No More Learning

It is neither grammaticall subtilties nor
logicall quiddities, nor the wittie contexture of choice words or
arguments and syllogismes, that will serve my turne. I like those
discourses that give the first charge to the strongest part of the
doubt; his are but flourishes, and languish everywhere. They are
good for schooles, at the barre, or for Orators and Preachers, where
we may slumber: and though we wake a quarter of an houre after, we
may finde and trace him soone enough. Such a manner of speech is fit
for those judges that a man would corrupt by hooke or crooke, by
right or wrong, or for children and the common people, unto whom a
man must tell all, and see what the event would be. I would not have
a man go about and labour by circumlocutions to induce and winne me
to attention, and that (as our Heralds or Criers do) they shall ring
out their words: Now heare me, now listen, or ho-yes. [Footnote:
Oyez, hear. ] The Romanes in their religion were wont to say, "Hoc
age; [Footnote: Do this. ] "which in ours we say, "Sursum corda.
[Footnote: Lift up your hearts. ] There are so many lost words for
me. I come readie prepared from my house. I neede no allurement nor
sawce, my stomacke is good enough to digest raw meat: And whereas
with these preparatives and flourishes, or preambles, they thinke to
sharpen my taste or stir my stomacke, they cloy and make it
wallowish. [Footnote: Mawkish. ] Shall the privilege of times excuse
me from this sacrilegious boldnesse, to deem Platoes Dialogismes to
be as languishing, by over-filling and stuffing his matter? And to
bewaile the time that a man who had so many thousands of things to
utter, spends about so many, so long, so vaine, and idle
interloqutions, and preparatives? My ignorance shall better excuse
me, in that I see nothing in the beautie of his language. I
generally enquire after bookes that use sciences, and not after such
as institute them. The two first, and Plinie, with others of their
ranke, have no Hoc age in them, they will have to doe with men that
have forewarned themselves; or if they have, it is a materiall and
substantial! Hoc age, and that hath his bodie apart I likewise love
to read the Epistles and ad Atticum, not onely because they containe
a most ample instruction of the historic and affaires of his times,
but much more because in them I descrie his private humours. For (as
I have said elsewhere) I am wonderfull curious to discover and know
the minde, the soul, the genuine disposition and naturall judgement
of my authors. A man ought to judge their sufficiencie and not their
customes, nor them by the shew of their writings, which they set
forth on this world's theatre. I have sorrowed a thousand times that
ever we lost the booke that Brutus writ of Vertue. Oh it is a goodly
thing to learne the Theorike of such as understand the practice
well. But forsomuch as the Sermon is one thing and the Preacher an
other, I love as much to see Brutus in Plutarke as in himself: I
would rather make choice to know certainly what talk he had in his
tent with some of his familiar friends, the night fore-going the
battell, than the speech he made the morrow after to his Armie; and
what he did in his chamber or closet, than what in the senate or
market place. As for Cicero, I am of the common judgement, that
besides learning there was no exquisite [Footnote: Overelaborate. ]
eloquence in him: He was a good citizen, of an honest, gentle
nature, as are commonly fat and burly men: for so was he: But to
speake truly of thim? full of ambitious vanity and remisse niceness.
[Footnote: Ineffectual fastidiousness. ] And I know not well how to
excuse him, in that he deemed his Poesie worthy to be published. It
is no great imperfection to make bad verses, but it is an
imperfection in him that he never perceived how unworthy they were
of the glorie of his name. Concerning his eloquence, it is beyond
all comparison, and I verily beleeve that none shall ever equall it.
Cicero the younger, who resembled his father in nothing but in name,
commanding in Asia, chanced one day to have many strangers at his
board, and amongst others, one Caestius sitting at the lower end, as
the manner is to thrust in at great mens tables: Cicero inquired of
one of his men what he was, who told him his name, but he dreaming
on other matters, and having forgotten what answere his man made
him, asked him his name twice or thrice more: the servant, because
he would not be troubled to tell him one thing so often, and by some
circumstance to make him to know him better, "It is," said he, "the
same Caestius of whom some have told you that, in respect of his
owne, maketh no accompt of your fathers eloquence:" Cicero being
suddainly mooved, commanded the said poore Caestius to be presently
taken from the table, and well whipt in his presence: Lo heere an
uncivill and barbarous host. Even amongst those which (all things
considered) have deemed his eloquence matchlesse and incomparable,
others there have been who have not spared to note some faults in
it. As great Brutus said, that it was an eloquence broken, halting,
and disjoynted, fractam et elumbem: "Incoherent and sinnowlesse. "
Those Orators that lived about his age, reproved also in him the
curious care he had of a certaine long cadence at the end of his
clauses, and noted these words, esse videatur, which he so often
useth. As for me, I rather like a cadence that falleth shorter, cut
like Iambikes: yet doth he sometimes confounde his numbers,
[Footnote: Confuse his rhythm. ] but it is seldome: I have especially
observed this one place: "Ego vero me minus diu senem esse mallem,
quam esse senem, antequam essem? [Footnote: Cic. De Senect. ] "But I
had rather not be an old man, so long as I might be, than to be old
before I should be. " Historians are my right hand, for they are
pleasant and easie; and therewithall the man with whom I desire
generally to be acquainted may more lively and perfectly be
discovered in them than in any other composition: the varictic and
truth of his inward conditions, in grosse and by retale: the
diversitie of the meanes of his collection and composing, and of the
accidents that threaten him. Now those that write of mens lives,
forasmuch as they ammuse and busie themselves more about counsels
than events, more about that which commeth from within than that
which appeareth outward; they are fittest for me: And that's the
reason why Plutarke above all in that kind doth best please me.
Indeed I am not a little grieved that we have not a dozen of
Laertius, or that he is not more knowne, or better understood; for I
am no lesse curious to know the fortunes and lives of these great
masters of the world than to understand the diversitie of their
decrees and conceits. In this kind of studie of historie a man must,
without distinction, tosse and turne over all sorts of Authors, both
old and new, both French and others, if he will learne the things
they so diversly treat of. But me thinkes that Caesar above all doth
singularly deserve to be studied, not onely for the understanding of
the historie as of himselfe; so much perfection and excellencie is
there in him more than in others, although Salust be reckoned one of
the number. Verily I read that author with a little more reverence
and respects than commonly men reade profane and humane Workes:
sometimes considering him by his actions and wonders of his
greatnesse, and other times waighing the puritie and inimitable
polishing and elegancie of his tongue, which (as Cicero saith) hath
not onely exceeded all historians, but haply Cicero himselfe: with
such sinceritie in his judgement, speaking of his enemies, that
except the false colours wherewith he goeth about to cloake his bad
cause, and the corruption and filthinesse of his pestilent ambition,
I am perswaded there is nothing in him to be found fault with: and
that he hath been over-sparing to speake of himselfe; for so many
notable and great things could never be executed by him, unlesse he
had put more of his owne into them than he setteth downe. I love
those Historians that are either very simple or most excellent. The
simple who have nothing of their owne to adde unto the storie and
have but the care and diligence to collect whatsoever come to their
knowledge, and sincerely and faithfully to register all things,
without choice or culling, by the naked truth leave our judgment
more entire and better satisfied.

