The lively sequence of these complaints implies that
they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet
the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment with-
out some study and some retouching.
they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet
the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment with-
out some study and some retouching.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
2139 (#337) ###########################################
BOËTIUS
2139
But I can easily instruct you by an example, so that you may
clearly enough perceive that this present life is very like a
shadow, and in that shadow no man can attain the true good.
If any very great man is driven from his country, or goes on
his lord's errand, and so comes to a foreign people, where no
man knows him, nor he any man, nor even knows the language,
do you think his greatness can make him honorable in that
land? Of course it cannot. But if dignity were natural to
wealth and were its own, or again if wealth were the rich man's
own, then it could not forsake him. Let the man who possessed
them be in whatsoever land he might, then his wealth and his
dignity would be with him. But because the wealth and the
power are not his own, they forsake him; and because they have
no natural good in themselves, they go away like a shadow or
smoke. Yet the mistaken opinion and fancy of unwise men
judge that power is the highest good. It is entirely otherwise.
When a great man is either among foreigners, or among wise
men in his own country, his wealth counts nothing to either one
when they learn that he was exalted for no virtue, but through
the applause of the ignorant. But if his power arose from any
personal merit, he would keep that even if he lost the power.
He would not lose the good that came from nature; that would
always follow him and always make him honorable, whatever
land he was in.
Worthless and very false is the glory of this world! Concern-
ing this a certain poet formerly sung. When he contemned this
present life, he said:-O glory of this world! wherefore do erring
men call thee, with false voice, glory, when thou art none! - For
man more frequently has great renown, and great glory, and
great honor, through the opinion of the unwise, than he has
through his deserts. But tell me now, what is more unmeet
than this; or why men may not rather be ashamed of themselves
than rejoice, when they hear that any one belies them. Though
men even rightly praise any one of the good, he ought not the
sooner to rejoice immoderately at the people's words. But at
this he ought to rejoice, that they speak truth of him. Though
he rejoice at this, that they spread his name, it is not the sooner
so extensively spread as he persuades himself; for they cannot
spread it over all the earth, though they may in some land;
for though it be to one known, yet it is to another unknown.
Though he in this land be celebrated, yet is he in another not
## p. 2140 (#338) ###########################################
2140
BOËTIUS
celebrated. Therefore is the people's favor to be held by every
man for nothing; since it comes not to every man according to
his deserts, nor indeed remains always to any one. Consider
first concerning noble birth. If any one boast of it, how vain
and how useless is the boast; for every one knows that all men
come from one father and from one mother. Or again, concern-
ing the people's favor, and concerning their applause, I know
not why we rejoice at it. Though they whom the vulgar ap-
plaud be illustrious, yet are they more illustrious and more
rightly to be applauded who are dignified by virtues. For no
man is really the greater or the more praiseworthy for the excel-
lence of another, or for his virtues, if he himself has it not. Are
you ever the fairer for another man's beauty? A man is little
the better though he have a good father, if he himself is inca-
pable of anything. Therefore I advise that you rejoice in other
men's good and their nobility, but so far only that you ascribe
it not to yourself as your own; because every man's good, and
his nobility, is more in the mind than in the flesh. This only,
indeed, I know of good in nobility: that it shames many a man
if he is worse than his ancestors were, and he therefore endeav
ors with all his power to imitate the manners of some one of
the best, and his virtues.
## p. 2141 (#339) ###########################################
2141
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
(1636-1711)
HE name of Louis XIV. suggests ultra-lavishness in life and
taste; a time when French society, surfeited with pleasure,
demanded a stimulus of continual novelty in current litera-
ture. The natural result was preciosité, hyperbole, falsetto sentiment,
which ranked the unusual above the natural, clever conceit above
careful workmanship. It was tainted with artificiality, and now seems
mawkish and superficial.
But Boileau changed all that. Perhaps no author unendowed with
genius has ever so influenced literature.
was usu-
Aside from his work, the man and his
life seem essentially commonplace. Nich-
olas Boileau, who, adding another name to
his own,- quite a fashion then,
ally called Despréaux by his contempora-
ries, was born in Paris, in the palace court,
nearly opposite the royal Sainte Chapelle.
He rarely went farther from the city than
to the little house at Auteuil, where he
spent twenty summers. So he knew his
Paris very intimately, and was limited too
by knowing only her life and thought. To
his repressed youth, guarded by a strict
father and a cross servant,- for his mother
died in his babyhood, -is sometimes attrib-
uted his lack of emotional quality. But his was not an intense nature,
and probably no training could have made the didactic poet lyric or
passionate. Sincerity and common-sense were his predominating qual-
ities, and he had the rare faculty of obedience to his own instincts.
He first studied for the priesthood, but anything like mysticism was
too repellent to his matter-of-fact mind. Then, as many of his family
had been lawyers, he naturally turned toward that career. But the
practice as taught him seemed senseless and arbitrary. Its rational
basis upon a logical theory only dawned upon him later. In spite of
his literary tastes, there was something extremely mundane about the
pleasure-loving bachelor, so fond of good eating and of jovial café
revels with Racine, Furetière, Ninon de L'Enclos, and other witty Bohe-
mians. With them he was much happier than in the more fastidious
—
BOILEAU
## p. 2142 (#340) ###########################################
2142
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
society of the Hôtel Rambouillet, from which he retired after reading
aloud a satiric poem not favorably received. Neither was he happy
at court, in spite of the favor of Louis XIV. , who, entertained by his
rough honesty, gave him a pension of two thousand francs. Later,
when appointed with Racine to write a history of the reign,- that
unfortunate history which was accidentally burned,—we find him an
unwilling follower on royal expeditions, his ungainly horsemanship
the mock of high-bred courtiers. In fact, he was bourgeois through
and through, and not at ease with the aristocrats. He was thrifty
bourgeois too; so often called miserly as well as malicious that it is
pleasant to remember certain illustrations of his nobler side. The
man who offered to resign his own pension if that of old disfavored
Corneille might be continued, and when the latter was forced to
sell his library, paid him its full value and then left him in lifelong
possession,-was generous if he did love to save sous. His was a fine
independence, which felt his art too lofty for purchase, and would
accept nothing from the booksellers.
He had always wished to be a poet. Feeble of body, asthmatic,
and in later life deaf and almost deprived of voice, he found in
writing all the charm of a brilliant and ingenious game. Then too
he had something definite to say, as all his work consistently testifies.
Neither rich nor poor, without family cares, he could give himself
unreservedly to authorship. In 1660 he published a satire upon the
vices of Paris, which inaugurated his great success. Seven satires
appeared in 1666, and he afterward added five others. Their mali-
cious wit, their novel form, the harmonious swing of the couplet
rhyme, forced immediate attention. They held up contemporary lit-
erary weaknesses to scorn, and indulged in the most merciless per-
sonalities, sparing not even his own brother, the poet Gilles Boileau.
All retorts upon himself the author bore with complacent superiority
which forced his adversaries to feel worsted.
From 1666 to 1774 most of the 'Epistles' were written; and also
his best known work, 'L'Art poétique' (The Art of Poetry). In the
satires he had been destructive, but he was too practical to be neg-
ative. The Art of Poetry,' modeled after Horace's work of that
name, offers the theory of poetic composition. It is a work in four
cantos of couplets: the first setting forth general rules of metrical
composition; the second a dissertation upon different forms-ode,
sonnet, pastoral, and others; the third treating tragedy, comedy, and
epic poetry; and the last consisting of general reflections and advice
to authors. Briefly stated, Boileau's desire was to establish literature
upon a foundation of unchanging laws. Why did some works speed-
ily die while others endure through the centuries? Because works
akin to the eternal classics did not, like much contemporary writing,
## p. 2143 (#341) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2143
reflect the trivial and evanescent. They contained what is peren-
nially true of humanity; and stated this in a simple, interesting, and
reasonable way. Above all, Boileau demands truth in subject, and
the conscientious workmanship which finds the most suitable form of
expression. To see a word at the end of a couplet only because it
rhymes with the word above it, he finds inexcusable. Without a
method resulting in unity, clearness, and proportion, writing is not
literature. Later, in his 'Reflections upon Longinus,' Boileau repeated
and emphasized these views.
His mock-heroic poem 'Le Lutrin' (The Reading-Desk), ridiculing
clerical pettinesses, was strong in realistic descriptions, and was per.
haps his most popular work.
A modern poet's definition of poetry as "the heat and height of
sane emotion" would have been unintelligible to Boileau. Deficient
in imagination, he always saw life on its material side, and was irri-
tated by any display of emotion not reducible to logic. Sọ his
poetry is sensible, clear argument in exquisitely careful metre. His
great strength lay in a taste which recognized harmony and fitness
instinctively. To us his quality is best translated by the dainty, per-
fect couplets of his imitator Pope. His talent, essentially French in
its love of effect and classification, has strewn the language with
clever saws, and his works have been studied as authoritative models
by generation after generation of students.
But after all, it is less as a poet than as a critic, "the lawgiver
of the French Parnassus," that the world has always known Boileau.
Before him the art of criticism had hardly existed. Authors had
received indiscriminate praise or blame, usually founded upon inter-
ested motives or personal bias; but there had been little comparison
with an acknowledged standard. This slashing reviewer in verse,"
as Saintsbury calls him, was a severe pedagogue, but his public did
learn their lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded nor
profound in attainments, was occasionally unjust; but he showed
readers why they should praise or blame; taught them appreciation
of his greater friends Molière and Racine; and pointed out to authors
what their purpose should be. With a greater creative power seek-
ing self-expression, he might have accomplished less in literary
reform.
## p. 2144 (#342) ###########################################
2144
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
ADVICE TO AUTHORS
From The Art of Poetry'
THE
HERE is a kind of writer pleased with sound,
Whose fustian head with clouds is compassed
round-
No reason can disperse them with its light;
Learn then to think, ere you pretend to write
As your idea's clear, or else obscure,
The expression follows, perfect or impure;
What we conceive with ease we can express;
Words to the notions flow with readiness.
Observe the language well in all you write,
And swerve not from it in your loftiest flight.
The smoothest verse and the exactest sense
Displease if uncouth language give offense;
A barbarous phrase no reader can approve;
Nor bombast, noise, or affectation love.
In short, without pure language, what you write
Can never yield us profit or delight.
