THE FRENCH MORALISTS, LA BRUYERE, MONTAIGNE, NICOLE. THE French are perfect masters of the philosophy of manners, or as they term it, "science du monde ;" whether they are equal proficients in the philosophy of morals or of mind, may admit of a question. To account for this is by no means difficult. It arises from their social disposition and natural readiness of apprehension. Commerce with the world sharpens their original acuteness, and renders them expert in detecting the nice shades of character and the more visible peculiarities of manner. Though mannerists themselves, yet are they extremely skillful in analyzing and painting the manners of others. This national trait is observable in most of their celebrated writers. It shines brilliantly in the pages of Molière and Le Sage, and forms the staple of their writings. In fact, their authors are perfect men of the world, and cannot be otherwise than shrewd and knowing. We know not how it is, but there seems to be something in the very atmosphere of France imparting vivacity and a full flow of animal spirits. Such men cannot realize a character like that of the old-fashioned scholar of whom we read-a man burying himself amidst his folios, and turning his library into a living tombwho was willing, for the sake of conversing with the mighty dead, to surrender his right to the society of the living great; a monkish idolator at the shrine of books, who, striking off his name from the roll of the world's citizens, resigned his place to some more enterprising and bustling individual. This presents an anomaly no Frenchman can ever resolve. In literature this spirit has not only pervaded their lighter writings, but it also mingles with their graver speculations. Shrewdness is the distinguishing feature of their ethical philosophy, as delivered by Rochefoucault and La Bruyère. With this shrewdness is mingled a scholastic formality, derived from their avowed imitation of the ancients, giving their productions an air of great stiffness and rigor. They want the ease, the familiar tone, and the natural logic of the English writer in the same department. And here we may see the best proof of the axiom, that they, whether writers or speakers, who are the lightest and most agreeable on gay topics, are on grave subjects the most stupid and tiresome. It has been said of such an one, that "his hawk's eye, which sparkled at a jest, looked blank at a speculation." Besides this, they are greatly deficient in fancy, and therefore are without that which gives life and spirit to philosophic writing-the power of illustration. Figures, metaphors and similes never appear in their writings; but everything is delivered in an oracular manner, never relieved by the embellishments of composition. Yet it is on the score of originality that they are mostly wanting. There is no boldness or freedom in their theorizing, no variety or marked expression in their phraseology-all is correct, classic and borrowed. Such a writer as Berkely, for instance, would make the whole nation stare (maugre their politeness) by the poetry of his style and the brilliancy of his paradox. All this we think true of their attempts in moral writing. In the ranks of highly civilized society, as well as of common life, they reign supreme. Their best novels and comedies are full of just and striking pictures of life, and are the best specimens of their every-day philosophy. Of the French writers, however, who not employing fiction for the purposes of instruction, have spoken out the truth plainly in works of sober reason, La Bruyère stands foremost. To estimate his writings and ability with justice, we should consider when he wrote, and his topics of discussion. In his time there had appeared no Spectator, no Tattler; there were no manuals of popular philosophy and criticism, nor any general observer and censor of the characters and manners of the age. For having been among the first of his nation to note down, discriminate, and reflect upon, the persons and occurrences passing before him, and the thoughts and observations of his own mind, he certainly deserves high consideration. It is true many opinions, then new and lately discovered, are mere truisms now; this, though it diminishes the value of his book, by no means lessens his own merit. The same might be asserted of all the old writers, yet would it be harsh in the extreme to deny their genuine originality. The title of his great work is, "The Characters; or the Manners of the Present Age." It has the great merit, which very many cannot claim, of declaring its aim and general scope. "I borrowed," says he very modestly, the subject matter of this book from the public." And richly has he repaid the debt. It is a general epi tome of his observations and reflections on a variety of subjects, all deeply interesting to every man of sense and discernment. He ranges from polite learning to the pulpit, and carefully traverses the intermediate grounds. Society and the passions which exist there, the faculties to insure success in it, and the manifold hues ofthose who mingle in it, are how ever, his grand and favorite theme. His characters are almost purely artificial. In painting these he is very happy; but all his skill deserts him when he takes up one purely natural. In addition to this all his portraits were contemporaries, giving a local character to his work, which must have made it, as indeed it was, highly popular at the time, though since much neglected. Bnt though local and mostly artificial, with but very few exceptions he still touches off their traits in a masterly style. Perhaps no man ever lived of a finer or more delicate vein of observation. He gives the broad features and the subtiler parts