Part 39

[787] Our author uses by exception _honnêtes gens_ for honest men. A certain Marquis de Langlade was put on the rack (1688), and after having been innocently sentenced to the galleys on a false accusation of having robbed the Duke de Montmorency, died there in 1689; and a servant, Le Brun, accused of the murder of Madame Marel, died after having been cruelly tortured (1690). The real criminals were discovered some time afterwards, and this produced a great sensation at the time La Bruyère wrote (1691).

[788] It has been said that the wife of M. de Saint-Pouange (see page 134, note 3) was robbed of a diamond buckle when leaving the opera, but that it was returned to her by M. de Grandmaison, _grand prévôt de la connétablie_.

[789] The “Keys” mention as one of these men the President de Mesmes. See page 168, note 3.

[790] During the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV., fire-raising was very common in the rural districts of France, and it was one of the means the peasants chose for revenging themselves on their masters for their exactions and for fiscal cruelties.

[791] The original has _lanternes_, tribunes in Parliament whence people could see what was going on without being seen.

[792] _Il se voit officier_ in the original. See page 153, note 3.

[793] Titius and Seius were often quoted in Roman law, as “A.” and “B.” are in English law, in stating a case to counsel. Mævius was a wretched poet of Virgilʼs time, and seems to be wrongly named by La Bruyère in apposition to Titius. According to some commentators, the mishap attributed to Titius really happened to a M. Hennequin, _procureur général au grand conseil_.

[794] The notary, M. de Bonnefoi, in Molièreʼs _Malade Imaginaire_ (act i. scene 9) explains to the hypochondriacal Argan: “You cannot give anything to your wife by your will ... Common law is opposed to it ... in Paris and in all countries where common law exists.... All the good which man and woman joined in wedlock can do to each other, is a mutual donation while living; and then there must be no children.” And when Argan asks what he has to do to leave his wife his property, the honest notary replies: “You can quietly choose an intimate friend of your wifeʼs, to whom you will give, in due form by your will, all that you can; and this friend shall afterwards give it all back to her.”

[795] _Vaudeville_ in the original, of which the primitive meaning was “a satirical song.”

[796] _Le mortier_ in French. See page 168, note 3. When the king was not present at a sitting of the Parliament, the president claimed the right to represent him, and therefore, to take precedence before any one.

[797] A certain de Charnacé, formerly lieutenant in the kingʼs body-guard, committed several crimes in Anjou, even coined false money, and finally was obliged to flee for his life. In many of the provinces the conduct of the nobles was so inhuman and disgraceful, that the kings of France were often obliged to appoint special committees, called _grands jours_, to try and punish them, the latest and most celebrated of which had been held in Auvergne in 1665.

[798] The “Keys” name Louis de Crevant, Duke dʼHumières, who was made Marshal of France in 1668, and died in 1694; Jacques Henri de Durfort, Duke de Duras, brother to the Earl of Feversham, and also a Marshal of France, who died in 1704, at the age of seventy-four; and the Marshal de Créqui, as having displayed great luxury whilst in the field. The king, who had first given the example of such splendour, finally attempted to restrain it, and in vain promulgated edicts against it in 1672.

[799] Hermippus is supposed to be a certain Jean-Jacques Renouard, Count de Villayer, _maître des requêtes_, a member of the French Academy, who was very ingenious, and always invented new machinery—amongst others, a kind of lift—and who died in 1691.

[800] The original has _improuver_, now antiquated.

[801] _Leurs pensions_ in French. See page 384, note 1.

[802] A dʼAquin (1629-1696), who was physician to Louis XIV., had one son a magistrate and another a bishop. See also page 273, note 1.

[803] See page 186, note 4. Some “Keys” also say that perhaps Adrien Helvétius, the grandfather of the philosopher, may be meant, but this seems hardly likely, for Helvétius was wealthy, gave his medicine gratis, was a very honest man, and the first to recommend the use of ipecacuanha in certain diseases.

[804] In Molièreʼs _Malade Imaginaire_ (act iii. scene 4), Toinette, the servant, dressed up as a physician, says almost the same thing.

[805] _Constitution (de rentes)_ understood in the text.

[806] Guy Crescence Fagon (1638-1718) became in succession physician to the wife of the Dauphin, the queen, and the royal children, and in 1693, when dʼAquin fell into disgrace, first physician to Louis XIV. He was for his time an able and conscientious man. His eldest son became Bishop of Lombez, and his second _intendant des finances_.