Take time for thinking; never work in haste;
And value not yourself for writing fast;
A rapid poem, with such fury writ,
Shows want of judgment, not abounding wit.
More pleased we are to see a river lead
His gentle streams along a flowery mead,
Than from high banks to hear loud torrents roar,
With foamy waters, on a muddy shore.
Gently make haste, of labor not afraid;
A hundred times consider what you've said;
Polish, repolish, every color lay,
And sometimes add, but oftener take away.
'Tis not enough, when swarming faults are writ,
That here and there are scattered sparks of wit;
Each object must be fixed in the true place,
And differing parts have corresponding grace;
Till, by a curious art disposed, we find
One perfect whole of all the pieces joined.
Keep to your subject close in all you say,
Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray.
## p. 2145 (#343) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
The public censure for your writings fear,
And to yourself be critic most severe;
Fantastic wits their darling follies love,
But find you faithful friends that will reprove,
That on your works may look with careful eyes,
And of your faults be zealous enemies.
Lay by an author's pride and vanity,
And from a friend a flatterer descry,
Who seems to like, but means not what he says;
Embrace true counsel, but suspect false praise.
A sycophant will everything admire;
Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire;
All is divine! there's not a word amiss!
He shakes with joy and weeps with tenderness;
He overpowers you with his mighty praise.
Truth never moves in those impetuous ways.
A faithful friend is careful of your fame,
And freely will your heedless errors blame;
He cannot pardon a neglected line,
But verse to rule and order will confine,
Reprove of words the too-affected sound,—
"Here the sense flags, and your expression's bound,
Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain;
Your term's improper;-make it just and plain. "
Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use.
But authors partial to their darling muse
Think to protect it they have just pretense,
And at your friendly counsel take offense.
"Said you of this, that the expression's flat?
Your servant, sir, you must excuse me that,"
He answers you. "This word has here no grace,
Pray leave it out. "-"That, sir, 's the properest place. "
"This term I like not. "-"'Tis approved by all. "
Thus, resolute not from one fault to fall,
If there's a symbol as to which you doubt,
'Tis a sure reason not to blot it out.
2145
Yet still he says you may his faults confute,
And over him your power is absolute.
But of his feigned humility take heed:
'Tis a bait laid to make you hear him read;
And when he leaves you, happy in his muse,
Restless he runs some other to abuse,
1
1
1
1
IV-135
## p. 2146 (#344) ###########################################
2146
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
And often finds; for in our scribbling times
No fool can lack a fool to praise his rhymes;
The flattest work has here within the court
Met with some zealous ass for its support;
And in all times a forward scribbling fop
Has found some greater fool to cry him up.
THE PASTORAL, THE ELEGY, THE ODE, AND THE EPIGRAM
From The Art of Poetry'
SA fair nymph, when rising from her bed,
Α
With sparkling diamonds dresses not her head,
But without gold, or pearl, or costly scents,
Gathers from neighboring fields her ornaments:
Such, lovely in its dress, but plain withal,
Ought to appear a perfect Pastoral.
Its humble method nothing has of fierce,
But hates the rattling of a lofty verse;
There native beauty pleases and excites,
And never with harsh sounds the ear affrights.
But in this style a poet, often spent
In rage, throws by his rural instrument,
And vainly, when disordered thoughts abound,
Amidst the eclogue makes the trumpet sound;
Pan flies alarmed into the neighboring woods,
And frighted nymphs dive down into the floods.
Opposed to this, another, low in style,
Makes shepherds speak a language low and vile;
His writings, flat and heavy, without sound,
Kissing the earth and creeping on the ground;
You'd swear that Randal, in his rustic strains,
Again was quavering to the country swains,
And changing, without care of sound or dress,
Strephon and Phyllis into Tom and Bess.
'Twixt these extremes 'tis hard to keep the right:
For guides take Virgil and read Theocrite;
Be their just writings, by the gods inspired,
Your constant pattern, practiced and admired.
By them alone you'll easy comprehend
How poets without shame may condescend
To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers and fruit,
To stir up shepherds and to tune the flute;
## p. 2147 (#345) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2147
Of love's rewards to tell the happy hour,
Daphne a tree, Narcissus make a flower,
And by what means the eclogue yet has power
To make the woods worthy a conqueror;
This of their writings is the grace and flight;
Their risings lofty, yet not out of sight.
The Elegy, that loves a mournful style,
With unbound hair weeps at a funeral pile;
It paints the lover's torments and delights,
A mistress flatters, threatens, and invites;
But well these raptures if you'll make us see,
You must know love as well as poetry.
I hate those lukewarm authors, whose forced fire
In a cold style describes a hot desire;
That sigh by rule, and raging in cold blood,
Their sluggish muse whip to an amorous mood.
Their transports feigned appear but flat and vain;
They always sigh, and always hug their chain,
Adore their prisons and their sufferings bless,
Make sense and reason quarrel as they please.
'Twas not of old in this affected tone
That smooth Tibullus made his amorous moan;
Nor Ovid, when, instructed from above,
By nature's rule he taught the art of love.
The heart in elegies forms the discourse.
The Ode is bolder and has greater force;
Mounting to heaven in her ambitious flight,
Amongst the gods and heroes takes delight;
Of Pisa's wrestlers tells the sinewy force,
And sings the lusty conqueror's glorious course;
To Simois's streams does fierce Achilles bring,
And makes the Ganges bow to Britain's king.
Sometimes she flies like an industrious bee,
And robs the flowers by nature's chemistry;
Describes the shepherd's dances, feasts, and bliss,
And boasts from Phyllis to surprise a kiss,
When gently she resists with feigned remorse,
That what she grants may seem to be by force.
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.
Unlike those fearful poets whose cold rime
In all their raptures keeps exactest time;
## p. 2148 (#346) ###########################################
2148
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
That sing the illustrious hero's mighty praise-
Lean writers! - by the terms of weeks and days,
And dare not from least circumstances part,
But take all towns by strictest rules of art.
Apollo drives those fops from his abode;
And some have said that once the humorous god,
Resolving all such scribblers to confound,
For the short Sonnet ordered this strict bound,
Set rules for the just measure and the time,
The easy-running and alternate rime;
But above all, those licenses denied
Which in these writings the lame sense supplied,
Forbade a useless line should find a place,
Or a repeated word appear with grace.
A faultless sonnet, finished thus, would be
Worth tedious volumes of loose poetry.
A hundred scribbling authors, without ground,
Believe they have this only phœnix found,
When yet the exactest scarce have two or three,
Among whole tomes, from faults and censure free;
The rest, but little read, regarded less,
Are shoveled to the pastry from the press.
Closing the sense within the measured time,
'Tis hard to fit the reason to the rime.
The Epigram, with little art composed,
Is one good sentence in a distich closed.
These points, that by Italians first were prized,
Our ancient authors knew not, or despised;
The vulgar, dazzled with their glaring light,
To their false pleasures quickly they invite;
But public favor so increased their pride,
They overwhelmed Parnassus with their tide.
The Madrigal at first was overcome,
And the proud Sonnet fell by the same doom;
With these grave Tragedy adorned her flights,
And mournful Elegy her funeral rites.
A hero never failed them on the stage:
Without his point a lover durst not rage;
The amorous shepherds took more care to prove
True to his point, than faithful to their love.
Each word, like Janus, had a double face,
And prose, as well as verse, allowed it place;
## p. 2149 (#347) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2149
The lawyer with conceits adorned his speech,
The parson without quibbling could not preach
At last affronted reason looked about,
And from all serious matters shut them out;
Declared that none should use them without shame,
Except a scattering, in the epigram —
-
Provided that by art, and in due time,
They turned upon the thought, and not the rime.
Thus in all parts disorders did abate;
Yet quibblers in the court had leave to prate,
Insipid jesters and unpleasant fools,
A corporation of dull, punning drolls.
'Tis not but that sometimes a dextrous muse
May with advantage a turned sense abuse,
And on a word may trifle with address;
But above all, avoid the fond excess,
And think not, when your verse and sense are lame,
With a dull point to tag your epigram.
TO MOLIÈRE
From The Satires'
UNE
NEQUALED genius, whose warm fancy knows
No rhyming labor, no poetic throes;
To whom Apollo has unlocked his store;
Whose coin is struck from pure Parnassian ore;
Thou, dextrous master, teach thy skill to me,
And tell me, Molière, how to rhyme like thee!
You never falter when the close comes round,
Or leave the substance to preserve the sound;
You never wander after words that fly,
For all the words you need before you lie.
But I, who smarting for my sins of late —
With itch of rhyme am visited by fate,
Expend on air my unavailing force,
And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse.
In vain I often muse from dawn till night:
When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white;
If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien,
I scarcely can forbear to name the Dean;
If asked to tell the strains that purest flow,
My heart says Virgil, but my pen Quinault;
-
## p. 2150 (#348) ###########################################
2150
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
In short, whatever I attempt to say,
Mischance conducts me quite the other way.
At times, fatigued and fretted with the pain,
When every effort for relief is vain,
The fruitless chase I peevishly give o'er,
And swear a thousand times to write no more:
But, after thousand vows, perhaps by chance,
Before my careless eyes the couplets dance.
Then with new force my flame bursts out again,
Pleased I resume the paper and the pen;
And, all my anger and my oaths forgot,
I calmly muse and resolutely blot.
Yet, if my eager hand, in haste to rhyme,
Should tack an empty couplet at a time,
Great names who do the same I might adduce;
Nay, some who keep such hirelings for their use.
Need blooming Phyllis be described in prose
By any lover who has seen a rose?
Who can forget heaven's masterpiece, her eye,
Where, within call, the Loves and Graces lie?
Who can forget her smile, devoid of art,
Her heavenly sweetness and her frozen heart?
How easy thus forever to compound,
And ring new changes on recurring sound;
How easy, with a reasonable store
Of useful epithets repeated o'er,
Verb, substantive, and pronoun, to transpose,
And into tinkling metre hitch dull prose.
But I who tremble o'er each word I use,
And all that do not aid the sense refuse,
Who cannot bear those phrases out of place
Which rhymers stuff into a vacant space-
Ponder my scrupulous verses o'er and o'er,
And when I write five words, oft blot out four.
Plague on the fool who taught us to confine
The swelling thought within a measured line;
Who first in narrow thraldom fancy pent,
And chained in rhyme each pinioned sentiment.