of a character with equal fidelity, force and finish. Passing over his portraits of bishops and dukes, for whom nobody cares a rush, we will enumerate but four, each of which is perfect. The absent man, made famous by Addison's mention of him in the Spectator, is most admirable. As it may be readily turned to, we will not quote it, but give the three others, of Rabelais, Lafontaine, and Corneille three Frenchmen in whom he took generous pride, and writers whom no subsequent critic has ever anatomized with one half of his skill. The translation is by Rowe the dramatist. taine-a fac simile of our delightful English poet, Gay : and stupid, knows neither how to speak or "A person who appears dull, sottish to relate what he has seen. If he sets to write, no man does it better; he makes animals, stones and trees talk, and everything which cannot talk: his works are full of nothing but elegance, ease, natural sense and delicacy." Corneille concludes the noble triumvirate. "Another is plain, timorous, and tirefor another, and judges not of the goodness some in conversation, mistakes one word of his writings but by the money they bring him in; knows not to recite or to read his own hand. Leave him to compose and he is not inferior to Augustus, Pompey, Nicodemus and Heraclius; he is a king and a great king, a politician, a philosopher; he describes the Romans, and they are greater and more Romans in his verse than in their history." It was seldom, however, he had such men to sit to him for their portraits; he passes short but pithy criticisms on Molière, Bossuet, and several other of his great contemporaries; but on none is a judgment passed more fastidiously correct, or a compliment more delicately as well as heartily expressed, than on those just quoted. His particular excellence, however, lay not as much in portrait, as in general reflection. He had a thorough knowledge of the heart, and could trace with unerring skill the sinuous windings of the affections. He was also completely acquainted with all the mixed modes of artificial life. On all serious topics he is earnest and apparently sincere, nor did he fall into the slough of French Philosophy-atheism. On the contrary, he never alludes to the Supreme Being without respect and awe. His general cast of mind was that of one governed by the strictest rules of propriety, not one anxious to be distinguished as well by a glaring defect as anything else. Judgment predominated over his other faculties, though he also possessed keen wit, the acutest penetration, fine sentiment and finished taste. As an author, though far from voluminous, his only other works being a translation of Theophrastus' characters, and a few addresses to the French Academy, he is remarkably well versed in all the arts and niceties of composition. To substantiate this latter assertion we will produce only The following is a portrait of Lafon- three or four passages. "Rabelais is incomprehensible; his book is an inexplicable enigma, a mere chimera; a woman's face with the feet and tail of a serpent, or some beast more deformed; a monstrous connection of fine and ingenious morality with a mixture of beastliness; where 'tis bad, 'tis abominable, and fit for the diversion of the stable: and where good, it is exquisite, and may entertain the most delicate." ""Tis as much a trade to make a book as to make a watch; there's something more than wit requisite to make an author." "We think of things differently and express them in a term altogether as different: by a sentence, an argument, or some other figure-a parallel or a simple comparison, by a story at length or a single passage by a description or a picture.' "To express truth is to write naturally, forcibly and delicately." "The pleasure of criticising takes away from us the pleasure of being sensibly touched with the finest things," &c. "A modern author commonly proves the ancients inferior to us in two ways, by reason and example: he takes the reason from his particular opinion, and the example from his own writings." Terence wanted only warmth. What purity, what exactness, what politeness, what elegance, and what characters. Molière wanted only to avoid jargon, and to write purely. What fire! what nature! what a source of good pleasantry! what imitation of manners! what images! what satire! What a man might be made out of these two comic writers!" We might multiply extracts, but must give others of a different kind. To determine his fine insight into the ways of the world, pages might be taken almost indiscriminately from the body of the work, but a few sentences must suffice. The following sentences are worthy of the subtlest politician that ever "schemed his hour upon the stage." "He is far gone in cunning, who makes the people believe he is but indifferently cunning." "Among such as out of cunning hear all but say little do you talk less; or if you will talk much, speak little to the purpose." "What a subtle contrivance is it to make rich presents in courtship, which are not paid for,but after marriage are to be returned in specie !" "We can't forbear even the company of those persons whom we hate and deride." One would think the writer must have been a mere knave and an arrant dissembler, yet was he a man of almost feminine sensibility. This at least should prove it, (allowing his sincerity :) though they are forbidden, 'tis natural to desire at least that they were allowed. Nothing can be more charming than they, except the pleasure of knowing how to renounce them by virtue." Yet other more worldly maxims displayed his knowledge of the inconstant fair. "The woman of the world looks on a gardener as a gardener, and a mason as a ma son. Your recluse ladies look on a mason as a