Such amongst others (for examples sake) plaine and well-meaning
Froissard, who in his enterprise hath marched with so free and
genuine a puritie, that having committed some oversight, he is
neither ashamed to acknowledge nor afraid to correct the same,
wheresoever he hath either notice or warning of it; and who
representeth unto us the diversitie of the newes then current and
the different reports that were made unto him. The subject of an
historie should be naked, bare, and formelesse; each man according
to his capacitie or understanding may reap commoditie out of it. The
curious and most excellent have the sufficiencie to cull and chuse
that which is worthie to be knowne and may select of two relations
that which is most likely: from the condition of Princes and of
their humours, they conclude their counsels and attribute fit words
to them: they assume a just authoritie and bind our faith to theirs.
But truly that belongs not to many. Such as are betweene both (which
is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will
needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by
consequence to square and encline the storie according to their
fantasie; for, where the judgement bendeth one way, a man cannot
chuse but wrest and turne his narration that way. They undertake to
chuse things worthy to bee knowne, and now and then conceal either a
word or a secret action from us, which would much better instruct
us: omitting such things as they understand not as incredible: and
haply such matters as they know not how to declare, either in good
Latin or tolerable French. Let them boldly enstall their eloquence
and discourse: Let them censure at their pleasure, but let them also
give us leave to judge after them: And let them neither alter nor
dispense by their abridgements and choice anything belonging to the
substance of the matter; but let them rather send it pure and entire
with all her dimensions unto us. Most commonly (as chiefly in our
age) this charge of writing histories is committed unto base,
ignorant, and mechanicall kind of people, only for this
consideration that they can speake well; as if we sought to learne
the Grammer of them; and they have some reason, being only hired to
that end, and publishing nothing but their tittle-tattle to aime at
nothing else so much. Thus with store of choice and quaint words,
and wyre drawne phrases, they huddle up and make a hodge-pot of a
laboured contexture of the reports which they gather in the market
places or such other assemblies. The only good histories are those
that are written by such as commanded or were imploied themselves in
weighty affaires or that were partners in the conduct of them, or
that at least have had the fortune to manage others of like
qualitie. Such in a manner are all the Graecians and Romans. For
many eye-witnesses having written of one same subject (as it hapned
in those times when Greatnesse and Knowledge did commonly meet) if
any fault or over-sight have past them, it must be deemed exceeding
light and upon some doubtful accident. What may a man expect at a
Phisitians hand that discourseth of warre, or of a bare Scholler
treating of Princes secret designes? If we shall but note the
religion which the Romans had in that, wee need no other example:
Asinius Pollio found some mistaking or oversight in Caesars
Commentaries, whereinto he was falne, only because he could not
possiblie oversee all things with his owne eyes that hapned in his
Armie, but was faine to rely on the reports of particular men, who
often related untruths unto him: or else because he had not been
curiously advertized [Footnote: Minutely informed. ] and distinctly
enformed by his Lieutenants and Captaines of such matters as they in
his absence had managed or effected. Whereby may be seen that
nothing is so hard or so uncertaine to be found out as the
certaintie of the truth, sithence [Footnote: Since. ] no man can put
any assured confidence concerning the truth of a battel, neither in
the knowledge of him that was Generall or commanded over it, nor in
the soldiers that fought, of anything that hath hapned amongst them;
except after the manner of a strict point of law, the severall
witnesses are brought and examined face to face, and that all
matters be nicely and thorowly sifted by the objects and trials of
the successe of every accident. Verily the knowledge we have of our
owne affaires is much more barren and feeble. But this hath
sufficiently been handled by Bodin, and agreeing with my conception.
Somewhat to aid the weaknesse of my memorie and to assist her great
defects; for it hath often been my chance to light upon bookes which
I supposed to be new and never to have read, which I had not
understanding diligently read and run over many years before, and
all bescribled with my notes; I have a while since accustomed my
selfe to note at the end of my booke (I meane such as I purpose to
read but once) the time I made an end to read it, and to set downe
what censure or judgement I gave of it; that so it may at least at