Without this toil, contentment's soothing balm
Might lull my languid soul in listless calm:
Like the smooth prebend how might I recline,
And loiter life in mirth and song and wine!
## p. 2151 (#349) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
Roused by no labor, with no care opprest,
Pass all my nights in sleep, my days in rest.
My passions and desires obey the rein;
No mad ambition fires my temperate vein;
The schemes of busy greatness I decline,
Nor kneel in palaces at Fortune's shrine.
In short, my life had been supremely blest
If envious rhyme had not disturbed my rest:
But since this freakish fiend began to roll
His idle vapors o'er my troubled soul,
Since first I longed in polished verse to please,
And wrote with labor to be read with ease,
Nailed to my chair, day after day I pore
On what I write and what I wrote before;
Retouch each line, each epithet review,
Or burn the paper and begin anew.
While thus my labors lengthen into years,
I envy all the race of sonneteers.
Hail, happy Scudére! whose prolific brain
Brings forth a monthly volume without pain;
What though thy works, offending every rule,
Proclaim their author an insipid fool;
Still have they found, whate'er the critic says,
Traders to buy and emptier fools to praise.
And, truly, if in rhymes the couplets close,
What should it matter that the rest is prose?
Who stickles now for antiquated saws,
Or cramps his verses with pedantic laws?
The fool can welcome every word he meets,
With placid joy contemplating his feats;
And while each stanza swells his wondering breast
Admires them all, yet thinks the last the best.
But towering Genius, hopeless to attain
That unknown summit which he pants to gain,
Displeased himself, enchanting all beside,
Scorns each past effort that his strength supplied,
And filling every reader with delight,
Repents the hour when he began to write.
To you, who know how justly I complain,
To you I turn for medicine to my pain!
Grant me your talent, and impart your store,
Or teach me, Molière, how to rhyme no more.
2151
## p. 2152 (#350) ###########################################
2152
GASTON BOISSIER
GASTON BOISSIER
(1823-)
M
ARIE LOUIS GASTON BOISSIER is known in Paris as one of the
most prominent professors of the Collège de France, and to
the outside world as the author of a number of scholarly
books of essays, most of them on Roman subjects. Born at Nîmes
in 1823, his life has been devoted entirely to literature. Soon after
his graduation from the École Normale he was made professor of
rhetoric at Angoulême, and later held the same position at Nîmes.
He has received the degree of Doctor, and occupied a number of high
positions, culminating in that of professor
of Latin poetry in the Collège de France,
which he still holds. His works have a
high value in the world of scholars, and
have won him the red ribbon of the Le-
gion of Honor, as well as a seat in the
Académie Française, which he entered in
1876. His best known works, 'Cicero et
ses Amis (Cicero and His Friends), was
crowned by the Académie; and Promé-
nades Archéologiques, Rome et Naples,'
written in 1880, has been translated into
English, as has also his life of Madame de
Sévigné, which contains many charming
bits of comment on the seventeenth cen-
he is quiet and
and writes with
He contributes
tury. As a biographer, and also as a historian,
accurate - never dry. He has great charm of style,
elegance, correctness, clearness, and originality.
largely, also, to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to scientific publi-
cations.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AS A LETTER-WRITER
From the Life of Madame de Sévigné
HE passages just cited appear so simple, and utter so nat-
urally what we all experience, that they are read the first
time without surprise. There seems nothing remarkable
about them except this very simplicity and naturalness. Now,
## p. 2153 (#351) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2153
these are not the qualities which attract attention. It is difficult
to appreciate them in works where they occur, and it is only by
reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their
importance. But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished
to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language
strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bun-
gling.
The lively sequence of these complaints implies that
they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet
the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment with-
out some study and some retouching. It is sometimes said that
a strong passion at once creates the language to express it. I
greatly doubt this. On the contrary, it seems to me that when
the soul is violently agitated, the words by which we try to ex-
press our feelings always appear dull and cold; we are tempted
to make use of exaggerated and far-fetched expressions in order
to rise to the level of our sorrow or joy. Hence come some-
times excessive terms, discordant metaphors. We might be in-
clined to regard these as thought out at leisure and in cold
blood, while on the contrary they are the product of the first
impulse of the effort we instinctively make to find an expression
corresponding to the intensity of our passion. There is nothing
of this kind in Madame de Sévigné's letters; and however vio-
lent her grief may be, it always speaks in accurate and fitting
language. This is a valuable quality, and one extremely rare.
That we may not be surprised at finding it so highly developed
in her, we need only remember what has just been said of the
way in which she was unconsciously prepared to become a great
writer.
Another characteristic of Madame de Sévigné's letters, not less
remarkable, is that generally her most loving messages are clev-
erly expressed. I do not refer merely to certain isolated phrases
that have sometimes appeared rather affected. "The north wind
bound for Grignan makes me ache for your chest. " "My dear,
how the burden within you weighs me down! " "I dare not
read your letters for fear of having read them. " These are only
occasional flashes; but almost always, when on the point of giv-
ing way to all her emotion, she gives her phrase an ingenious
turn, she makes witty observations, is bright, pleasing, elegant.
All this seems to some readers to proceed from a mind quite
self-possessed, and not so far affected by passion as to be inat-
tentive to elegant diction.
## p. 2154 (#352) ###########################################
2154
GASTON BOISSIER
Just now I placed naturalness among Madame de Sévigné's
leading qualities. There are those who are not of this opinion,
and contend that naturalness is just the merit she most lacks;
but we must define our meaning. Naturalness for each one is
what is conformable to his nature; and as each one of us has a
nature of his own very different from that of his neighbors, nat-
uralness cannot be exactly the same in every instance. Moreover,
education and habit give us each a second nature which often has
more control over us than the original one. In the society in
which Madame de Sévigné lived, people made a point of speaking
wittily. The first few times one appeared in this society, it
required a little study and effort to assume the same tone as the
rest. One had to be on the watch for those pleasant repartees
that, among the frequenters of the Rambouillet and Richelieu
houses, gave the new-comer a good reputation; but after a while
these happy sayings came unsought. To persons trained in such
a school, what might at first sight appear subtle and refined is
ordinary and natural. Whether they speak or write, their ideas
take a certain form which is not the usual one; and bright, witty,
and dainty phrases, which would require labor from others, occur
to them spontaneously.
>>
To be sure, I do not mean that Madame de Sévigné wrote
well without knowing it. This is a thing of which a witty woman
always has an inkling; and besides, her friends did not permit
her to be ignorant of it. "Your letters are delightful," they told
her, "and you are like your letters. It was all the easier to
believe this, because she paid to herself in a whisper such com-
pliments as others addressed to her aloud. One day, when she
had recently written to her friend Dr. Bourdelot, she said to her
daughter, "Brava! what a good answer I sent him! That is a
foolish thing to say, but I had a good, wide-awake pen that
day. " It is very delightful to feel that one has wit, and we can
understand how Madame de Sévigné might sometimes have yielded
to this feeling with some satisfaction. In her most private corre-
spondence, that in which she least thought of the public, we
might note certain passages in which she takes pleasure in elab-
orating and decorating her thought, and in adding to it new
details more and more dainty and ingenious. This she does with-
out effort, to satisfy her own taste and to give herself the pleasure
of expressing her thought agreeably. It has been remarked that
good talkers are not sensitive to the praises of others only: they
## p. 2155 (#353) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2155
also wish to please themselves, independently of the public around
them; and like to hear themselves talk. It might be said in the
same sense that Madame de Sévigné sometimes likes to see herself
write. This is one of those pretty artifices which in women do
not exclude sincerity, and which may be united with naturalness.
Copyrighted by A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.
FRENCH SOCIETY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
From the Life of Madame de Sévigné›
STU
TUDYING the seventeenth century in the histories is one thing,
and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading con-
temporary letters is another and a far different thing. The
two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians,
taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general
characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and
sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and sim-
plicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of see-
ing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there
was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when
we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as
they took place, the opinions of men and things we have drawn
from the historians are greatly modified. We then perceive that
good and evil are at all times mingled, and even that the propor-
tions of the mixture vary less than one would think. Cousin says
somewhere, "In a great age all is great. " It is just the contrary
that is true: there is no age so great that there is not much little-
ness about it; and if we undertake to study history we should
expect this, so as not to reckon without our host. No epoch has
been more celebrated, more admired, than the reign of Louis
XIV. ; there is danger lest the correspondence of Madame de
Sévigné may much abate the warmth of our admiration. She is
constantly telling strange stories that compel us to pause and
reflect. When, in a society represented as so noble, so delicate,
so regular, we meet with so many shameful disorders, so many
ill-assorted households, so many persons whose fortunes are sus-
tained only by dishonest expedients, with great lords buying and
not paying, promising and not keeping their word, borrowing and
never returning, kneeling before ministers and ministers' mis-
tresses, cheating at play like M. de Cessac, living like Caderousse
## p. 2156 (#354) ###########################################
2156
GASTON BOISSIER
at the expense of a great lady, surrendering like Soubise a wife.
to the king, or like Villarceaux a niece, or insisting with Bussy
that "the chariest of their honor should be delighted when such
a good fortune befalls their family," it seems to me we have a
right to conclude that people then were hardly our superiors;
that perhaps in some points we are better than they were; and
that in any case it is not worth while to set them up as models
to the disparagement of our own times.
-
In one respect, however, they were unlike us. In those days
there were certain subjects on which people were generally
agreed, and these were precisely the subjects that now give rise
to the greatest divisions, religion and politics. Not that all
were pious then, — far from it, — but almost all were believers,
and almost none contested the principle of royal authority.
To-day, religious belief and belief in monarchy are well-nigh
extinct; and there are hardly any left of those commonly received
opinions, escaped by none, impregnating all, breathed in like the
air, and always found at the bottom of the heart on occasions of
grave need, despite all the inward changes that experience has
wrought. Is this a good or an evil? Should we rejoice at it or
regret it?
Each one will answer according to his character and
inclinations. Daring minds that feel strong enough to form their
own convictions are glad to be delivered from prejudices inter-
fering with independence of opinion, glad to have free scope.