man and a gardener as a man.' "Some ladies are liberal to the church as well as to their lovers; and being both gallant and charitable, are provided with places within the rails of the altar, where they read their billet-doux, aud where, for anything you can see of them, you would think them at their prayers to Heaven." "The woman who has her eye constantly fixed on one particular person, or whose eyes you may observe constantly to avoid him, makes us conclude but one and the same thing of her." "The women are at little trouble to express what they do not feel; the men are at less still to express what they do." "Sometimes it happens a woman conceals from a man the passion she has for him, while he only feigns the passion he has for her." The last sentence reveals the acme of finesse in the mere Art of Love, as practiced the world over, but such as a Frenchman only would be likely to re mark. His idea of the pleasantest company, is after all the true one: "The best society and conversation is that in which the heart has a greater share than the head." We might quote pages, if not the entire volume, but we shall content ourselves with only these epigrams, as full of wit as of wisdom. "There are two ways at Court of dismissing or discharging servants and dependents to be angry with 'em, or make 'em so angry with us that they resent it." "The Court is like a marble structure that is, very hard but very polished." "Tis possible to have some people's confidence, without having their hearts; but he who has the heart has no need of "A fine face is the finest of all sights; confidence-every thing is open to him. and the sweetest music the sound of her voice whom we love." And this: "There are some pleasures to be met with in the course of life which are so dear to us, and some engagements so soft and tender "In friendship we only see the faults which may be prejudicial to our friendsin love we see none but those by which we suffer ourselves." In fine, the mind of La Bruyère was not one of great capacity, nor of extreme loftiness, nor yet was it very profound; but it was as nice, delicate, acute, and of as fine a grain, within its limits, as that of any man that ever lived. There is but one other French author with whom La Bruyère can be compared, and that is Rochefoucault; though the latter has published so little that he can hardly be called an author. Still he is an original thinker, a character few authors can boast. They were both of them men who looked upon the world and its doings with the calm eyes of philosophers and men of the world. They had both the same solidity of judgment and quickness of observation. As writers they both exhibited powers of great condensation, and employed the same brilliant style. The general character of his morality is not of a very lofty or unattainable nature, but suited to men of business and men of the world. He was in prose what Pope was in poetry, the author for the man of sense. He further possessed a great deal of true wit of the kind that grows out of shrewdness and satire. Although he never (wisely) pretended to form a system, or pompously to usher in a new discovery, yet he has certainly said some new things on the most familiar topics. Where the matter of his remarks is old the manner compensates for it. The latter is fresh and sparkling, and produces the same effect upon the reader as fine elocuon does on an auditory. La Bruyère we have placed foremost in the list of French moralists, although Montaigne in point of time comes first, and in the opinion of many in point of excellence also. The latter moralist is more of the author, however, and the style (the perfection of prose epigram) is classic; while Montaigne, doubtless the greater man and bolder thinker, has much less of the artist and professed author about him. Why Charron is called by Pope more wise, whether in irony or from the title of his work of wisdom, (no very strong proof of his possession of it,) we agree with Hazlitt in thinking an enigma hardly worth the solution. In point of fact, Charron is a mere cold transcriber of the morality of the ancient philosophers. Pascal, a far higher name, lies quite out of the scope of our present criticism, being rather a devotional than a merely moral writer in his Pensées. Stephens has done all for his fame that is necessary; yet the same brilliant writer has neglected, (if we do not strangely mistake,) in his article on the Port Roy alists, even to mention the name of Ni- Meantime we proceed with our present purpose, and present the reader with sketches of Montaigne, by his eminent critics: the one, (Mr. Hallam,) rather a historian than a belles letter-ist, and generally cold, yet who quite forgets his indifference in speaking of Montaigne, while he is at the same time altogether judicious and discriminating; the other, Hazlitt, the chief of modern critics, whose admirable literary portrait supersedes the necessity of an original draught, that could after all be little else than a copy. We append the two criticisms as a literary study, also affording a fine contrast, and the opportunity of comparing." The Essays of Montaigne make, in several respects, an epoch in literature-less on account of their real importance or of the moral truths they contain, than of their influence on the taste and opinions of Europe. They are the first provocatio ad populum-the first appeals from the porch and the academy to the haunts of busy and of idle men-the first book that taught the unlearned reader to observe and reflect for himself on questions of moral philosobhy. In an age when every topic of this nature was treated systematically, and in a didactic form, he broke out without connection of chapters, with all the