[807] Fagon was a strenuous defender of emetics and of Peruvian bark, which latter remedy was first imported into France in the seventeenth century, and had become so popular that Jean la Fontaine sang its praises in a pretty long poem, _le Quinquina_, the French name of the Peruvian bark, so called after the Countess del Cinchon, wife of the Viceroy of Peru, whence the bark was first sent to Europe.

[808] Fagon was also professor of botany and chemistry in the kingʼs botanical garden, and one of the editors of its catalogue, called _Hortus regius_, published in 1665.

[809] The belief in sorcerers and witchcraft was very general when our author wrote, and there existed an almost universal idea that robbers and murderers might be discovered by means of the motion of a hazel rod. Even the magistrates in France tried sometimes such a rod to find out criminals.

[810] Many eminent pedagogues have held a contrary opinion; for example, Malebranche in his _Traité de Morale_, and Jean Jacques Rousseau in his _Emile_, both maintain languages should be acquired when the child is not too young.

[811] The going “open-breasted” was the fashion of the time of Francis I.; ruffs and bands were worn in France during part of the reigns of Henri II. and Henri III., but were no longer in vogue when our author wrote; they were, however, still used in Spain.

[812] This is an allusion to the wearing of very tight silk stockings and short breeches, showing the legs.

[813] It was never the custom in France for ladies to hide their feet, but in Spain it was considered highly improper and indecent even to show the smallest part of them (see the Countess dʼAulnoy, _Relation du Voyage en Espagne_, 1690); and as the wife of Louis XIV., Maria Theresa, was a daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, it is probable that the ladies at court followed the fashion set to them by the queen.

[814] According to Voltaireʼs _Siècle de Louis XIV._, chap, viii., the king and his officers went, however, to the trenches wearing head-pieces and breast-plates.

[815] Bertrand du Guesclin (1320-1380) was constable of France under Charles V., whilst Olivier de Clisson (1332-1407) filled the same high office under Charles VI.; Gaston de Foix (1331-1391), surnamed “Phœbus,” was Viscount of Bearn, and Jean le Maingre de Boucicault (1364-1421) was Marshal of France. They all four distinguished themselves in the wars against the English during the fourteenth century.

[816] Our author now launches into a dissertation about the relative value of certain words which was far from unusual at the time he wrote, and is found in almost the same form in several contemporary writers. I also imagine the late Walter Savage Landor was influenced by La Bruyèreʼs dissertation when he wrote in his “Imaginary Conversations” the two “Dialogues” between Dr. Johnson and Horne Tooke.

[817] _Mais_, says La Bruyère in a note, but this word is not an anagram of _ains_, which comes from the Latin _ante_, whilst _mais_ is the Latin _magis_.

[818] It is not yet settled whether _maint_ is of Latin, Celtic, or Teutonic origin.

[819] Some purists wished to forbid the use of _car_, which was defended by Voiture. (See page 20, note 3.)

[820] A good many words which La Bruyère thought were going out of fashion are still in use at present.

[821] _De moi_ and _que cʼest que_ have been employed several times by Malherbe (see page 21, note 4) and other good authors, but these expressions are now quite obsolete.

[822] _Oraison_, phrase in the original; antiquated in this sense.

[823] The people formally changed the Latin syllables _pro_ and _fro_ into _prou_ or _pour_ and into _frou_ or _four_; hence _proufit_, _fourment_, or _froument_, from the Latin _proficere_ and _fromentum_. The scholars of the sixteenth century brought back these words to their etymological form.

[824] In French adjectives in _il_ derived from Latin words with a long _i_, on which the accent rests, form their feminine by adding an _e_, whilst adjectives with the termination _ile_ for the masculine and feminine are formed from Latin words with a short _i_, not accentuated.

[825] In the French of the Middle Ages these substantives had the termination _els_, _aus_, or _iaus_ in the nominative singular plural, and _el_ in the accusative singular and the nominative plural; _aus_ became generally adopted in all cases, but dropped the _s_.

[826] Vaugelas and his commentators insisted that all words not sanctioned by custom should not be admitted into the French language.

[827] Laurent was a wretched versifier at the time of La Bruyère, who published rhymed descriptions of all kinds of festivals.