But the rest, who form the vast majority, who are without such
high aims, and whose life is moreover taken up with other cares,
troubled, uncertain, ill at ease, when they have to settle these
great problems independently. They regret that they can no
longer find the solutions all worked out, and sadly repeat with
Jocelyn:-
-
―
"Ah, why was I born in days stormy and dread,
When the pilgrim of life hath no rest for his head;
When the way disappears; when the spent human mind,
Groping, doubting, still strives some new pathway to find,
Unable to trust in the hopes of the Old
Or to strike out a New from its perishing mold! »
This sort of anguish of spirit was unknown in the seventeenth
century, as Madame de Sévigné's letters clearly show.
Copyrighted by A. C. McClurg & Co. , Chicago.
## p. 2157 (#355) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2157
HOW HORACE LIVED AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE
From The Country of Horace and Virgil
I
T IS very annoying that Horace, who has described with so
many details the employment of his days while he remained
in Rome, should not have thought it necessary to tell us as
clearly how he spent his life in the country. The only thing we
know with certainty is that he was very happy there: he for the
first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor. "I take my
meals," said he, "before household gods that are mine own"
("ante larem proprium vescor"). To have a hearth and domes-
tic gods, to fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master,
was the greatest happiness that could befall a Roman. To enjoy
it, Horace had waited until he was more than thirty years of
age. We have seen that his domain, when he took possession of
it, was very much neglected, and that the house was falling into
ruins. He first had to build and plant. Do not let us pity him;
these cares have their charms. One loves one's house when one
has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land costs us
attaches us to it. He came to it as often as he could, and
always with pleasure. Everything served him as a pretext to
leave Rome. It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia
were approaching—an unbearable time of the year, when all the
town was out of doors; it was the moment to finish a work
which Maecenas had pressingly required. Well, how could any-
thing good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street, the
bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or
receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part
of your time? So he put Plato with Menander into his portman-
teau, took with him the work he had begun, promising to do
wonders, and started for Tibur. But when he was at home, his
good resolutions did not hold out. He had something to do
quite different from shutting himself up in his study. He had
to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers. He went
to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself. He
dug the spade into the field, took out the stones, etc. , to the
great amusement of the neighbors, who marveled both at his
ardor and his clumsiness:
"Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem. "
―
>
## p. 2158 (#356) ###########################################
2158
GASTON BOISSIER
In the evening he received at his table a few of the neigh-
boring proprietors. They were honest folk, who did not speak
ill of their neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had
not for sole topic of conversation the races or the theatre. They
handled most serious questions, and their rustic wisdom found
ready expression in proverbs and apologues. What pleased
Horace above all at these country dinners was that etiquette
was laughed at, that everything was simple and frugal, that one
did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which Varro
had drawn up, and which had become the code of good com-
pany. Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for
the guests the number of cups that must be drained. Every
one ate according to his hunger and drank according to his
thirst. "They were," said Horace, "divine repasts" ("O noctes
cenæque Deum ”).
Yet he did not always stay at home, however great the
pleasure he felt in being there. This steady-going, regular man
thought it right from time to time to put a little irregularity
into one's life. Does not a Grecian sage-Aristotle, I think-
recommend that one excess per month be indulged in, in the
interest of health? It serves at least to break the round of
habit. Such also was the opinion of Horace. Although the
most moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occas-
ional wildness ("dulce est desipere in loco"). With age these
outbursts had become less frequent, yet he still loved to break
the sage uniformity of his existence by some pleasure jaunt.
Then he returned to Præneste, to Baiæ, or to Tarentum, which
he had loved so much in his youth. Once he was unfaithful to
these old affections, and chose for the goal of his journey spots
that were new to him. The occasion of the change was this:
Antonius Musa, a Greek physician, had just cured Augustus
of a dangerous illness, which it had been thought must prove
fatal, by means of cold water. Hydrotherapeutics at once became
fashionable. People deserted the thermal springs, formerly so
much sought after, to go off to Clusium, to Gabii, into the
mountains, where springs of icy water were found. Horace did
like the rest. In the winter of the year 730, instead of going
as usual towards Baiæ, he turned his little steed towards Salerno
and Velia. This was the affair of a season. Next year Marcel-
lus, the Emperor's son-in-law and heir, falling very ill, Antonius.
Musa was hastily sent for, and applied his usual remedy.
But
## p. 2159 (#357) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2159
the remedy no longer healed, and hydrotherapeutics, which had
saved Augustus, did not prevent Marcellus from dying. They
were at once forsaken, and the sick again began following the
road to Baiæ.
When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took
a change of diet. "At home," said he, “I can put up with any-
thing; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale
myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of
bacon. But when I have once left my house, I become more par-
ticular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no
longer suffice me. " So before starting in the direction of Salerno,
where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question
one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether
one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come
back home again as fat as a Phæacian. Above all, he is anxious
to know what is drunk in those parts. He wants a generous
wine to make him eloquent, and "which will give him strength,
and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his young Lucanian sweet-
heart. " We see he pushes precaution a considerable length. He
was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ,
Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman
fashionable world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria
nota "), where he used to put up. When Seneca was at Baiæ, he
lived above a public bath, and he has furnished us a very amus-
ing account of the sounds of all kinds that troubled his rest.
Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet, could not
make a very long stay in those noisy places. His whim gratified,
he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid the
fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks
made it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him.
One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that
his affection for his country estate goes on constantly increasing.
At first, when he had passed a few weeks there, the memory
of Rome used to re-awaken in his thoughts. Those large towns,
which we hate when we are forced to live in them, have only to
be left in order to be regretted! When Horace's slave, taking
an unfair advantage of the liberty of the Saturnalia, tells his
master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches him with never
being pleased where he is:-
"Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem
Tollis ad astra levis ? »
## p. 2160 (#358) ###########################################
2160
GASTON BOISSIER
He was himself very much vexed at his inconstancy, and
accused himself of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur,
and only thinking of Tibur from the moment he found himself
in Rome. " However, he cured himself at last of this levity,
which annoyed him so much. To this he bears witness in his
own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives
to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-
house next door. "As for me," he tells him, "thou knowest
that I am self-consistent, and that each time hated business
recalls me to Rome I leave this spot with sadness. " He doubt.
less arranged matters so as to live more and more at his country
house. He looked forward to a time when it would be possible
for him scarcely ever to leave it, and counted upon it to enable
him to bear more lightly the weight of his closing years.
They are heavy, whatever one may do, and age never comes
without bringing many griefs. Firstly, the long-lived must needs
leave many friends upon the way. Horace lost some to whom
he was very tenderly attached. He had the misfortune to sur-
vive Virgil and Tibullus ten years. What regrets he must have
felt on the death of the great poet, of whom he said he "knew
no soul more bright, and had no better friend"! The great suc
cess of Virgil's posthumous work could only have half consoled
him for his loss, for he regretted in him the man as well as the
poet. He had also great cause to grieve for Mæcenas, whom he
so dearly loved. This favorite of the Emperor, this king of
fashion, whose fortune all men envied, finished by being very
unhappy. It is all very well to take every kind of precaution in
order to insure one's happiness-to fly from business, to seek
pleasure, to amass wealth, to gather clever men about one, to
surround one's self with all the charms of existence; however
one may try to shut the door on them, troubles and sorrows
find a way in. The saddest of it all is that Mæcenas was first
unhappy through his own fault. Somewhat late in life this
prudent, wise man had been foolish enough to marry a coquette,
and to fall deeply in love with her. He had rivals, and among
them the Emperor himself, of whom he dared not be jealous.
He who had laughed so much at others afforded the Romans a
comedy at his own expense. His time was passed in leaving
Terentia and taking her back again. "He has been married
more than a hundred times," said Seneca, "although he has had
but one wife. " To these domestic troubles illness was added.
## p. 2161 (#359) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2161
His health had never been good, and age and sorrows made it
worse. Pliny tells us that he passed three whole years without
being able to sleep. Enduring pain badly, he grieved his friends
beyond measure by his groans. Horace, with whom he contin-
ually conversed about his approaching end, answered him in
beautiful verses: —
"Thou, Mæcenas, die first! Thou, stay of my fortune, adornment
of my life! The gods will not allow it, and I will not consent. Ah!
if Fate, hastening its blows, should tear from me part of myself in
thee, what would betide the other? What should I henceforth do,
hateful unto myself, and but half of myself surviving? »
In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he
was growing old. The hour when one finds one's self face to
face with age is a serious one. Cicero, when approaching it,
tried to give himself courage in advance, and being accustomed
to console himself for everything by writing, he composed his
'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he tries to deck the
closing years of life with certain beauties. He had not to make
use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we do
not know whether he would have found them sufficient when
the moment came. That spirit, so young, so full of life, would
I fear have resigned itself with difficulty to the inevitable deca-
dences of age.
Nor did Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars
Poetica he has drawn a somewhat gloomy picture of it. He
had all the more reason to detest it because it came to him
rather early. In one of those passages where he so willingly
gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair
whitened quickly. As a climax of misfortune he had grown very
fat, and being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to
him. Augustus, in a letter, compares him to one of those meas
ures of liquids which are broader than they are high. If, in
spite of these too evident signs which warned him of his age, he
had tried to deceive himself, there was no lack of persons to
disabuse him. There was the porter of Neæra, who no longer
allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was obliged
to put up with without complaining. "My hair whitening," said
he, warns me not to quarrel. I should not have been so patient
in the time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul. "
Then it was Neæra herself who declined to come when he sum-
moned her, and again resigning himself with a good enough
grace, the poor poet found that after all she was right, and that
it was natural love should prefer youth to ripened age.
«<
IV-136
## p. 2162 (#360) ###########################################
2162
GASTON BOISSIER
·
« Abi,
Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces. "
Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his
friends Tibullus and Virgil. He even had opinions on the sub-
ject of melancholy which differ widely from ours. Whereas,
since Lamartine, we have assumed the habit of regarding sad
ness as one of the essential elements of poetry, he thought on
the contrary that poetry has the privilege of preventing us from
being sad. "A man protected by the Muses," said he, "flings
cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away. " His philosophy
had taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills. However
painful they be, one makes them lighter by bearing them.
he accepted old age because it cannot be eluded, and because no
means have yet been found of living long without growing old.
Death itself did not frighten him. He was not of those who
reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by never thinking
about it. On the contrary, he counsels us to have it always in
mind. "Think that the day which lights you is the last you
have to live. The morrow will have more charm for you if you
have not hoped to see it: "—
« Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora.
BOËTIUS
2139
But I can easily instruct you by an example, so that you may
clearly enough perceive that this present life is very like a
shadow, and in that shadow no man can attain the true good.
