pleasant, inexhaustible; may you live for a long time, and treat it without interruption as long as you live! what can you do better? The follies of mankind will ensure you a volume every year.” Others, again, with a good deal of reason, made me dread the fickleness of the multitude and the instability of the public, with whom, however, I have good cause to be satisfied; they were always suggesting to me that for the last thirty years, few persons read except for the pleasure of reading, and not to improve themselves, and that, to amuse mankind, fresh chapters and a new title were needed; that this sluggishness had filled the shops and crowded the world with dull and tedious books, written in a bad style and without any intelligence, order, or the least correctness, against all morality or decency, written in a hurry, and read in the same way, and then only for the sake of novelty; and that if I could do nothing else but enlarge a sensible book, it would be much better for me to take a rest. I adopted something of both those advices, though they were at variance with one another, and observed an impartiality which clashed with neither. I did not hesitate to add some fresh remarks to those which already had doubled the bulk of the first edition of my book;36 but, in order not to oblige the public to read again what had been printed before, to get at new material, and to let them immediately find out what they only desired to read, I took care to distinguish those second additions by a peculiar mark ((¶));37 I also thought it would not be useless to distinguish the first augmentations by another and simpler mark (¶), to show the progress of my “Characters,” as well as to guide the reader in the choice he might be willing to make. And lest he be afraid I should never have done with those additions, I added to all this care a sincere promise to venture on nothing more of the kind. If any one accuses me of breaking my word, because I inserted in the three last editions38 a goodly number of new remarks, he may perceive at least that by adding new ones to old, and by completely suppressing those differences pointed out in the margin, I did not so much endeavour to entertain the world with novelties, as perhaps to leave to posterity a book of morals more complete, more finished, and more regular. To conclude, I did not wish to write any maxims, for they are like moral laws, and I acknowledge that I possess neither sufficient authority nor genius for a legislator. I also know I have transgressed the ordinary standard of maxims, which, like oracles, should be short and concise.39 Some of my remarks are so, others are more diffuse; we do not always think of things in the same way, and we describe them in as different a manner by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor, or some other figure; by a parallel or a simple comparison; by a story, by a single feature, by a description, or a picture; which is the cause of the length or brevity of my reflections. Finally, those who write maxims would be thought infallible; I, on the contrary, allow any one to say that my remarks are not always correct, provided he himself will make better ones.
(1.)AFTER above seven thousand years,40 during which there have been men who have thought we come too late to say anything that has not been said already, the finest and most beautiful ideas on morals and manners have been swept away before our times, and nothing is left for us but to glean after the ancients and the ablest41 amongst the moderns.
(2.) We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions;42 this would be too great an undertaking.
(3.) To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author. A certain magistrate was going to be raised by his merit to the highest legal dignity; he was a man of subtle mind and of experience, but must needs print a treatise of morality, which was quickly bought up on account of its absurdity.43
(4.) It is not so easy to obtain a reputation by a perfect work as to enhance the value of an indifferent one by a reputation already acquired.
(5.) A satirical work or a book of anecdotes44 handed about privately in manuscript from one to another, passes for a masterpiece, even when it is but middling; the printing ruins its reputation.
(6.) Take away from most of our works on morality the “Advertisement to the reader,” the “Epistle dedicatory,” the “Preface,” the “Table of contents,” and the “Permission to print,” and there will scarcely be pages enough left to deserve the name of a book.
(7.) In certain things mediocrity is unbearable, as in poetry, music, painting, and eloquence. How we are tortured when we hear a dull soliloquy delivered in a pompous tone, or indifferent verses read with all the emphasis of a wretched poet!
(8.) Some poets in their tragedies employ a goodly number of big sounding verses, which seem strong, elevated, and filled with lofty sentiments.45 They are listened to anxiously, with eyes raised and gaping mouths, and are thought to please the public; and where they are understood the least, are admired the most; people have no time to breathe, they have hardly time to exclaim and to applaud. Formerly, when I was quite young, I imagined those passages were clear and intelligible to the actors, the pit, and the galleries; that the authors themselves understood them, and that I must have been very dull not to understand what it was all about. But now I am undeceived.
(9.) Up to the present time there exists hardly any literary masterpiece which is the joint labour of several men.46 Homer wrote the Iliad,47 Virgil the Æneid, Livy the Decades, and the Roman orator48 his Orations.
(10.) There is in art an acme of perfection, as there is in Nature one of goodness and completeness. Any one who feels this and loves art possesses a perfect taste; but he who is not sensible of it, and loves what is below or above that point, is wanting in taste. Thus there exists a good and a bad taste, and we are right in discussing the difference between them.
(11.) Men have generally more vivacity than judgment; or, to speak more accurately, few men exist whose intelligence is combined with a correct taste and a judicious criticism.
(12.) The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.
(13.) A heap of epithets is but a sorry commendation. Actions alone, and the manner of relating them, speak a manʼs praise.
(14.) The whole genius of an author consists in giving accurate definitions and in painting well. Only Moses,49 Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace, excel all other writers in their expressions and their imagery: to express truth is to write naturally, forcibly, and delicately.