[828] For Marot. See page 22, note 3. Philippe Desportes (1555-1606), an imitator of the Italian school of poetry, enjoyed a great reputation in his time.

[829] See page 122, note 1, and page 20, note 3.

[830] The original _rondeaux_ which are given here are not so old as La Bruyère thought they were, and are merely very fair imitations, written probably about the end of the sixteenth century. The hero of the first _rondeau_ is Ogier, generally called _le Danois_, which does not mean the Dane, but is a contraction of _le DʼArdennois_, from the Ardennes.

I owe the above translation to Mr. J. E. Barlas, of New College, Oxford, who has endeavoured to imitate the pseudo-antiquated style of the original, and to use several Chaucerian and Spenserian words.

Bien à propos sʼen vint Ogier en France Pour le païs de mescréans monder: Jà nʼest besoin de conter sa vaillance Puisquʼ ennemis nʼosoient le regarder.

Or quand il eut tout mis en assurance, De voyager il voulut sʼenharder; En Paradis trouva lʼeau de jouvance, Dont il se sceut de vieillesse engarder Bien à propos.

Puis par cette eau son corps tout décrépite Transmué fut par manière subite En jeune gars, frais, gracieux et droit.

Grand dommage est que cecy soit sornettes: Filles connois qui ne sont pas jeunettes, A qui cette eau de jouvance viendroit Bien à propos.

* * * * *

De cettuy preux maints grands clercs ont écrit Quʼoncques dangier nʼétonna son courage: Abusé fut par le malin esprit, Quʼil épousa sous feminin visage.

Si piteux cas à la fin découvrit, Sans un seul brin de peur ny de dommage, Dont grand renom par tout le monde acquit, Si quʼon tenoit très honeste langage De cettuy preux.

Bien-tost après fille de Roy sʼéprit De son amour, qui voulentiers sʼoffrit Au bon Richard en second mariage.

Donc sil vaut mieux ou diable ou femme avoir, Et qui des deux bruit plus en ménage, Ceulx qui voudront, si le pourront scavoir De cettuy preux.

[831] The chapter “Of the Pulpit” was first published in 1688, and our author made additions to it until the eighth edition of the “Characters” saw the light, in 1694. He had heard all the best preachers of his time, such as the Jesuit Claude de Lingendes (See page 323, note 2), and the Oratorians Le Jeune and Senault, who both died in 1672, whilst Bossuet preached in Paris from 1659 to 1669. Bourdaloue began preaching there in 1663, Mascaron in 1666, Fléchier in 1670, and Fénelon in 1675. The only great pulpit-orator our author did not hear was Massillon, who did not preach in the capital until 1696. Several sermons on pulpit oratory were preached in France, and many books on the same subject had been published there before and after this chapter was printed.

[832] Three barristers of repute in the seventeenth century, Antoine le Maître (1608-1658), whose _Recueil de Plaidoyers_ has been printed; Claude Pucelle, and Bonaventure Fourcroy, a friend of Molière and Boileau, who died in 1691 and was a poet as well as a lawyer.

[833] See the Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” § 42.

[834] A certain Abbé le Tourneur or le Tourneux, who died in 1680 at the age of forty-six, is said to have been such a man, but was, of course, not allowed to remain long at court.

[835] Bourdaloue (1632-1704) set the fashion of introducing in his sermons “portraits” or “Characters” of well-known individuals: a fashion which was much exaggerated by his imitators, and which also for some time prevailed in England. The Sermons of Dr. R. South (1633-1716), Prebendary of Westminster and Canon of Christ Church, Oxon, contain also many “portraits.”

[836] Our author says in a note; “This was Father Seraphin, a Capuchin monk.” Others have been less favourably inclined towards this preacher than La Bruyère was. This monk, who had been holding forth in Paris as early as 1671, preached in the parish church of Versailles, and four years later before the court and the king, in the palace.

[837] Saint Basil (329-379) was bishop of Cesarea; Saint John Chrysostom was (347-407) bishop of Constantinople, called the “golden-mouthed” for his great eloquence.

[838] Our author makes the same observation about dramatic poets. See his Chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” page 9, § 8.

[839] Compare in Racineʼs comedy of _Les Plaideurs_ the speech of “LʼIntimé” (act iii, scene 3), to ridicule similar quotations.