If any very great man is driven from his country, or goes on
his lord's errand, and so comes to a foreign people, where no
man knows him, nor he any man, nor even knows the language,
do you think his greatness can make him honorable in that
land? Of course it cannot. But if dignity were natural to
wealth and were its own, or again if wealth were the rich man's
own, then it could not forsake him. Let the man who possessed
them be in whatsoever land he might, then his wealth and his
dignity would be with him. But because the wealth and the
power are not his own, they forsake him; and because they have
no natural good in themselves, they go away like a shadow or
smoke. Yet the mistaken opinion and fancy of unwise men
judge that power is the highest good. It is entirely otherwise.
When a great man is either among foreigners, or among wise
men in his own country, his wealth counts nothing to either one
when they learn that he was exalted for no virtue, but through
the applause of the ignorant. But if his power arose from any
personal merit, he would keep that even if he lost the power.
He would not lose the good that came from nature; that would
always follow him and always make him honorable, whatever
land he was in.
Worthless and very false is the glory of this world! Concern-
ing this a certain poet formerly sung. When he contemned this
present life, he said:-O glory of this world! wherefore do erring
men call thee, with false voice, glory, when thou art none! - For
man more frequently has great renown, and great glory, and
great honor, through the opinion of the unwise, than he has
through his deserts. But tell me now, what is more unmeet
than this; or why men may not rather be ashamed of themselves
than rejoice, when they hear that any one belies them. Though
men even rightly praise any one of the good, he ought not the
sooner to rejoice immoderately at the people's words. But at
this he ought to rejoice, that they speak truth of him. Though
he rejoice at this, that they spread his name, it is not the sooner
so extensively spread as he persuades himself; for they cannot
spread it over all the earth, though they may in some land;
for though it be to one known, yet it is to another unknown.
Though he in this land be celebrated, yet is he in another not
## p. 2140 (#338) ###########################################
2140
BOËTIUS
celebrated. Therefore is the people's favor to be held by every
man for nothing; since it comes not to every man according to
his deserts, nor indeed remains always to any one. Consider
first concerning noble birth. If any one boast of it, how vain
and how useless is the boast; for every one knows that all men
come from one father and from one mother. Or again, concern-
ing the people's favor, and concerning their applause, I know
not why we rejoice at it. Though they whom the vulgar ap-
plaud be illustrious, yet are they more illustrious and more
rightly to be applauded who are dignified by virtues. For no
man is really the greater or the more praiseworthy for the excel-
lence of another, or for his virtues, if he himself has it not. Are
you ever the fairer for another man's beauty? A man is little
the better though he have a good father, if he himself is inca-
pable of anything. Therefore I advise that you rejoice in other
men's good and their nobility, but so far only that you ascribe
it not to yourself as your own; because every man's good, and
his nobility, is more in the mind than in the flesh. This only,
indeed, I know of good in nobility: that it shames many a man
if he is worse than his ancestors were, and he therefore endeav
ors with all his power to imitate the manners of some one of
the best, and his virtues.
## p. 2141 (#339) ###########################################
2141
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
(1636-1711)
HE name of Louis XIV. suggests ultra-lavishness in life and
taste; a time when French society, surfeited with pleasure,
demanded a stimulus of continual novelty in current litera-
ture. The natural result was preciosité, hyperbole, falsetto sentiment,
which ranked the unusual above the natural, clever conceit above
careful workmanship. It was tainted with artificiality, and now seems
mawkish and superficial.
But Boileau changed all that. Perhaps no author unendowed with
genius has ever so influenced literature.
was usu-
Aside from his work, the man and his
life seem essentially commonplace. Nich-
olas Boileau, who, adding another name to
his own,- quite a fashion then,
ally called Despréaux by his contempora-
ries, was born in Paris, in the palace court,
nearly opposite the royal Sainte Chapelle.
He rarely went farther from the city than
to the little house at Auteuil, where he
spent twenty summers. So he knew his
Paris very intimately, and was limited too
by knowing only her life and thought. To
his repressed youth, guarded by a strict
father and a cross servant,- for his mother
died in his babyhood, -is sometimes attrib-
uted his lack of emotional quality. But his was not an intense nature,
and probably no training could have made the didactic poet lyric or
passionate. Sincerity and common-sense were his predominating qual-
ities, and he had the rare faculty of obedience to his own instincts.
He first studied for the priesthood, but anything like mysticism was
too repellent to his matter-of-fact mind. Then, as many of his family
had been lawyers, he naturally turned toward that career. But the
practice as taught him seemed senseless and arbitrary. Its rational
basis upon a logical theory only dawned upon him later. In spite of
his literary tastes, there was something extremely mundane about the
pleasure-loving bachelor, so fond of good eating and of jovial café
revels with Racine, Furetière, Ninon de L'Enclos, and other witty Bohe-
mians. With them he was much happier than in the more fastidious
—
BOILEAU
## p. 2142 (#340) ###########################################
2142
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
society of the Hôtel Rambouillet, from which he retired after reading
aloud a satiric poem not favorably received. Neither was he happy
at court, in spite of the favor of Louis XIV. , who, entertained by his
rough honesty, gave him a pension of two thousand francs. Later,
when appointed with Racine to write a history of the reign,- that
unfortunate history which was accidentally burned,—we find him an
unwilling follower on royal expeditions, his ungainly horsemanship
the mock of high-bred courtiers. In fact, he was bourgeois through
and through, and not at ease with the aristocrats. He was thrifty
bourgeois too; so often called miserly as well as malicious that it is
pleasant to remember certain illustrations of his nobler side. The
man who offered to resign his own pension if that of old disfavored
Corneille might be continued, and when the latter was forced to
sell his library, paid him its full value and then left him in lifelong
possession,-was generous if he did love to save sous. His was a fine
independence, which felt his art too lofty for purchase, and would
accept nothing from the booksellers.
He had always wished to be a poet. Feeble of body, asthmatic,
and in later life deaf and almost deprived of voice, he found in
writing all the charm of a brilliant and ingenious game. Then too
he had something definite to say, as all his work consistently testifies.
Neither rich nor poor, without family cares, he could give himself
unreservedly to authorship. In 1660 he published a satire upon the
vices of Paris, which inaugurated his great success. Seven satires
appeared in 1666, and he afterward added five others. Their mali-
cious wit, their novel form, the harmonious swing of the couplet
rhyme, forced immediate attention. They held up contemporary lit-
erary weaknesses to scorn, and indulged in the most merciless per-
sonalities, sparing not even his own brother, the poet Gilles Boileau.
All retorts upon himself the author bore with complacent superiority
which forced his adversaries to feel worsted.
From 1666 to 1774 most of the 'Epistles' were written; and also
his best known work, 'L'Art poétique' (The Art of Poetry). In the
satires he had been destructive, but he was too practical to be neg-
ative. The Art of Poetry,' modeled after Horace's work of that
name, offers the theory of poetic composition. It is a work in four
cantos of couplets: the first setting forth general rules of metrical
composition; the second a dissertation upon different forms-ode,
sonnet, pastoral, and others; the third treating tragedy, comedy, and
epic poetry; and the last consisting of general reflections and advice
to authors. Briefly stated, Boileau's desire was to establish literature
upon a foundation of unchanging laws. Why did some works speed-
ily die while others endure through the centuries? Because works
akin to the eternal classics did not, like much contemporary writing,
## p. 2143 (#341) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2143
reflect the trivial and evanescent. They contained what is peren-
nially true of humanity; and stated this in a simple, interesting, and
reasonable way. Above all, Boileau demands truth in subject, and
the conscientious workmanship which finds the most suitable form of
expression. To see a word at the end of a couplet only because it
rhymes with the word above it, he finds inexcusable. Without a
method resulting in unity, clearness, and proportion, writing is not
literature. Later, in his 'Reflections upon Longinus,' Boileau repeated
and emphasized these views.
His mock-heroic poem 'Le Lutrin' (The Reading-Desk), ridiculing
clerical pettinesses, was strong in realistic descriptions, and was per.
haps his most popular work.
A modern poet's definition of poetry as "the heat and height of
sane emotion" would have been unintelligible to Boileau. Deficient
in imagination, he always saw life on its material side, and was irri-
tated by any display of emotion not reducible to logic. Sọ his
poetry is sensible, clear argument in exquisitely careful metre. His
great strength lay in a taste which recognized harmony and fitness
instinctively. To us his quality is best translated by the dainty, per-
fect couplets of his imitator Pope. His talent, essentially French in
its love of effect and classification, has strewn the language with
clever saws, and his works have been studied as authoritative models
by generation after generation of students.
But after all, it is less as a poet than as a critic, "the lawgiver
of the French Parnassus," that the world has always known Boileau.
Before him the art of criticism had hardly existed. Authors had
received indiscriminate praise or blame, usually founded upon inter-
ested motives or personal bias; but there had been little comparison
with an acknowledged standard. This slashing reviewer in verse,"
as Saintsbury calls him, was a severe pedagogue, but his public did
learn their lesson. He made mistakes, was neither broad-minded nor
profound in attainments, was occasionally unjust; but he showed
readers why they should praise or blame; taught them appreciation
of his greater friends Molière and Racine; and pointed out to authors
what their purpose should be. With a greater creative power seek-
ing self-expression, he might have accomplished less in literary
reform.
## p. 2144 (#342) ###########################################
2144
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
ADVICE TO AUTHORS
From The Art of Poetry'
THE
HERE is a kind of writer pleased with sound,
Whose fustian head with clouds is compassed
round-
No reason can disperse them with its light;
Learn then to think, ere you pretend to write
As your idea's clear, or else obscure,
The expression follows, perfect or impure;
What we conceive with ease we can express;
Words to the notions flow with readiness.
Observe the language well in all you write,
And swerve not from it in your loftiest flight.
The smoothest verse and the exactest sense
Displease if uncouth language give offense;
A barbarous phrase no reader can approve;
Nor bombast, noise, or affectation love.
In short, without pure language, what you write
Can never yield us profit or delight.
Take time for thinking; never work in haste;
And value not yourself for writing fast;
A rapid poem, with such fury writ,
Shows want of judgment, not abounding wit.
More pleased we are to see a river lead
His gentle streams along a flowery mead,
Than from high banks to hear loud torrents roar,
With foamy waters, on a muddy shore.