another time represent unto my mind the aire and generall idea I had
conceived of the Author in reading him. I will here set downe the
Copie of some of my annotations, and especially what I noted upon my
Guicciardine about ten yeares since: (For what language soever my
books speake unto me I speake unto them in mine owne. ) He is a
diligent Historiographer and from whom in my conceit a man may as
exactly learne the truth of such affaires as passed in his time, as
of any other writer whatsoever: and the rather because himselfe hath
been an Actor of most part of them and in verie honourable place.
There is no signe or apparance that ever he disguised or coloured
any matter, either through hatred, malice, favour, or vanitie;
whereof the free and impartiall judgements he giveth of great men,
and namely of those by whom he had been advanced or imployed in his
important charges, as of Pope Clement the seaventh, beareth
undoubted testimony. Concerning the parts wherein he most goeth
about to prevaile, which are his digressions and discourses, many of
them are verie excellent and enriched with faire ornaments, but he
hath too much pleased himselfe in them: for endeavouring to omit
nothing that might be spoken, having so full and large a subject,
and almost infinite, he proveth somewhat languishing, and giveth a
taste of a kind of scholasticall tedious babling. Moreover, I have
noted this, that of so severall and divers armes, successes, and
effects he judgeth of; of so many and variable motives, alterations,
and counsels, that he relateth, he never referreth any one unto
vertue, religion or conscience: as if they were all extinguished and
banished the world. And of all actions how glorious soever in
apparance they be of themselves, he doth ever impute the cause of
them to some vicious and blame-worthie occasion, or to some
commoditie and profit. It is impossible to imagine that amongst so
infinite a number of actions whereof he judgeth, some one have not
been produced and compassed by way of reason. No corruption could
ever possesse men so universally but that some one must of necessity
escape the contagion; which makes me to feare he hath had some
distaste or blame in his passion, and it hath haply fortuned that he
hath judged or esteemed of others according to himselfe. In my
Philip de Comines there is this: In him you shall find a pleasing-
sweet and gently-gliding speech, fraught with a purely sincere
simplicitie, his narration pure and unaffected, and wherein the
Authours unspotted good meaning doth evidently appeare, void of all
manner of vanitie or ostentation speaking of himselfe, and free from
all affection or envie-speaking of others; his discourses and
perswasions accompanied more with a well-meaning zeale and meere
[Footnote: Pure. ] veritie than with any laboured and exquisite
sufficiencie, and allthrough with gravitie and authoritie,
representing a man well-borne and brought up in high negotiations.
Upon the Memoires and historic of Monsieur du Bellay: It is ever a
well-pleasing thing to see matters written by those that have as
said how and in what manner they ought to be directed and managed:
yet can it not be denied but that in both these Lords there will
manifestly appeare a great declination from a free libertie of
writing, which clearely shineth in ancient writers of their kind: as
in the Lord of louinille, familiar unto Saint Lewis; Eginard,
Chancellor unto Charlemaine; and of more fresh memorie in Philip de
Comines. This is rather a declamation or pleading for King Francis
against the Emperour Charles the fifth, than an Historic. I will not
beleeve they have altered or changed any thing concerning the
generalitie of matters, but rather to wrest and turne the judgement
of the events many times against reason, to our advantage, and to
omit whatsoever they supposed to be doubtful or ticklish in their
masters life: they have made a business of it: witnesse the
recoylings of the Lords of Momorancy and Byron, which therein are
forgotten; and which is more, you shall not so much as find the name
of the Ladie of Estampes mentioned at all. A man may sometimes
colour and haply hide secret actions, but absolutely to conceal that
which all the world knoweth, and especially such things as have
drawne-on publike effects, and of such consequence, it is an
inexcusable defect, or as I may say unpardonable oversight. To
conclude, whosoever desireth to have perfect information and
knowledge of king Francis the first, and of the things hapned in his
time, let him addresse himselfe elsewhere if he will give any credit
unto me. The profit he may reap here is by the particular
description of the battels and exploits of warre wherein these
gentlemen were present; some privie conferences, speeches, or secret
actions of some princes that then lived, and the practices managed,
or negotiations directed by the Lord of Langeay, in which doubtless
are verie many things well worthy to be knowne, and diverse
discourses not vulgare.