(15.) People have been obliged to do with style what they have done with architecture; they wholly abandoned the Gothic style, which the barbarians introduced in their palaces and temples,50 and brought back the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. That which was only seen amongst the ruins of ancient Rome and time-honoured Greece has become modernised, and now shines forth in our porticoes and colonnades. So, in writing, we can never arrive at perfection, and, if possible, surpass the ancients, but by imitating them.
How many centuries have elapsed before men were able to come back to the taste of the ancients in arts and sciences, and, finally, took up again a simple and natural style.
A man51 feeds on the ancients and intelligent moderns; he squeezes and drains them as much as possible; he stuffs his works with them; and when at last he becomes an author and thinks he can walk alone, he lifts up his voice against them, and ill-treats them, like those lusty children, grown strong through the healthy milk on which they have been fed, and who beat their nurses.
An author of modern times usually proves the ancients inferior to us in two ways: by reason and examples. The reason is his own opinion, and the examples are his own writings.52
He confesses that the ancients, though they are unequal and incorrect, have a great many beautiful passages; he quotes them, and they are so fine, that his criticism is read only for their sake.
Some able men declare in favour of the ancients against the moderns; but we doubt them, as they seem to be judges in their own cause, for their works are so exactly written after the model of antiquity, that we cannot accept their authority.53
(16.) We ought to like to read our works to those who know how to correct and appreciate them.
He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.
An author ought to receive with the same moderation all praises and all criticisms on his productions.
(17.) Amongst all the various expressions which can render our thoughts, there is but one which is correct. We are not always so fortunate as to hit upon it in writing or speaking, but, nevertheless, such a one undoubtedly exists, and all others are weak, and do not satisfy a man of culture who wishes to make himself understood.
A good author, who writes carefully, often finds that the expression he has been looking for for some time, and which he did not know, proves, when found at last, to be the most simple, the most natural, and the one which was most likely to present itself to him spontaneously at first.
Fanciful authors often touch up their works. As their temper is not always the same, and as it varies on every occasion, they soon grow indifferent about those very expressions and terms they liked so much at first.
(18.) The same common-sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
A shallow mind thinks his writings divine; a man of sense imagines he writes tolerably well.
(19.) Aristus says, “I was prevailed upon to read my works to Zoilus,54 and I did so. At first he liked them, before he had leisure to disapprove of them; he commended them coldly in my presence, and since then, has not said one word in their favour to any one. I excuse him, and desire no more from any author; I even pity him for listening to so many fine things which were not his own.”
Those men who through their rank are exempt from an authorʼs jealousy, have either other passions or necessities to distract them, and to make them indifferent towards other menʼs conceptions. Almost no one, whether through disposition, inclination, or fortune, is willing to relish the delight that a perfect piece of work can give.
(20.) The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
(21.) Many people perceive the merit of a manuscript which is read to them, but will not declare themselves in its favour until they see what success it has in the world when printed, or what intelligent men will say about it. They do not like to risk their opinion, and they want to be carried away by the crowd, and dragged along by the multitude. Then they say that they were amongst the first who approved of that work, and the general public shares their opinion.55
Such men lose the best opportunities of convincing us that they are intelligent, clever, and first-rate critics, and can really discover what is good and what is better. A fine work falls into their hands; it is an authorʼs first book, before he has got any great name; there is nothing to prepossess any one in his favour, and by applauding his writings one does not court or flatter the great. Zelotes,56 you are not required to cry out: “This is a masterpiece; human intelligence never went farther; the human speech cannot soar higher; henceforward we will judge of no oneʼs taste but by what he thinks of this book.” Such exaggerated and offensive expressions are only employed by postulants for pensions or benefices, and are even injurious to what is really commendable and what one wishes to praise. Why not merely say—“Thatʼs a good book?” It is true you say it when the whole of France has approved of it, and foreigners as well as your own countrymen, when it is printed all over Europe, and has been translated into several languages, but then it is too late.
(22.) Some people, after having read a book, quote certain passages which they do not thoroughly understand, and moreover completely change their character by what they put in of their own. Those passages, so mutilated and disfigured that they are nothing else but their own expressions and thoughts, they expose to censure, maintain them to be bad, and the world agrees with them; but the passage such critics think they quote, and in reality do not, is not a bit the worse for it.57
(23.) “What is your opinion about Hermodorusʼ book?”—“That it is wretchedly written,” replies Anthymus.—“Wretchedly written! what do you mean, sir?”—“Just what I say,” he continues; “it is not a book, at least it does not deserve to be talked about”—“Have you read it?”—“No,” replies Anthymus. Why does he not add that Fulvia and Melania have condemned it without reading, and that he is a friend of those two ladies?