Gently make haste, of labor not afraid;
A hundred times consider what you've said;
Polish, repolish, every color lay,
And sometimes add, but oftener take away.
'Tis not enough, when swarming faults are writ,
That here and there are scattered sparks of wit;
Each object must be fixed in the true place,
And differing parts have corresponding grace;
Till, by a curious art disposed, we find
One perfect whole of all the pieces joined.
Keep to your subject close in all you say,
Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray.
## p. 2145 (#343) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
The public censure for your writings fear,
And to yourself be critic most severe;
Fantastic wits their darling follies love,
But find you faithful friends that will reprove,
That on your works may look with careful eyes,
And of your faults be zealous enemies.
Lay by an author's pride and vanity,
And from a friend a flatterer descry,
Who seems to like, but means not what he says;
Embrace true counsel, but suspect false praise.
A sycophant will everything admire;
Each verse, each sentence, sets his soul on fire;
All is divine! there's not a word amiss!
He shakes with joy and weeps with tenderness;
He overpowers you with his mighty praise.
Truth never moves in those impetuous ways.
A faithful friend is careful of your fame,
And freely will your heedless errors blame;
He cannot pardon a neglected line,
But verse to rule and order will confine,
Reprove of words the too-affected sound,—
"Here the sense flags, and your expression's bound,
Your fancy tires, and your discourse grows vain;
Your term's improper;-make it just and plain. "
Thus 'tis a faithful friend will freedom use.
But authors partial to their darling muse
Think to protect it they have just pretense,
And at your friendly counsel take offense.
"Said you of this, that the expression's flat?
Your servant, sir, you must excuse me that,"
He answers you. "This word has here no grace,
Pray leave it out. "-"That, sir, 's the properest place. "
"This term I like not. "-"'Tis approved by all. "
Thus, resolute not from one fault to fall,
If there's a symbol as to which you doubt,
'Tis a sure reason not to blot it out.
2145
Yet still he says you may his faults confute,
And over him your power is absolute.
But of his feigned humility take heed:
'Tis a bait laid to make you hear him read;
And when he leaves you, happy in his muse,
Restless he runs some other to abuse,
1
1
1
1
IV-135
## p. 2146 (#344) ###########################################
2146
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
And often finds; for in our scribbling times
No fool can lack a fool to praise his rhymes;
The flattest work has here within the court
Met with some zealous ass for its support;
And in all times a forward scribbling fop
Has found some greater fool to cry him up.
THE PASTORAL, THE ELEGY, THE ODE, AND THE EPIGRAM
From The Art of Poetry'
SA fair nymph, when rising from her bed,
Α
With sparkling diamonds dresses not her head,
But without gold, or pearl, or costly scents,
Gathers from neighboring fields her ornaments:
Such, lovely in its dress, but plain withal,
Ought to appear a perfect Pastoral.
Its humble method nothing has of fierce,
But hates the rattling of a lofty verse;
There native beauty pleases and excites,
And never with harsh sounds the ear affrights.
But in this style a poet, often spent
In rage, throws by his rural instrument,
And vainly, when disordered thoughts abound,
Amidst the eclogue makes the trumpet sound;
Pan flies alarmed into the neighboring woods,
And frighted nymphs dive down into the floods.
Opposed to this, another, low in style,
Makes shepherds speak a language low and vile;
His writings, flat and heavy, without sound,
Kissing the earth and creeping on the ground;
You'd swear that Randal, in his rustic strains,
Again was quavering to the country swains,
And changing, without care of sound or dress,
Strephon and Phyllis into Tom and Bess.
'Twixt these extremes 'tis hard to keep the right:
For guides take Virgil and read Theocrite;
Be their just writings, by the gods inspired,
Your constant pattern, practiced and admired.
By them alone you'll easy comprehend
How poets without shame may condescend
To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers and fruit,
To stir up shepherds and to tune the flute;
## p. 2147 (#345) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2147
Of love's rewards to tell the happy hour,
Daphne a tree, Narcissus make a flower,
And by what means the eclogue yet has power
To make the woods worthy a conqueror;
This of their writings is the grace and flight;
Their risings lofty, yet not out of sight.
The Elegy, that loves a mournful style,
With unbound hair weeps at a funeral pile;
It paints the lover's torments and delights,
A mistress flatters, threatens, and invites;
But well these raptures if you'll make us see,
You must know love as well as poetry.
I hate those lukewarm authors, whose forced fire
In a cold style describes a hot desire;
That sigh by rule, and raging in cold blood,
Their sluggish muse whip to an amorous mood.
Their transports feigned appear but flat and vain;
They always sigh, and always hug their chain,
Adore their prisons and their sufferings bless,
Make sense and reason quarrel as they please.
'Twas not of old in this affected tone
That smooth Tibullus made his amorous moan;
Nor Ovid, when, instructed from above,
By nature's rule he taught the art of love.
The heart in elegies forms the discourse.
The Ode is bolder and has greater force;
Mounting to heaven in her ambitious flight,
Amongst the gods and heroes takes delight;
Of Pisa's wrestlers tells the sinewy force,
And sings the lusty conqueror's glorious course;
To Simois's streams does fierce Achilles bring,
And makes the Ganges bow to Britain's king.
Sometimes she flies like an industrious bee,
And robs the flowers by nature's chemistry;
Describes the shepherd's dances, feasts, and bliss,
And boasts from Phyllis to surprise a kiss,
When gently she resists with feigned remorse,
That what she grants may seem to be by force.
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.
Unlike those fearful poets whose cold rime
In all their raptures keeps exactest time;
## p. 2148 (#346) ###########################################
2148
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
That sing the illustrious hero's mighty praise-
Lean writers! - by the terms of weeks and days,
And dare not from least circumstances part,
But take all towns by strictest rules of art.
Apollo drives those fops from his abode;
And some have said that once the humorous god,
Resolving all such scribblers to confound,
For the short Sonnet ordered this strict bound,
Set rules for the just measure and the time,
The easy-running and alternate rime;
But above all, those licenses denied
Which in these writings the lame sense supplied,
Forbade a useless line should find a place,
Or a repeated word appear with grace.
A faultless sonnet, finished thus, would be
Worth tedious volumes of loose poetry.
A hundred scribbling authors, without ground,
Believe they have this only phœnix found,
When yet the exactest scarce have two or three,
Among whole tomes, from faults and censure free;
The rest, but little read, regarded less,
Are shoveled to the pastry from the press.
Closing the sense within the measured time,
'Tis hard to fit the reason to the rime.
The Epigram, with little art composed,
Is one good sentence in a distich closed.
These points, that by Italians first were prized,
Our ancient authors knew not, or despised;
The vulgar, dazzled with their glaring light,
To their false pleasures quickly they invite;
But public favor so increased their pride,
They overwhelmed Parnassus with their tide.
The Madrigal at first was overcome,
And the proud Sonnet fell by the same doom;
With these grave Tragedy adorned her flights,
And mournful Elegy her funeral rites.
A hero never failed them on the stage:
Without his point a lover durst not rage;
The amorous shepherds took more care to prove
True to his point, than faithful to their love.
Each word, like Janus, had a double face,
And prose, as well as verse, allowed it place;
## p. 2149 (#347) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
2149
The lawyer with conceits adorned his speech,
The parson without quibbling could not preach
At last affronted reason looked about,
And from all serious matters shut them out;
Declared that none should use them without shame,
Except a scattering, in the epigram —
-
Provided that by art, and in due time,
They turned upon the thought, and not the rime.
Thus in all parts disorders did abate;
Yet quibblers in the court had leave to prate,
Insipid jesters and unpleasant fools,
A corporation of dull, punning drolls.
'Tis not but that sometimes a dextrous muse
May with advantage a turned sense abuse,
And on a word may trifle with address;
But above all, avoid the fond excess,
And think not, when your verse and sense are lame,
With a dull point to tag your epigram.
TO MOLIÈRE
From The Satires'
UNE
NEQUALED genius, whose warm fancy knows
No rhyming labor, no poetic throes;
To whom Apollo has unlocked his store;
Whose coin is struck from pure Parnassian ore;
Thou, dextrous master, teach thy skill to me,
And tell me, Molière, how to rhyme like thee!
You never falter when the close comes round,
Or leave the substance to preserve the sound;
You never wander after words that fly,
For all the words you need before you lie.
But I, who smarting for my sins of late —
With itch of rhyme am visited by fate,
Expend on air my unavailing force,
And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse.
In vain I often muse from dawn till night:
When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white;
If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien,
I scarcely can forbear to name the Dean;
If asked to tell the strains that purest flow,
My heart says Virgil, but my pen Quinault;
-
## p. 2150 (#348) ###########################################
2150
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
In short, whatever I attempt to say,
Mischance conducts me quite the other way.
At times, fatigued and fretted with the pain,
When every effort for relief is vain,
The fruitless chase I peevishly give o'er,
And swear a thousand times to write no more:
But, after thousand vows, perhaps by chance,
Before my careless eyes the couplets dance.
Then with new force my flame bursts out again,
Pleased I resume the paper and the pen;
And, all my anger and my oaths forgot,
I calmly muse and resolutely blot.
Yet, if my eager hand, in haste to rhyme,
Should tack an empty couplet at a time,
Great names who do the same I might adduce;
Nay, some who keep such hirelings for their use.
Need blooming Phyllis be described in prose
By any lover who has seen a rose?
Who can forget heaven's masterpiece, her eye,
Where, within call, the Loves and Graces lie?
Who can forget her smile, devoid of art,
Her heavenly sweetness and her frozen heart?
How easy thus forever to compound,
And ring new changes on recurring sound;
How easy, with a reasonable store
Of useful epithets repeated o'er,
Verb, substantive, and pronoun, to transpose,
And into tinkling metre hitch dull prose.
But I who tremble o'er each word I use,
And all that do not aid the sense refuse,
Who cannot bear those phrases out of place
Which rhymers stuff into a vacant space-
Ponder my scrupulous verses o'er and o'er,
And when I write five words, oft blot out four.
Plague on the fool who taught us to confine
The swelling thought within a measured line;
Who first in narrow thraldom fancy pent,
And chained in rhyme each pinioned sentiment.
Without this toil, contentment's soothing balm
Might lull my languid soul in listless calm:
Like the smooth prebend how might I recline,
And loiter life in mirth and song and wine!