MONTAIGNE

WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

BY

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE


TRANSLATED BY

E. LEE




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the foremost French critic of the
nineteenth century, and, in the view of many, the greatest literary
critic of the world, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23,
1804. He studied medicine, but soon abandoned it for literature; and
before he gave himself up to criticism he made some mediocre
attempts in poetry and fiction. He became professor at the College
de France and the Ecole Normale and was appointed Senator in 1865. A
course of lectures given at Lausanne in 1837 resulted in his great
"Histoire de Port-Royal" and another given at Liege in his
"Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire. " But his most famous
productions were his critical essays published periodically in the
"Constitutionnel" the "Moniteur" and the "Temps" later collected in
sets under the names of "Critiques et Portraits Litteraires"
"Portraits Contemporains" "Causeries du Lundi" and "Nouveaux
Lundis. " At the height of his vogue, these Monday essays were events
of European importance. He died in 1869.

Sainte-Beuve's work was much more than literary criticism as that
type of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In
place of the mere classification of books and the passing of a
judgment upon them as good or bad, he sought to illuminate and
explain by throwing light on a literary work from a study of the
life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a comparison with
the literature of other times and countries. Thus his work was
historical, psychological, and ethical, as well as esthetic, and
demanded vast learning and a literary outlook of unparalleled
breadth. In addition to this equipment he had fine taste and an
admirable style; and by his universality, penetration, and balance
he raised to a new level the profession of critic.




MONTAIGNE

While the good ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course,
getting into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots
(if there is a pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at
the mast-head thinks he sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor
rising on the horizon, many honourable and peaceable men continue
their work and studies all the same, and follow out to the end, or
as far as they can, their favourite hobbies. I know, at the present
time, a learned man who is collating more carefully than has ever
yet been done the different early editions of Rabelais--editions,
mark you, of which only one copy remains, of which a second is not
to be found: from the careful collation of the texts some literary
and maybe philosophical result will be derived with regard to the
genius of the French Lucian-Aristophanes. I know another scholar
whose devotion and worship is given to a very different man--to
Bossuet: he is preparing a complete, exact, detailed history of the
life and works of the great bishop. And as tastes differ, and "human
fancy is cut into a thousand shapes" (Montaigne said that),
Montaigne also has his devotees, he who, himself, was so little of
one: a sect is formed round him. In his lifetime he had Mademoiselle
de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who was solemnly devoted to
him; and his disciple, Charron, followed him closely, step by step,
only striving to arrange his thoughts with more order and method. In
our time amateurs, intelligent men, practice the religion under
another form: they devote themselves to collecting the smallest
traces of the author of the Essays, to gathering up the slightest
relics, and Dr. Payen may be justly placed at the head of the group.
For years he has been preparing a book on Montaigne, of which the
title will be--"Michel de Montaigne, a collection of unedited or
little known facts about the author of the Essays, his book, and his
other writings, about his family, his friends, his admirers, his
detractors. "

While awaiting the conclusion of the book, the occupation and
amusement of a lifetime, Dr. Payen keeps us informed in short
pamphlets of the various works and discoveries made about Montaigne.

If we separate the discoveries made during the last five or six
years from the jumble of quarrels, disputes, cavilling, quackery,
and law-suits (for there have been all those), they consist in this-
-

In 1846 M. Mace found in the (then) Royal Library, amongst the
"Collection Du Puys," a letter of Montaigne, addressed to the king,
Henri IV. , September 2, 1590.

In 1847 M. Payen printed a letter, or a fragment of a letter of
Montaigne of February 16, 1588, a letter corrupt and incomplete,
coming from the collection of the Comtesse Boni de Castellane.

But, most important of all, in 1848, M. Horace de Viel-Castel found
in London, at the British Museum, a remarkable letter of Montaigne,
May 22, 1585, when Mayor of Bordeaux, addressed to M. de Matignon,
the king's lieutenant in the town. The great interest of the letter
is that it shows Montaigne for the first time in the full discharge
of his office with all the energy and vigilance of which he was
capable. The pretended idler was at need much more active than he
was ready to own.

M. Detcheverry, keeper of the records to the mayoralty of Bordeaux,
found and published (1850) a letter of Montaigne, while mayor, to
the Jurats, or aldermen of the town, July 30, 1585.

M. Achille Jubinal found among the manuscripts of the National
Library, and published (1850), a long, remarkable letter from
Montaigne to the king, Henri IV. , January 18, 1590, which happily
coincides with that already found by M. Mace.

Lastly, to omit nothing and do justice to all, in a "Visit to
Montaigne's Chateau in Perigord," of which the account appeared in
1850, M. Bertrand de Saint-Germain described the place and pointed
out the various Greek and Latin inscriptions that may still be read
in Montaigne's tower in the third-storey chamber (the ground floor
counting as the first), which the philosopher made his library and
study.

M. Payen, collecting together and criticising in his last pamphlet
the various notices and discoveries, not all of equal importance,
allowed himself to be drawn into some little exaggeration of praise;
but we cannot blame him. Admiration, when applied to such noble,
perfectly innocent, and disinterested subjects, is truly a spark of
the sacred fire: it produces research that a less ardent zeal would
quickly leave aside, and sometimes leads to valuable results.
However, it would be well for those who, following M. Payen's
example, intelligently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to
remember, even in their ardour, the advice of the wise man and the
master. "There is more to do," said he, speaking of the commentators
of his time, "in interpreting the interpretations than in
interpreting the things themselves; and more bdoks about books than
on any other subject. We do nothing, but everything swarms with
commentators; of authors there is a great rarity. " Authors are of
great price and very scared at all times--that is to say, authors
who really increase the sum of human knowledge. I should like all
who write on Montaigne, and give us the details of their researches
and discoveries, to imagine one thing,--Montaigne himself reading
and criticising them. "What would he think of me and the manner in
which I am going to speak of him to the public? " If such a question
was put, how greatly it would suppress useless phrases and shorten
idle discussions! M. Payen's last pamphlet was dedicated to a man
who deserves equally well of Montaigne--M. Gustave Brunet, of
Bordeaux. He, speaking of M. Payen, in a work in which he pointed
out interesting and various corrections of Montaigne's text, said:
"May he soon decide to publish the fruits of his researches: he will
have left nothing for future Montaignologues" Montaignologues! Great
Heaven! what would Montaigne say of such a word coined in his
honour? You who occupy yourselves so meritoriously with him, but who
have, I think, no claim to appropriate him to yourselves, in the
name of him whom you love, and whom we all love by a greater or
lesser title, never, I beg of you, use such words; they smack of the
brotherhood and the sect, of pedantry and of the chatter of the
schools--things utterly repugnant to Montaigne.