(24.) Arsène,58 from the height of his own wisdom, contemplates men, and from the eminence he beholds them seems frightened as it were at their littleness. Commended, extolled, and raised to the skies by certain persons who have reciprocally promised to admire one another, he fancies, though he has some merit, that he has as much as any man can have, which he never will; his mind being occupied and filled with sublime ideas, he scarcely finds time to pronounce certain oracles; raised by his character above human judgments, he leaves to vulgar souls the merit of leading a regular and uniform life, being answerable for his variations to none but to a circle of friends who worship them. They alone know how to judge, to think, to write, and they only ought to write; there is no literary work, though ever so well received by the world and universally liked by men of culture, which he does approve of, nay, which he would condescend to read; he is incapable of being corrected by this picture, which will not even be read by him.
(25.) Theocrines59 knows a good many useless things; he is singular in his sentiments, and less profound than methodical; he only exercises his memory, is absent-minded, scornful, and seems continually laughing to himself at those whom he thinks his inferiors. By chance I one day read him something of mine: he heard it out, and then spoke about some of his own writings. “But what said he of yours?” youʼll ask me. “I have told you already; he spoke to me only of his own.”
(26.) The most accomplished literary work would be reduced to nothing by carping criticism, if the author would listen to all critics and allow every one to erase the passage which pleases him the least.
(27.) Experience tells us, that if there are ten persons who would strike a thought or an expression out of a book, we could easily find a like number who would insist upon its being put back again. The latter will exclaim: “Why should such a thought be suppressed? it is new, fine, and wonderfully well expressed.” The former, on the contrary, will maintain, “that they would have omitted such an idea, or have expressed it in another way.” “In your work,” say the first, “there is a very happy phrase which depicts most naturally what you meant to say.” The second maintain “that a certain word is venturesome, and moreover does not give the precise meaning you perhaps desired to give.” It is about the same thought and the same word those people argue; and yet they are all critics, or pass for such. What then can an author do but venture, in such a perplexity, to follow the advice of those who approve of the passage.
(28.) A serious-minded author is not obliged to trouble his head about all the foolish sayings, the obscene remarks, and bad words that are uttered, or about the stupid constructions which some men put on certain passages of his writings; much less ought he to suppress them. He is convinced that let a man be never so careful in his writings, the insipid jokes of wretched buffoons are an unavoidable evil, since they often only turn the best things into ridicule.
(29.) If certain men of quick and resolute mind are to be believed, words would even be superfluous to express feelings; signs would be sufficient to address them, or we could make ourselves be understood without speaking. However careful you may be to write closely and concisely, and whatever reputation you may have as such, they will think you diffuse. You must allow them to supply everything and write for them alone. They understand a whole phrase by reading the first word, and an entire chapter by a single phrase. It is sufficient for them to have heard only a bit of your work, they know it all and understand the whole. A great many riddles would be amusing reading to them; they regret that the wretched style which delights them becomes rare, and that so few authors employ it. Comparisons of a river flowing rapidly, though calmly and uniformly, or of a conflagration which, fanned by the winds, spreads afar in a forest, where it devours oaks and pine-trees, gives to them not the smallest idea of eloquence. Show them some fireworks60 to astonish them, or a flash of lightning to dazzle them, and they will dispense with anything fine or beautiful.
(30.) What a prodigious difference is there between a fine work and one that is perfect or regular. I am not aware whether a single one of the latter kind still exists. It is perhaps less difficult for uncommon minds to hit upon the grand and the sublime than to avoid all kinds of errors. The Cid, at its first appearance, was universally admired; it rose in spite of power and politics, which attempted in vain to crush it. People of rank and the general public, though always divided in their opinions and feelings, were in favour of it; they learned it by heart so as to anticipate the actors who were performing it. The Cid, in short, is one of the finest poems ever written, and one of the best criticisms on any subject is that on the Cid.61
(31.) When, after having read a work, loftier thoughts arise in your mind and noble and heartfelt feelings animate you, do not look for any other rule to judge it by; it is fine and written in a masterly manner.62
(32.) Capys,63 who sets up for a judge of style and fancies he writes like Bouhours64 and Rabutin,65 disagrees with public opinion, and is the only person who says that Damis66 is not a good author. Damis is of the same opinion as a large number of people, and says artlessly, as well as the public, that Capys is a dull writer.
(33.) It is the business of a newsmonger to inform us when any book is published; if it is printed by Cramoisy,67 and with what type; if it is well bound, and on what paper, and at what price it is sold; he ought even to know what the booksellerʼs sign is; but it is foolish in him to pretend to criticise it.
The highest point a newsmonger can reach is to reason in a vague manner on politics.
A newsmonger lies down at night quietly, after having received some information, but it is spoiled overnight, and he is obliged to throw it away when he wakes in the morning.68
(34.) A philosopher69 wastes his life in observing men, and wears himself out in exposing vice and folly. If he shapes his thoughts into words, it is not so much from his vanity as an author as to place entirely in its proper light some truth he has discovered, that it may make the desired impression. Yet some readers think they repay him with interest if they say, with a magisterial air, “that they have read his book, and that there is some sense in it;” but he does not mind their praise, for he has not laboured and passed many sleepless nights to obtain it: he has higher aims, and acts from nobler motives: he demands from mankind greater and more uncommon results than empty praise, and even than rewards; he expects them to lead better lives.