## p. 2151 (#349) ###########################################
NICHOLAS BOILEAU-DESPRÉAUX
Roused by no labor, with no care opprest,
Pass all my nights in sleep, my days in rest.
My passions and desires obey the rein;
No mad ambition fires my temperate vein;
The schemes of busy greatness I decline,
Nor kneel in palaces at Fortune's shrine.
In short, my life had been supremely blest
If envious rhyme had not disturbed my rest:
But since this freakish fiend began to roll
His idle vapors o'er my troubled soul,
Since first I longed in polished verse to please,
And wrote with labor to be read with ease,
Nailed to my chair, day after day I pore
On what I write and what I wrote before;
Retouch each line, each epithet review,
Or burn the paper and begin anew.
While thus my labors lengthen into years,
I envy all the race of sonneteers.
Hail, happy Scudére! whose prolific brain
Brings forth a monthly volume without pain;
What though thy works, offending every rule,
Proclaim their author an insipid fool;
Still have they found, whate'er the critic says,
Traders to buy and emptier fools to praise.
And, truly, if in rhymes the couplets close,
What should it matter that the rest is prose?
Who stickles now for antiquated saws,
Or cramps his verses with pedantic laws?
The fool can welcome every word he meets,
With placid joy contemplating his feats;
And while each stanza swells his wondering breast
Admires them all, yet thinks the last the best.
But towering Genius, hopeless to attain
That unknown summit which he pants to gain,
Displeased himself, enchanting all beside,
Scorns each past effort that his strength supplied,
And filling every reader with delight,
Repents the hour when he began to write.
To you, who know how justly I complain,
To you I turn for medicine to my pain!
Grant me your talent, and impart your store,
Or teach me, Molière, how to rhyme no more.
2151
## p. 2152 (#350) ###########################################
2152
GASTON BOISSIER
GASTON BOISSIER
(1823-)
M
ARIE LOUIS GASTON BOISSIER is known in Paris as one of the
most prominent professors of the Collège de France, and to
the outside world as the author of a number of scholarly
books of essays, most of them on Roman subjects. Born at Nîmes
in 1823, his life has been devoted entirely to literature. Soon after
his graduation from the École Normale he was made professor of
rhetoric at Angoulême, and later held the same position at Nîmes.
He has received the degree of Doctor, and occupied a number of high
positions, culminating in that of professor
of Latin poetry in the Collège de France,
which he still holds. His works have a
high value in the world of scholars, and
have won him the red ribbon of the Le-
gion of Honor, as well as a seat in the
Académie Française, which he entered in
1876. His best known works, 'Cicero et
ses Amis (Cicero and His Friends), was
crowned by the Académie; and Promé-
nades Archéologiques, Rome et Naples,'
written in 1880, has been translated into
English, as has also his life of Madame de
Sévigné, which contains many charming
bits of comment on the seventeenth cen-
he is quiet and
and writes with
He contributes
tury. As a biographer, and also as a historian,
accurate - never dry. He has great charm of style,
elegance, correctness, clearness, and originality.
largely, also, to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to scientific publi-
cations.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AS A LETTER-WRITER
From the Life of Madame de Sévigné
HE passages just cited appear so simple, and utter so nat-
urally what we all experience, that they are read the first
time without surprise. There seems nothing remarkable
about them except this very simplicity and naturalness. Now,
## p. 2153 (#351) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2153
these are not the qualities which attract attention. It is difficult
to appreciate them in works where they occur, and it is only by
reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their
importance. But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished
to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language
strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bun-
gling.
The lively sequence of these complaints implies that
they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet
the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment with-
out some study and some retouching. It is sometimes said that
a strong passion at once creates the language to express it. I
greatly doubt this. On the contrary, it seems to me that when
the soul is violently agitated, the words by which we try to ex-
press our feelings always appear dull and cold; we are tempted
to make use of exaggerated and far-fetched expressions in order
to rise to the level of our sorrow or joy. Hence come some-
times excessive terms, discordant metaphors. We might be in-
clined to regard these as thought out at leisure and in cold
blood, while on the contrary they are the product of the first
impulse of the effort we instinctively make to find an expression
corresponding to the intensity of our passion. There is nothing
of this kind in Madame de Sévigné's letters; and however vio-
lent her grief may be, it always speaks in accurate and fitting
language. This is a valuable quality, and one extremely rare.
That we may not be surprised at finding it so highly developed
in her, we need only remember what has just been said of the
way in which she was unconsciously prepared to become a great
writer.
Another characteristic of Madame de Sévigné's letters, not less
remarkable, is that generally her most loving messages are clev-
erly expressed. I do not refer merely to certain isolated phrases
that have sometimes appeared rather affected. "The north wind
bound for Grignan makes me ache for your chest. " "My dear,
how the burden within you weighs me down! " "I dare not
read your letters for fear of having read them. " These are only
occasional flashes; but almost always, when on the point of giv-
ing way to all her emotion, she gives her phrase an ingenious
turn, she makes witty observations, is bright, pleasing, elegant.
All this seems to some readers to proceed from a mind quite
self-possessed, and not so far affected by passion as to be inat-
tentive to elegant diction.
## p. 2154 (#352) ###########################################
2154
GASTON BOISSIER
Just now I placed naturalness among Madame de Sévigné's
leading qualities. There are those who are not of this opinion,
and contend that naturalness is just the merit she most lacks;
but we must define our meaning. Naturalness for each one is
what is conformable to his nature; and as each one of us has a
nature of his own very different from that of his neighbors, nat-
uralness cannot be exactly the same in every instance. Moreover,
education and habit give us each a second nature which often has
more control over us than the original one. In the society in
which Madame de Sévigné lived, people made a point of speaking
wittily. The first few times one appeared in this society, it
required a little study and effort to assume the same tone as the
rest. One had to be on the watch for those pleasant repartees
that, among the frequenters of the Rambouillet and Richelieu
houses, gave the new-comer a good reputation; but after a while
these happy sayings came unsought. To persons trained in such
a school, what might at first sight appear subtle and refined is
ordinary and natural. Whether they speak or write, their ideas
take a certain form which is not the usual one; and bright, witty,
and dainty phrases, which would require labor from others, occur
to them spontaneously.
>>
To be sure, I do not mean that Madame de Sévigné wrote
well without knowing it. This is a thing of which a witty woman
always has an inkling; and besides, her friends did not permit
her to be ignorant of it. "Your letters are delightful," they told
her, "and you are like your letters. It was all the easier to
believe this, because she paid to herself in a whisper such com-
pliments as others addressed to her aloud. One day, when she
had recently written to her friend Dr. Bourdelot, she said to her
daughter, "Brava! what a good answer I sent him! That is a
foolish thing to say, but I had a good, wide-awake pen that
day. " It is very delightful to feel that one has wit, and we can
understand how Madame de Sévigné might sometimes have yielded
to this feeling with some satisfaction. In her most private corre-
spondence, that in which she least thought of the public, we
might note certain passages in which she takes pleasure in elab-
orating and decorating her thought, and in adding to it new
details more and more dainty and ingenious. This she does with-
out effort, to satisfy her own taste and to give herself the pleasure
of expressing her thought agreeably. It has been remarked that
good talkers are not sensitive to the praises of others only: they
## p. 2155 (#353) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2155
also wish to please themselves, independently of the public around
them; and like to hear themselves talk. It might be said in the
same sense that Madame de Sévigné sometimes likes to see herself
write. This is one of those pretty artifices which in women do
not exclude sincerity, and which may be united with naturalness.
Copyrighted by A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago.
FRENCH SOCIETY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
From the Life of Madame de Sévigné›
STU
TUDYING the seventeenth century in the histories is one thing,
and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading con-
temporary letters is another and a far different thing. The
two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions. Historians,
taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general
characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and
sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and sim-
plicity captivate our minds. We finally get into the habit of see-
ing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there
was anything in it besides the qualities they specify. But when
we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as
they took place, the opinions of men and things we have drawn
from the historians are greatly modified. We then perceive that
good and evil are at all times mingled, and even that the propor-
tions of the mixture vary less than one would think. Cousin says
somewhere, "In a great age all is great. " It is just the contrary
that is true: there is no age so great that there is not much little-
ness about it; and if we undertake to study history we should
expect this, so as not to reckon without our host. No epoch has
been more celebrated, more admired, than the reign of Louis
XIV. ; there is danger lest the correspondence of Madame de
Sévigné may much abate the warmth of our admiration. She is
constantly telling strange stories that compel us to pause and
reflect. When, in a society represented as so noble, so delicate,
so regular, we meet with so many shameful disorders, so many
ill-assorted households, so many persons whose fortunes are sus-
tained only by dishonest expedients, with great lords buying and
not paying, promising and not keeping their word, borrowing and
never returning, kneeling before ministers and ministers' mis-
tresses, cheating at play like M. de Cessac, living like Caderousse
## p. 2156 (#354) ###########################################
2156
GASTON BOISSIER
at the expense of a great lady, surrendering like Soubise a wife.
to the king, or like Villarceaux a niece, or insisting with Bussy
that "the chariest of their honor should be delighted when such
a good fortune befalls their family," it seems to me we have a
right to conclude that people then were hardly our superiors;
that perhaps in some points we are better than they were; and
that in any case it is not worth while to set them up as models
to the disparagement of our own times.
-
In one respect, however, they were unlike us. In those days
there were certain subjects on which people were generally
agreed, and these were precisely the subjects that now give rise
to the greatest divisions, religion and politics. Not that all
were pious then, — far from it, — but almost all were believers,
and almost none contested the principle of royal authority.
To-day, religious belief and belief in monarchy are well-nigh
extinct; and there are hardly any left of those commonly received
opinions, escaped by none, impregnating all, breathed in like the
air, and always found at the bottom of the heart on occasions of
grave need, despite all the inward changes that experience has
wrought. Is this a good or an evil? Should we rejoice at it or
regret it?
Each one will answer according to his character and
inclinations. Daring minds that feel strong enough to form their
own convictions are glad to be delivered from prejudices inter-
fering with independence of opinion, glad to have free scope.
