shelter the Regent from the responsibility that he proposed to convoke the States-General, throw all the odium upon them by getting them to pass the edict, and then send them about their business :

"Then I made him feel the address and the delicacy with which, above all things, it was necessary to make sure that the States should pronounce nothing; should decree nothing; should confirm nothing; that their acclamation should never be anything more than what is called verba et voces. . . Thus the decoy (leurre) is complete; it is hollow throughout; the States-General acquire no rights from it; whilst the Duke of Orleans has all the essential through this specious and (to the nation) so interesting The means of restraining the States, after having so powerfully excited them, appeared to me very easy. Protest, with confidence and modesty, that nothing is desired but their hearts, etc."

error.

He then proceeds to recommend tactics which might be called Machiavellian, but for their transparent simplicity and absurdity. In short, the enlightened high-minded statesman, as he has been termed, saw "the sole hope of the nation" in a national bankruptcy and a shallow artifice. He expresses great disappointment when the Duke of Orleans, on becoming Regent, refuses to adopt this scheme. But in 1717, when the Duke, pressed by fresh difficulties, was disposed to have recourse to the States-General, Saint-Simon drew up a memoir (filling fifty pages) to prove that the golden opportunity had been let slip, and that the States might turn out dangerous and unmanageable:

"But besides the capital point of the relief of the people, which will put the whole kingdom on the side of the States, without weighing what is or what is not possible,-who can be sure of the number or the nature of the propositions which they may bring upon the tapis? The more violent the present situation, the more difficult the remedies, the

more the blame of them is thrown on the past Government, so much the more will the States feel it incumbent on them to search for solid means of preventing their return; and through this desire so natural, even so just if it were within their province, so much the more will they try to give themselves authority for it. Now who can imagine, with any approach to precision, what means may be proposed? All that can be foreseen is that there are no possible means which would not weigh heavily on the royal authority, or which may not be put forward to bridle it.

"We are not in England; and God preserve a guardian and conservator of the royal authority, so enlightened as your Royal Highness, from giving occasion for the usages of this neighbouring kingdom; from which our kings have emancipated themselves for centuries, and of which ours would require a great account from you. No need of States-General to obtain aid from the peoples of France; the King, by himself alone, provides for it by his registered edicts and declarations."

Surely this is plain enough. The bare notion of a limited monarchy or a constitutional government never crossed Saint-Simon's mind, except to be discredited and repudiated. The longing desire of his life was to suppress the Parliament, the only semblance of a constitutional check: the lit de justice, which called forth so much unseemly and ungenerous exultation, was a downright act of despotism; and the words which brought his heart to his mouth were "Le Roi (a boy of eight) veut être obéi, et obéi sur le champ!" He despised the people, and did not know what civil or religious liberty meant. When the Regent, vividly impressed by the vast amount of injury, the depopulation and impoverishment, inflicted on the kingdom by the expulsion of the Huguenots, proposed recalling and emancipating them, Saint-Simon vehemently objected, on the ground that they would never be satisfied without equality, and that all the troubles

resulting from their obstinate adherence to their peculiar opinions under successive sovereigns would be renewed.

Far from wishing for the re-establishment of the old aristocracy, Saint-Simon highly commends Richelieu for reducing them to what he terms their "just measure of honour, distinction, consideration, and authority"-to a condition which no longer admits of their "agitating" or "speaking loud to the King." When, therefore, Mr. Reeve compares the political principles of Saint-Simon to those of the Whig peers of 1688, the comparison is about as true as Mr. Disraeli's comparison of those same Whig peers to the Venetian oligarchy. When, again, Mr. Reeve appeals to Saint-Simon's proposal for convoking the States-General as a recognition of popular rights, he falls into an error analogous to that of the orator who called on the lieges to rally round their sovereign like the barons at Runnymede.