Montaigne had a simple, natural, affable mind, and a very happy
disposition. Sprung from an excellent father, who, though of no
great education, entered with real enthusiasm into the movement of
the Renaissance and all the liberal novelties of his time, the son
corrected the excessive enthusiasm, vivacity, and tenderness he
inherited by a great refinement and justness of reflection; but he
did not abjure the original groundwork. It is scarcely more than
thirty years ago that whenever the sixteenth century was mentioned
it was spoken of as a barbarous epoch, Montaigne only excepted:
therein lay error and ignorance. The sixteenth century was a great
century, fertile, powerful, learned, refined in parts, although in
some aspects it was rough, violent, and seemingly coarse. What it
particularly lacked was taste, if by taste is meant the faculty of
clear and perfect selection, the extrication of the elements of the
beautiful. But in the succeeding centuries taste quickly became
distaste. If, however, in literature it was crude, in the arts
properly so-called, in those of the hand and the chisel, the
sixteenth century, even in France, is, in the quality of taste, far
greater than the two succeeding centuries: it is neither meagre nor
massive, heavy nor distorted. In art its taste is rich and of fine
quality,--at once unrestrained and complex, ancient and modern,
special to itself and original. In the region of morals it is
unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of contrasts in all
their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, of scepticism
and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in collision; nothing
was blended and united. Everything was in ferment; it was a period
of chaos; every ray of light caused a storm. It was not a gentle
age, or one we can call an age of light, but an age of struggle and
combat. What distinguished Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him
was, that in such an age he should have possessed moderation,
caution, and order.

Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient languages
as a game while still a child, waked even in his cradle by the sound
of musical instruments, he seemed less fitted for a rude and violent
epoch than for the commerce and sanctuary of the muses. His rare
good sense corrected what was too ideal and poetical in his early
education; but he preserved the happy faculty of saying everything
with freshness and wit. Married, when past thirty, to an estimable
woman who was his companion for twenty-eight years, he seems to have
put passion only into friendship. He immortalised his love for
Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of the sweetest
and closest intimacy. For some time counsellor in the Parliament of
Bordeaux, Montaigne, before he was forty, retired from public life,
and flung away ambition to live in his tower of Montaigne, enjoying
his own society and his own intellect, entirely given up to his own
observations and thoughts, and to the busy idleness of which we know
all the sports and fancies. The first edition of the Essays appeared
in 1580, consisting of only two books, and in a form representing
only the first rough draft of what we have in the later editions.
The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to Switzerland and
Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of Bordeaux
elected him mayor of their town. At first he refused and excused
himself, but warned that it would be well to accept, and enjoined by
the king, he took the office, "the more beautiful," he said, "that
there was neither renunciation nor gain other than the honour of its
performance. " He filled the office for four years, from July 1582 to
July 1586, being re-elected after the first two years. Thus
Montaigne, at the age of fifty, and a little against his will, re-
entered public life when the country was on the eve of civil
disturbances which, quieted and lulled to sleep for a while, broke
out more violently at the cry of the League. Although, as a rule,
lessons serve for nothing, since the art of wisdom and happiness
cannot be taught, let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of
listening to Montaigne; let us look on his wisdom and happiness; let
him speak of public affairs, of revolutions and disturbances, and of
his way of conducting himself with regard to them. We do not put
forward a model, but we offer our readers an agreeable recreation.

Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, a period
that a man who had lived through the Terror (M. Daunou) called the
most tragic century in all history, he by no means regarded his age
as the worst of ages. He was not of those prejudiced and afflicted
persons, who, measuring everything by their visual horizon, valuing
everything according to their present sensations, alway declare that
the disease they suffer from is worse than any ever before
experienced by a human being. He was like Socrates, who did not
consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world; with his
broad and full imagination he embraced the universality of countries
and of ages; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which
he was witness and victim. "Who is it," he said, "that, seeing the
bloody havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out that the
machine of the world is near dissolution, and that the day of
judgment is at hand, without considering that many worse revolutions
have been seen, and that, in the mean time, people are being merry
in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part,
considering the license and impunity that always attend such
commotions, I admire they are so moderate, and that there is not
more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his
ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest. " And
raising his thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering
to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing there not only
himself but whole kingdoms as mere specks in the infinite, he added
in words which foreshadowed Pascal, in words whose outline and
salient points Pascal did not disdain to borrow: "But whoever shall
represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our
mother nature, portrayed in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in
her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever
shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole
kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in
comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things
according to their true estimate and grandeur. "

Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it
all the same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have
been written down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do
not mean to underrate the gravity of the circumstances in which
France is just now involved, for I believe there is pressing need to
bring together all the energy, prudence, and courage she possesses
in order that the country may come out with honour [Footnote: This
essay appeared April 28, 1851]. However, let us reflect, and
remember that, leaving aside the Empire, which as regards internal
affairs was a period of calm, and before 1812 of prosperity, we who
utter such loud complaints, lived in peace from 1815 to 1830,
fifteen long years; that the three days of July only inaugurated
another order of things that for eighteen years guaranteed peace and
in dustrial prosperity; in all, thirty-two years of repose. Stormy
days came; tempests burst, and will doubtless burst again. Let us
learn how to live through them, but do not let us cry out every day,
as we are disposed to do, that never under the sun were such storms
known as we are enduring. To get away from the present state of
feeling, to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us
read every evening a page of Montaigne.