[840] The Pandects of the Roman emperor Justinian were a cyclopædia of legal decisions of Roman lawyers; and after they had been discovered at Amalfi in Italy about the year 1137, they changed the whole of the legal aspect of Europe.

[841] There were three saints of the name of Cyrillus, but the one mentioned above was probably bishop of Jerusalem (315-388); Saint Thascius Cæcilius Cyprianus (210-285) was bishop of Carthage: whilst Saint Aurelius Augustinus (354-430) was the celebrated author and bishop of Hippo.

[842] The preachers accused of a florid style were, according to the “Keys,” the Oratorian Senault, and Fléchier, who in 1685 had been appointed bishop of Nîmes.

[843] Theodorus is supposed to be Bourdaloue (see page 165, note 3). Some other celebrated preachers have also been named.

[844] Charles Boileau, _abbé_ de Beaulieu, and a member of the French Academy, who died in 1704 (see page 49, note 2), is said to have preached a morality such as is mentioned in the above paragraph.

[845] A certain Abbé de Roquette, a nephew of the Bishop of Autun (see page 226, note i.), had to preach one Holy Thursday before the king, but through some unfortunate accident Louis XIV. could not be present, and the preacher, disconcerted at the absence of the monarch, for whom probably he had prepared the most fulsome flatteries, did not dare to mount the pulpit and deliver his sermon.

[846] In the original _clercs_, to which our author added a note in the first four editions to say that he meant “clergymen.” The whole paragraph alludes to the missionaries sent into the provinces to convert the Protestants. Did La Bruyère, in speaking of the “converts who had already been made for these clergymen,” hint at the _dragonnades_ and at the other wretched and inhuman means employed to compel people to change their religion? I am afraid not, though he admits some persons could not be converted.

[847] Saint Vincent de Paul (1566-1660), a well-known philanthropical preacher, very successful in his missions; Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1553), a Jesuit missionary, who made many converts in the East Indies.

[848] See page 173, note 1.

[849] See the chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” page 8, § 3.

[850] Some scribbler of the time, a certain Gédéon Pontier, author of the _Cabinet des Grands_, is said to have written almost similar nonsense.

[851] In 1689, the same year this paragraph first appeared, seventy-nine royal censors had been appointed, and no book could be printed without their permission.

[852] The last sentence of the above paragraph was added in the fifth edition of the “Characters,” published in 1690, about one year after Fénelon had been appointed teacher of the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of Louis XIV. Fénelon became archbishop of Cambrai in 1695.

[853] See page 27, note 2. Several eminent divines had already written against “freethinkers,” and about a year before the first edition of the “Characters” appeared, Fénelon preached a sermon against them. Those freethinkers were not deists nor atheists, but somewhat like those persons, at present called agnostics, who neither affirm nor deny anything, but simply state that they know nothing for certain. Among their sect might be reckoned at the time our author wrote the celebrated traveller Bernier, Saint Evremond, Bayle, Fontenelle, Chaulieu, La Fare, the Dukes de Nevers and de Bouillon, the Grand Prior de Vendôme, and many others.

[854] The French name for “freethinker” is _esprit fort_, literally “strong mind.”

[855] Another play on words in the original on _esprit fort_ and _esprit faible_.

[856] This is perhaps an allusion to the traveller F. Bernier, a pupil of Gassendi, who visited Assyria, Egypt, and India, and published a narrative of his travels in 1670.

[857] _Libertin_ was another name for freethinker in French. See p. 161, note 1.

[858] The original has _une personne libre_, to which our author adds in a note, _une fille_.

[859] An allusion to some such men as the Duke de la Feuillade, the Minister de Louvois, and the Marquis de Seignelay, who have been mentioned before, and who almost all died after a very short illness.

[860] Whenever our author has an opportunity he always opposes _esprits forts_ to _esprits faibles_, or _faibles génies_, as in the above paragraph.

[861] Leo I., bishop of Rome, called the Great, died 461; St. Jerome (331-420) was one of the fathers of the Latin Church. For Basil and Augustine (see page 446, note 1, and page 447, note 1.)

[862] _Spécieux_ in the original, with the Latin meaning.

[863] This is perhaps a hit at Malebrancheʼs _Nouvelle Métaphysique_.

[864] At the time our author wrote it was the custom to allow masked people to enter a ball-room.