But the rest, who form the vast majority, who are without such
high aims, and whose life is moreover taken up with other cares,
troubled, uncertain, ill at ease, when they have to settle these
great problems independently. They regret that they can no
longer find the solutions all worked out, and sadly repeat with
Jocelyn:-
-
―
"Ah, why was I born in days stormy and dread,
When the pilgrim of life hath no rest for his head;
When the way disappears; when the spent human mind,
Groping, doubting, still strives some new pathway to find,
Unable to trust in the hopes of the Old
Or to strike out a New from its perishing mold! »
This sort of anguish of spirit was unknown in the seventeenth
century, as Madame de Sévigné's letters clearly show.
Copyrighted by A. C. McClurg & Co. , Chicago.
## p. 2157 (#355) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2157
HOW HORACE LIVED AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE
From The Country of Horace and Virgil
I
T IS very annoying that Horace, who has described with so
many details the employment of his days while he remained
in Rome, should not have thought it necessary to tell us as
clearly how he spent his life in the country. The only thing we
know with certainty is that he was very happy there: he for the
first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor. "I take my
meals," said he, "before household gods that are mine own"
("ante larem proprium vescor"). To have a hearth and domes-
tic gods, to fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master,
was the greatest happiness that could befall a Roman. To enjoy
it, Horace had waited until he was more than thirty years of
age. We have seen that his domain, when he took possession of
it, was very much neglected, and that the house was falling into
ruins. He first had to build and plant. Do not let us pity him;
these cares have their charms. One loves one's house when one
has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land costs us
attaches us to it. He came to it as often as he could, and
always with pleasure. Everything served him as a pretext to
leave Rome. It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia
were approaching—an unbearable time of the year, when all the
town was out of doors; it was the moment to finish a work
which Maecenas had pressingly required. Well, how could any-
thing good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street, the
bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or
receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part
of your time? So he put Plato with Menander into his portman-
teau, took with him the work he had begun, promising to do
wonders, and started for Tibur. But when he was at home, his
good resolutions did not hold out. He had something to do
quite different from shutting himself up in his study. He had
to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers. He went
to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself. He
dug the spade into the field, took out the stones, etc. , to the
great amusement of the neighbors, who marveled both at his
ardor and his clumsiness:
"Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem. "
―
>
## p. 2158 (#356) ###########################################
2158
GASTON BOISSIER
In the evening he received at his table a few of the neigh-
boring proprietors. They were honest folk, who did not speak
ill of their neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had
not for sole topic of conversation the races or the theatre. They
handled most serious questions, and their rustic wisdom found
ready expression in proverbs and apologues. What pleased
Horace above all at these country dinners was that etiquette
was laughed at, that everything was simple and frugal, that one
did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which Varro
had drawn up, and which had become the code of good com-
pany. Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for
the guests the number of cups that must be drained. Every
one ate according to his hunger and drank according to his
thirst. "They were," said Horace, "divine repasts" ("O noctes
cenæque Deum ”).
Yet he did not always stay at home, however great the
pleasure he felt in being there. This steady-going, regular man
thought it right from time to time to put a little irregularity
into one's life. Does not a Grecian sage-Aristotle, I think-
recommend that one excess per month be indulged in, in the
interest of health? It serves at least to break the round of
habit. Such also was the opinion of Horace. Although the
most moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occas-
ional wildness ("dulce est desipere in loco"). With age these
outbursts had become less frequent, yet he still loved to break
the sage uniformity of his existence by some pleasure jaunt.
Then he returned to Præneste, to Baiæ, or to Tarentum, which
he had loved so much in his youth. Once he was unfaithful to
these old affections, and chose for the goal of his journey spots
that were new to him. The occasion of the change was this:
Antonius Musa, a Greek physician, had just cured Augustus
of a dangerous illness, which it had been thought must prove
fatal, by means of cold water. Hydrotherapeutics at once became
fashionable. People deserted the thermal springs, formerly so
much sought after, to go off to Clusium, to Gabii, into the
mountains, where springs of icy water were found. Horace did
like the rest. In the winter of the year 730, instead of going
as usual towards Baiæ, he turned his little steed towards Salerno
and Velia. This was the affair of a season. Next year Marcel-
lus, the Emperor's son-in-law and heir, falling very ill, Antonius.
Musa was hastily sent for, and applied his usual remedy.
But
## p. 2159 (#357) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2159
the remedy no longer healed, and hydrotherapeutics, which had
saved Augustus, did not prevent Marcellus from dying. They
were at once forsaken, and the sick again began following the
road to Baiæ.
When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took
a change of diet. "At home," said he, “I can put up with any-
thing; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale
myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of
bacon. But when I have once left my house, I become more par-
ticular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no
longer suffice me. " So before starting in the direction of Salerno,
where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question
one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether
one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come
back home again as fat as a Phæacian. Above all, he is anxious
to know what is drunk in those parts. He wants a generous
wine to make him eloquent, and "which will give him strength,
and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his young Lucanian sweet-
heart. " We see he pushes precaution a considerable length. He
was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ,
Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman
fashionable world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria
nota "), where he used to put up. When Seneca was at Baiæ, he
lived above a public bath, and he has furnished us a very amus-
ing account of the sounds of all kinds that troubled his rest.
Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet, could not
make a very long stay in those noisy places. His whim gratified,
he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid the
fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks
made it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him.
One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that
his affection for his country estate goes on constantly increasing.
At first, when he had passed a few weeks there, the memory
of Rome used to re-awaken in his thoughts. Those large towns,
which we hate when we are forced to live in them, have only to
be left in order to be regretted! When Horace's slave, taking
an unfair advantage of the liberty of the Saturnalia, tells his
master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches him with never
being pleased where he is:-
"Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem
Tollis ad astra levis ? »
## p. 2160 (#358) ###########################################
2160
GASTON BOISSIER
He was himself very much vexed at his inconstancy, and
accused himself of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur,
and only thinking of Tibur from the moment he found himself
in Rome. " However, he cured himself at last of this levity,
which annoyed him so much. To this he bears witness in his
own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives
to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-
house next door. "As for me," he tells him, "thou knowest
that I am self-consistent, and that each time hated business
recalls me to Rome I leave this spot with sadness. " He doubt.
less arranged matters so as to live more and more at his country
house. He looked forward to a time when it would be possible
for him scarcely ever to leave it, and counted upon it to enable
him to bear more lightly the weight of his closing years.
They are heavy, whatever one may do, and age never comes
without bringing many griefs. Firstly, the long-lived must needs
leave many friends upon the way. Horace lost some to whom
he was very tenderly attached. He had the misfortune to sur-
vive Virgil and Tibullus ten years. What regrets he must have
felt on the death of the great poet, of whom he said he "knew
no soul more bright, and had no better friend"! The great suc
cess of Virgil's posthumous work could only have half consoled
him for his loss, for he regretted in him the man as well as the
poet. He had also great cause to grieve for Mæcenas, whom he
so dearly loved. This favorite of the Emperor, this king of
fashion, whose fortune all men envied, finished by being very
unhappy. It is all very well to take every kind of precaution in
order to insure one's happiness-to fly from business, to seek
pleasure, to amass wealth, to gather clever men about one, to
surround one's self with all the charms of existence; however
one may try to shut the door on them, troubles and sorrows
find a way in. The saddest of it all is that Mæcenas was first
unhappy through his own fault. Somewhat late in life this
prudent, wise man had been foolish enough to marry a coquette,
and to fall deeply in love with her. He had rivals, and among
them the Emperor himself, of whom he dared not be jealous.
He who had laughed so much at others afforded the Romans a
comedy at his own expense. His time was passed in leaving
Terentia and taking her back again. "He has been married
more than a hundred times," said Seneca, "although he has had
but one wife. " To these domestic troubles illness was added.
## p. 2161 (#359) ###########################################
GASTON BOISSIER
2161
His health had never been good, and age and sorrows made it
worse. Pliny tells us that he passed three whole years without
being able to sleep. Enduring pain badly, he grieved his friends
beyond measure by his groans. Horace, with whom he contin-
ually conversed about his approaching end, answered him in
beautiful verses: —
"Thou, Mæcenas, die first! Thou, stay of my fortune, adornment
of my life! The gods will not allow it, and I will not consent. Ah!
if Fate, hastening its blows, should tear from me part of myself in
thee, what would betide the other? What should I henceforth do,
hateful unto myself, and but half of myself surviving? »
In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he
was growing old. The hour when one finds one's self face to
face with age is a serious one. Cicero, when approaching it,
tried to give himself courage in advance, and being accustomed
to console himself for everything by writing, he composed his
'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he tries to deck the
closing years of life with certain beauties. He had not to make
use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we do
not know whether he would have found them sufficient when
the moment came. That spirit, so young, so full of life, would
I fear have resigned itself with difficulty to the inevitable deca-
dences of age.
Nor did Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars
Poetica he has drawn a somewhat gloomy picture of it. He
had all the more reason to detest it because it came to him
rather early. In one of those passages where he so willingly
gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair
whitened quickly. As a climax of misfortune he had grown very
fat, and being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to
him. Augustus, in a letter, compares him to one of those meas
ures of liquids which are broader than they are high. If, in
spite of these too evident signs which warned him of his age, he
had tried to deceive himself, there was no lack of persons to
disabuse him. There was the porter of Neæra, who no longer
allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was obliged
to put up with without complaining. "My hair whitening," said
he, warns me not to quarrel. I should not have been so patient
in the time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul. "
Then it was Neæra herself who declined to come when he sum-
moned her, and again resigning himself with a good enough
grace, the poor poet found that after all she was right, and that
it was natural love should prefer youth to ripened age.
«<
IV-136
## p. 2162 (#360) ###########################################
2162
GASTON BOISSIER
·
« Abi,
Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces. "
Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his
friends Tibullus and Virgil. He even had opinions on the sub-
ject of melancholy which differ widely from ours. Whereas,
since Lamartine, we have assumed the habit of regarding sad
ness as one of the essential elements of poetry, he thought on
the contrary that poetry has the privilege of preventing us from
being sad. "A man protected by the Muses," said he, "flings
cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away. " His philosophy
had taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills. However
painful they be, one makes them lighter by bearing them.
he accepted old age because it cannot be eluded, and because no
means have yet been found of living long without growing old.
Death itself did not frighten him. He was not of those who
reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by never thinking
about it. On the contrary, he counsels us to have it always in
mind. "Think that the day which lights you is the last you
have to live. The morrow will have more charm for you if you
have not hoped to see it: "—
« Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora.