digressions that levity and garrulous egotism could suggest; with a very delightful, but at that time most unusual, rapidity of transition from seriousness to gaiety." The chief defect of Montaigne's manner arose from perhaps one of the most pleasing traits of his intellectual character: he was a loose and rambling writer, because he was an unconstrained and independent thinker. His style is rarely terse, but his thoughts are never formal or pedantic. He was, as a writer, so much of the familiar gossip as to lose the strictly literary and philosophic character. He had no system of his own, but then he had many good thoughts on all the systems of the speculatists. No conventionalist in his opinion or habits, he neglected, perhaps a little too much, the proper restraints of style and artistic form. Yet out of his defects arose some of the fore most of his excellences. If he is rambling, he is also comprehensive; his mind took a wide scope, that included much that might have been omitted. Many of his quotations, perhaps, only serve to precede equally fine thoughts of his own, or to fire his invention with the desire of rivalry. He is often tedious from an excessive love of detail, from a painful love of the truth, or from a constitutional ingenuity that required to make the most of every thing. To a modern reader, the great evil of his style is his want of precision and concise force. He is apt to look on all sides of a subject, rather than directly at it. He swoops widely before he pounces, hawk-like, on the very heart and vitals of his theme. He is not, however, to be judged as critically as later writers. In his day the French language was not formed, and hence his style, or rather no style, is not to be scrutinized too closely. The sketch of Montagne has been often drawn. His prodigality of quotation rivals even old Burton's. His obscenity, a literary taint similar to that of Rabelais, Sterne, Swift, Smollett, and Gibbon. The inappropriate titles to his chapters, &c., have been sufficiently noticed. On the favorable side, how much can be said for him of his admirable practical sense, his wide toleration, his humanity, his wide and just views of life and the human heart, his fine unerring judgment of men and books, his cordiality, his honesty, his genuine feeling. But all this has been so much better said than we can possibly repeat it, by an eminent critic, Hazlitt, in one of his most admirable critical analyses, that we transcribe his literary portrait of Montaigne, equal to a fine painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. "The great merit of Montaigne, then, was that he may be said to have been the first who had the courage to say as an author what he felt as a man. And as courage is generally the effect of conscious strength, he was probably led to do so by the richness, truth, and force of his own observations on books and men. He was, in the truest sense, a man of original mind; that is, he had the power of looking at things for himself, or as they really were, instead of blindly trusting to, and fondly repeating, what others told him that they were. He got rid of the go-cart of prejudice and affectation, with the learned lumber that follows at their heels, because he could do without them. In taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator, or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed through his mind in its native simplicity and force, what he thought any ways worth communicating. He did not, in the abstract chathat could be said upon a subject; but what, racter of an author, undertake to say all in his capacity as an inquirer after truth, he happened to know about it. He was neither a pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to know all things, nor that all things were bound to conform to what he had fancied, or would have them to be. In treating of men and manners, he spoke of them as he found them, not according to preconcerted notions and abstract dogmas; and he began by In criteaching us what he himself was. with rules and systems, but told us what he ticising books, he did not compare them saw to like or dislike in them. He did not take his standard of excellence "according to an exact scale" of Aristotle, or fall out with a work that was good for anything, because not one of the angles at the four corners was a right one.' He was, in a word, the first author who was not a bookmaker, and who wrote not to make con verts of others to established creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of know not which to be most charmed with, the truth of things. In this respect we the author or the man. There is an inexpressible franknesss and sincerity, as well as power, in what he writes. There is no attempt at imposition or concealment, no juggling tricks or solemn mouthing, no labored attempts at proving himself always in the right and everybody else in the wrong: he says what is uppermost, lays open what floats at the top or the bottom of his mind, and deserves Pope's character of him, where he professes to pour out all as plain, As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.' He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to me as much superior to a common bookworm, as a library of real books is superior to a book-case, painted and lettered on the outside with the names of celebrated works. As he was the first to attempt this new way of writing, so the same strong natural impulse which prompted the under. taking carried him to the end of the course. The same force and honesty of mind which urged him to throw off the shackles of custom and prejudice, would enable him to complete his triumph over them. Nearly all the thinking of the two last centuries, |