[865] In “A New Historical Relation of Siam,” by M. de la Loubère (see page 155, note 2), we find: “The priests are the Talapoins.... They have umbrellas in the form of a screen which they carry in their hand.... In Siamese they call them ‘Talapat,’ and it is probable that from hence comes the name of ‘Talapir’ or ‘Talapoin,’ which is in use among foreigners only.” The embassy from the King of Siam to Louis XIV. took place in the year 1686. See page 338, note 3.

[866] In 1685, when this paragraph was first published, La Bruyère was forty years old.

[867] St. Augustin (see page 447, note 1) and Descartes (see page 150, § 56) had already made use of the above argument.

[868] Our author adds in a note: “An objection to the system of freethinkers.” An allusion to the system of Spinosa, which Fénelon also attempted to refute in his _Traité de lʼexistence de Dieu_.

[869] “This is what freethinkers bring forward,” says La Bruyère in a note. He means probably the disciples of Gassendi, and followers of the systems of Epicurus and Lucretius.

[870] This is Descartesʼ doctrine.

[871] Lucilius is supposed to have been the Duke of Bourbon, the pupil of La Bruyère, and the spot of ground, the park of Chantilly, the seat of the Condé family. (See page 25, § 48.)

[872] Instead of the Nonette and the Thève, two small rivers canalised by order of the Prince de Condé, our author names two other small streams, the Yvette, which has its source near Rambouillet, and the Lignon, an affluent of the Loire.

[873] André le Nôtre, a celebrated landscape-gardener, laid out the gardens of Versailles and Chantilly, and died in 1700.

[874] The calculations of La Bruyère were not always exact; thus the mass of the moon is eighty-nine times less than the earthʼs; it is 2165 miles in diameter, and revolves at a mean distance of 238,800 miles round the earth.

[875] Our author argues as if he were no believer in the system of Copernicus (1473-1543), but he only states that the sun appears to move through the firmament, for on page 484 he distinctly mentions that “the earth is carried round the sun.”

[876] If we suppose that the earth is immovable, the moon moves at a rate of more than eighteen hundred thousand miles a day, but in reality it moves at the rate of about sixty thousand miles during twenty-four hours.

[877] Sound travels at the rate of more than nine hundred miles per hour.

[878] It is in reality a hundred and ten times more.

[879] Its absolute diameter is 860,000 miles.

[880] The volume of the sun is equivalent to about one and a quarter million times the volume of our earth; but its mean density is only a quarter of that of the earth.

[881] The mean distance of the sun from the earth, is, according to the latest results, about 92,400,000 miles.

[882] Saturnʼs volume is 686.7 that of the earth; it is the sixth planet in order of distance from the sun, and describes in 10,795,22 days, or twenty-nine years five months and fourteen days, an orbit whose semi-major axis is 872,137,000 miles. In our authorʼs time Saturn was supposed to be the planet the farthest from the sun. See page 135, note 4.

[883] “Immensurable” is a word La Bruyère tried to naturalise in French, but he did not succeed, yet it exists in English; “incommensurable” is to be found in both languages.

[884] According to Aragoʼs _Leçons dʼAstronomie_ the star nearest the earth is still 22,800,000,000,000 leagues distant from it.

[885] No south polar star exists.

[886] Though the number of stars visible to the naked eye is not more than five thousand, thousands of millions of stars are in existence of which only about a hundred thousand have been observed.

[887] See page 479, note 2. The sun is not the centre of the universe, but of our planetary system.

[888] The atomic system of philosophy started by Leucippus, and adopted by Epicurus, Democritus, and many other philosophers, was that the universe, material and mental, consisted of minute, indivisible, and impenetrable atoms, which atoms were assumed to be the ultimate ground of nature, whilst necessity was supposed to be the cause of all existence.

[889] According to Descartesʼ _Discours de la Méthode_, animal spirits, which are so often mentioned in the philosophical and moral works of his time, “are like a very subtle mind, or rather like a very pure and bright flame, which is continually and in great abundance ascending from the heart to the brain, proceeds from thence through the nerves into the muscles, and produces motion in all the members of the body.”

[890] Pascal already in his _Pensées_ (i. 6.) had called man “a thinking reed ... nobler than the universe, even if it were to crush him, because he knows he has to die.”

[891] In the original _ouvrier_. See page 159, note 1.