A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, and it
bears equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher says somewhere
that he knows a fair number of men possessing various good
qualities--one, intelligence; another, heart; another, address,
conscience or knowledge, or skill in languages, each has his share:
"but of a great man as a whole, having so many good qualities
together, or one with such a degree of excellence that we ought to
admire him, or compare him with those we honour in the past, my
fortune has never shown me one. " He afterwards made an exception in
favour of his friend Etienne de la Boetie, but he belonged to the
company of great men dead before attaining maturity, and showing
promise without having time to fulfil it. Montaigne's criticism
called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly great man in his
time, the age of L'Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. Well! how does
ours seem to you? We have as many great men as in Montaigne's time,
one distinguished for his intellect, another for his heart, a third
for skill, some (a rare thing) for conscience, many for knowledge
and language. But we too lack the perfect man, and he is greatly to
be desired. One of the most intelligent observers of our day
recognised and proclaimed it some years ago: "Our age," said M. de
Remusat, "is wanting in great men. " [Footnote: Essais de
Philosophie, vol. i, p. 22]

How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first magistrate
of a great city? If we take him literally and on a hasty first
glance we should believe he discharged them slackly and languidly.
Did not Horace, doing the honours to himself, say that in war he one
day let his shield fall (relicta non bene parmula)? We must not be
in too great a hurry to take too literally the men of taste who have
a horror of over-estimating themselves. Minds of a fine quality are
more given to vigilance and to action than they are apt to confess.
The man who boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost sure,
be less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the
council board than Montaigne.

On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the aldermen of
Bordeaux not to expect to find in him more than there really was; he
presented himself to them without affectation. "I represented to
them faithfully and conscientiously all that I felt myself to be,--a
man without memory, without vigilance, without experience, and
without energy; but also, without hate, without ambition, without
avarice, and without violence. " He should be sorry, while taking the
affairs of the town in hand, that his feelings should be so strongly
affected as those of his worthy father had been, who in the end had
lost his place and health. The eager and ardent pledge to satisfy an
impetuous desire was not his method. His opinion was "that you must
lend yourself to others, and only give yourself to yourself. " And
repeating his thought, according to his custom in all kinds of
metaphors and picturesque forms, he said again that if he some times
allowed himself to be urged to the management of other men's
affairs, he promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs and
liver. " We are thus forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor
and Montaigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office
he reserved to himself a certain freedom and secret security. He
continued to judge things in his own fashion and impartially,
although acting loyally for the cause confided to him. He was far
from approving or even excusing all he saw in his party, and he
could judge his adversaries and say of them: "He did that thing
wickedly, and this virtuously. " "I would have," he added, "matters
go well on our side; but if they do not, I shall not run mad. I am
heartily for the right party; but I do not affect to be taken notice
of for an especial enemy to others. " And he entered into some
details and applications which at that time were piquant. Let us
remark, however, in order to explain and justify his somewhat
extensive profession of impartiality, that the chiefs of the party
then in evidence, the three Henris, were famous and considerable men
on several counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri,
King of Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King Henri III.
in whose name Montaigne was mayor, who wavered between the two. When
parties have neither chief nor head, when they are known by the body
only, that is to say, in their hideous and brutal reality, it is
more difficult and also more hazardous to be just towards them and
to assign to each its share of action.

The principle which guided him in his administration was to look
only at the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to noise and
outward show: "How much more a good effect makes a noise, so much I
abate of the goodness of it. " For it is always to be feared that it
was more performed for the sake of the noise than upon the account
of goodness: "Being exposed upon the stall, 'tis half sold. " That
was not Montaigne's way: he made no show; he managed men and affairs
as quietly as he could; he employed in a manner useful to all alike
the gifts of sincerity and conciliation; the personal attraction
with which nature endowed him was a quality of the highest value in
the management of men. He preferred to warn men of evil rather than
to take on himself the honour of repressing it: "Is there any one
who desires to be sick that he may see his physician's practice? And
would not that physician deserve to be whipped who should wish the
plague amongst us that he might put his art into practice? " Far from
desiring that trouble and disorder in the affairs of the city should
rouse and honour his govern ment, he had ever willingly, he said,
contributed all he could to their tranquillity and ease. He is not
of those whom municipal honours intoxicate and elate, those
"dignities of office" as he called them, and of which all the noise
"goes from one cross-road to another. " If he was a man desirous of
fame, he recognised that it was of a kind greater than that. I do
not know, however, if even in a vaster field he would have changed
his method and manner of proceed ing. To do good for the public
imperceptibly would always seem to him the ideal of skill and the
culminating point of happiness. "He who will not thank me," he said,
"for the order and quiet calm that has accompanied my administration,
cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me by the
title of my good fortune. " And he is inexhaustible in describing in
lively and graceful expressions the kinds of effective and imperceptible
services he believed he had rendered--services greatly superior to
noisy and glorious deeds: "Actions which come from the workman's
hand carelessly and noiselessly have most charm, that some honest
man chooses later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into
the light for their own sake. " Thus fortune served Montaigne to
perfection, and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult
conjunctures, he never had to belie his maxim, nor to step very far
out of the way of life he had planned: "For my part I commend a gliding,
solitary, and silent life. " He reached the end of his magistracy almost
satisfied with himself, having accomplished what he had promised
himself, and much more than he had promised others.