The terms "magnificent" and "transcendent beauty" are about as applicable to Saint-Simon's portraits as "heroic" to his cast of mind. His portrait of Fénélon is principally remarkable for the artistic skill with which the praise is qualified and the attractive features are shaded off, so as to produce the impression of a courtier-prelate who blended the grand seigneur with the priest, was all things to all men, and had his thoughts fixed more on this world than the next.1 It is an ironical portrait, not a captivating one; it conveys no

1 To cite a paragraph: "Plus coquet que toutes les femmes, mais en solides et non en misères, sa passion était de plaire, et il avait autant de soin de captiver les valets que les maîtres, et les plus petites gens que les personnages. Il avait pour cela des talents faits exprès, une douceur, une insinuation, des grâces naturelles et qui coulaient de source, un esprit facile, ingénieux, fleuri, agréable, dont il tenait pour ainsi dire le robinet, pour en verser la qualité et la quantité exactement convenable à chaque chose et à chaque personne."

sense of beauty to our minds and we much prefer the portrait of the author of "Telemachus " by La Bruyère, as both more pleasing and more true.

There is one consideration, however, which may help to console the most ardent admirers of SaintSimon when they cannot get colder or calmer critics to keep pace with them in their enthusiasm. If he had been in advance of his age instead of being on an exact level with it, the representative of his order, the type of his class-if he had been a stern moralist, a philosopher who despised forms and ceremonies, or a far-sighted high-principled statesman, he would not have been the Saint-Simon who has descended to us: he would not, and could not, have composed the most curious and valuable passages of his "Memoirs.”

This is as clear as that we should not have had Boswell's Johnson, or Pepys' Diary, or Walpole's Letters, without the foibles, vanity, egotism, affectation, and love of gossip, to which the rare flavour of their writings is as certainly owing as that of the foie gras to the diseased liver of the goose. We cannot have it both ways. Men of an heroic cast of mind, of commanding genius, of lofty ambition, of elevated views, will not make it the chief business of their lives to struggle for straws and feathers and complacently record the struggle: to chronicle the current scandals or fix the fleeting follies of a Court; and it is precisely because SaintSimon was not a Molière, a Bossuet, a Tacitus, a Juvenal, or a felicitous compound of all four, that he occupies his peculiar place in French literature: that he is hailed at last, by almost universal consent, as the author of the richest, most suggestive, illustrative, entertaining collection of contemporary anecdotes, scenes and characters which any age or country has produced.

MADAME DU DEFFAND

AND HER CORRESPONDENTS.1

(From the Quarterly Review, July, 1878.)

WE recently named Saint-Simon as a striking instance of a celebrity of whom little was popularly known in this country beyond the name. Madame

du Deffand is another and still more striking instance. The reading public of England know next to nothing of her besides her connection and correspondence with Horace Walpole, forming a mere (if important) episode in the concluding years of her life. Yet that life is mixed up and blended with one of the most brilliant periods of the social and literary history of France. "Born," says M. de Lescure, "in the reign (en plein règne) of Louis XIV., and, by virtue of a privilege of longevity, which she shares with Voltaire and the Marshal de

11. Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole. Auxquelles sont jointes des Lettres de Madame du Deffand à Voltaire, etc. Nouvelle Edition, augmentée des Extraits des Lettres d'Horace Walpole, etc., et précédée d'une Notice sur Madame du Deffand par M. Thiers. Deux volumes. Paris, 1864.

2. Correspondance complète de la Marquise du Deffand, avec ses Amis, etc., classée dans l'Ordre chronologique et précédée d'une Histoire de sa Vie, etc., etc. Par M. de Lescure. Deux volumes. Paris, 1865.

3. Correspondance complète de Mme. du Deffand avec la Duchesse de Choiseul, l'Abbé Barthélemy et M. Craufurt. Publiée avec une Introduction par M. le Marquis de Sainte-Aulaire. Troisième édition, revue et considérablement augmentée. Trois volumes. Paris, 1877.

VOL. II.

K