The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel
corroborates the chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and criticises
himself in the period of his public life. "That letter," says M.
Payen, "is entirely on affairs. Montaigne is mayor; Bordeaux, lately
disturbed, seems threatened by fresh agitations; the king's
lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 22, 1585; it is night,
Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the governor of the province. "
The letter, which is of too special and local an interest to be
inserted here, may be summed up in these words:--Montaigne regretted
the absence of Marshal de Matignon, and feared the consequences of
its prolongation; he was keeping, and would continue to keep, him
acquainted with all that was going on, and begged him to return as
soon as his circumstances would permit. "We are looking after our
gates and guards, and a little more carefully in your absence. . . .
If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall send you a messenger
immediately, so that if you hear no news from me, you may consider
that nothing has happened. " He begs M. de Matignon to remember,
however, that he might not have time to warn him, "entreating you to
consider that such movements are usually so sudden, that if they do
occur they will take me by the throat without any warning. " Besides,
he will do everything to ascertain the march of events beforehand.
"I will do what I can to hear news from all parts, and to that end
shall visit and observe the inclinations of all sorts of men. "
Lastly, after keeping the marshal informed of everything, of the
least rumours abroad in the city, he pressed him to return, assuring
him "that we spare neither our care, nor, if need be, our lives to
preserve everything in obedience to the king. " Montaigne was never
prodigal of protestations and praises, and what with others was a
mere form of speech, was with him a real undertaking and the truth.

Things, however, became worse and worse: civil war broke out;
friendly or hostile parties (the difference was not great) infested
the country. Montaigne, who went to his country house as often as he
could, whenever the duties of his office, which was drawing near its
term, did not oblige him to be in Bordeaux, was exposed to every
sort of insult and outrage. "I underwent," he said, "the
inconveniences that moderation brings along with it in such a
disease. I was pitied on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a
Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline. " In the midst of his
personal grievances he could disengage and raise his thoughts to
reflections on the public misfortunes and on the degradation of
men's characters. Considering closely the disorder of parties, and
all the abject and wretched things which developed so quickly, he
was ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and debase themselves by
cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances we know, like him,
"that in the word of command to march, draw up, wheel, and the like,
we obey him indeed; but all the rest is dissolute and free. " "It
pleases me," said Montaigne ironically, "to observe how much
pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by how abject and
servile ways it must arrive at its end. " Despising ambition as he
did, he was not sorry to see it unmasked by such practices and
degraded in his sight. However, his goodness of heart overcoming his
pride and contempt, he adds sadly, "it displeases me to see good and
generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day
corrupted in the management and command of this confusion. . . . We
had ill-contrived souls enough without spoiling those that were
generous and good. " He rather sought in that misfortune an
opportunity and motive for fortifying and strengthening himself.
Attacked one by one by many disagreeables and evils, which he would
have endured more cheerfully in a heap--that is to say, all at once-
-pursued by war, disease, by all the plagues (July 1585), in the
course things were taking, he already asked himself to whom he and
his could have recourse, of whom he could ask shelter and
subsistence for his old age; and having looked and searched
thoroughly all around, he found himself actually destitute and
RUINED. For, "to let a man's self fall plumb down, and from so great
a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
fortunate friendship. They are very rare, if there be any. " Speaking
in such a manner, we perceive that La Boetie had been some time
dead. Then he felt that he must after all rely on himself in his
distress, and must gain strength; now or never was the time to put
into practice the lofty lessons he spent his life in collecting from
the books of the philosophers. He took heart again, and attained all
the height of his virtue: "In an ordinary and quiet time, a man
prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the
confusion wherein we have been for these thirty years, every
Frenchman, whether in particular or in general, sees himself every
hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his fortune. "
And far from being discouraged and cursing fate for causing him to
be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly congratulated himself: "Let
us thank fortune that has not made us live in an effeminate, idle
and languishing age. " Since the curiosity of wise men seeks the past
for disturbances in states in order to learn the secrets of history,
and, as we should say, the whole physiology of the body social, "so
does my curiosity," he declares, "make me in some sort please myself
with seeing with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public
death, its forms and symptoms; and, seeing I could not hinder it, am
content to be destined to assist in it, and thereby to instruct
myself. " I shall not suggest a consolation of that sort to most
people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the heroic and
eager curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, the two intrepid
men who went straight to the volcanoes and the disturbances of
nature to examine them at close quarters, at the risk of destruction
and death. But to a man of Montaigne's nature, the thought of that
stoical observation gave him consolation even amid real evils.
Considering the condition of false peace and doubtful truce, the
regime of dull and profound corruption which had preceded the last
disturbances, he almost congratulated himself on seeing their
cessation; for "it was," he said of the regime of Henri III. , "an
universal juncture of particular members, rotten to emulation of one
another, and the most of them with inveterate ulcers, that neither
required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore did
really more animate than depress me. " Note that his health, usually
delicate, is here raised to the level of his morality, although what
it had suffered through the various disturbances might have been
enough to undermine it. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he
had some hold against fortune, and that it would take a greater
shock still to crush him.

Another consideration, humbler and more humane, upheld him in his
troubles, the consolation arising from a common misfortune, a
misfortune shared by all, and the sight of the courage of others.
The people, especially the real people, they who are victims and not
robbers, the peasants of his district, moved him by the manner in
which they endured the same, or even worse, troubles than his. The
disease or plague which raged at that time in the country pressed
chiefly on the poor; Montaigne learned from them resignation and the
practice of philosophy. "Let us look down upon the poor people that
we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon
their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor
precept. Even from these does nature every day extract effects of
constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools. " And he goes on to describe them
working to the bitter end, even in their grief, even in disease,
until their strength failed them. "He that is now digging in my
garden has this morning buried his father, or his son. . . . They
never keep their beds but to die. " The whole chapter is fine,
pathetic, to the point, evincing noble, stoical elevation of mind,
and also the cheerful and affable disposition which Montaigne said,
with truth, was his by inheritance, and in which he had been
nourished. There could be nothing better as regards "consolation in
public calamities," except a chapter of some not more human, but of
some truly divine book, in which the hand of God should be
everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne, but
actually and lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Montaigne
gives himself and others is perhaps as lofty and beautiful as human
consolation without prayer can be.

He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the midst of
the evils described, and before they were ended. He concluded it in
his graceful and poetical way with a collection of examples, "a heap
of foreign flowers," to which he furnished only the thread for
fastening them together.

There is Montaigne to the life; no matter how seriously he spoke, it
was always with the utmost charm. To form an opinion on his style
you have only to open him indifferently at any page and listen to
his talk on any subject; there is none that he did not enliven and
make suggestive. In the chapter "Of Liars," for instance, after
enlarging on his lack of memory and giving a list of reasons by
which he might console himself, he suddenly added this fresh and
delightful reason, that, thanks to his faculty for forgetting, "the
places I revisit, and the books I read over again, always smile upon
me with a fresh novelty. " It is thus that on every subject he
touched he was continually new, and created sources of freshness.

Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great
poets, Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne! " How true it is
of Montaigne! No French writer, including the poets proper, had so
lofty an idea of poetry as he had. "From my earliest childhood," he
said, "poetry had power over me to transport and transpierce me. " He
considered, and therein shows penetration, that "we have more poets
than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than
to understand. " In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies
definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern
of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance
of a flash of lightning. " In the constitution and continuity of his
style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes,
naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the
thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that
join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying his own genius, he
has gone beyond and some times exceeded the genius of language. His
concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy,
emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that
it is a continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that
has only been successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne
himself. If we wanted to imitate him, supposing we had the power and
were naturally fitted for it--if we desired to write with his
severity, exact proportion, and diverse continuity of figures and
turns--it would be necessary to force our language to be more
powerful, and poetically more complete, than is usually our custom.
Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied in the series and
assortment of the metaphors, exacts the creation of a portion of the
tissue itself to hold them. It is absolutely necessary that in
places the woof should be enlarged and extended, in order to weave
into it the metaphor; but in defining him I come almost to write
like him. The French language, French prose, which in fact always
savours more or less of conversation, does not, naturally, possess
the resources and the extent of canvas necessary for a continued
picture: by the side of an animated metaphor it will often exhibit a
sudden lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness and
invention as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the expression
and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear equally
finished. Style a la Montaigne would, in many respects, be openly at
war with that of Voltaire. It could only come into being and
flourish in the full freedom of the sixteenth century, in a frank,
ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and refined mind, of an unique
stamp, that even for that time, seemed free and somewhat licentious,
and that was inspired and emboldened, but not intoxicated by the
pure and direct spirit of ancient sources.

Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace; he is Horatian in the
groundwork, often in the form and expression, although in that he
sometimes approaches Seneca. His book is a treasure-house of moral
observations and of experience; at whatever page it is opened, and
in what ever condition of mind, some wise thought expressed in a
striking and enduring fashion is certain to be found. It will at
once detach itself and engrave itself on the mind, a beautiful
meaning in full and forcible words, in one vigorous line, familiar
or great. The whole of his book, said Etienne Pasquier, is a real
seminary of beautiful and remarkable sentences, and they come in so
much the better that they run and hasten on without thrusting them
selves into notice. There is something for every age, for every hour
of life: you cannot read in it for any time without having the mind
filled and lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully armed and
clothed. We have just seen how much useful counsel and actual
consolation it contains for an honourable man, born for private
life, and fallen on times of disturbance and revolution. To this I
shall add the counsel he gave those who, like myself and many men of
my acquaintance, suffer from political disturbances without in any
way provoking them, or believing ourselves capable of averting them.
Montaigne, as Horace would have done, counsels them, while
apprehending everything from afar off, not to be too much
preoccupied with such matters in advance; to take advantage to the
end of pleasant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come
his piquant and wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, with
the most delightful one of all, and one, besides, entirely
appropriate and seasonable: it is folly and fret, he said, "to take
out your furred gown at Saint John because you will want it at
Christmas. "




WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be
given according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it
to me, and I intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine
and discuss it face to face with my readers, were it only to
persuade them to answer it for themselves, and, if I can, to make
their opinion and mine on the point clear. And why, in criticism,
should we not, from time to time, venture to treat some of those
subjects which are not personal, in which we no longer speak of some
one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well
succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the
modest title of "Essays. " It is true that in writing of such
subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to
speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own
attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of
calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even
when she is desirous of being wise and is not making revolutions,
her brilliant genius can scarcely tolerate them.

A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author
canonised by admiration, and an authority in his particular style.
The word classic was first used in this sense by the Romans. With
them not all the citizens of the different classes were properly
called classici, but only those of the chief class, those who
possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who possessed a
smaller income were described by the term infra classem, below the
preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative sense
by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and
distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of
account, has real property, and is not lost in the proletariate
crowd. Such an expression implies an age sufficiently advanced to
have already made some sort of valuation and classification of
literature.

At first the only true classics for the moderns were the ancients.
The Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of
mind, had no classics but themselves. They were at first the only
classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to
imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after
Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who
became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries
which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin
antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste,
confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and
Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long
chaos to order, and then only was admiration rightly proportioned.
Thenceforth the true classical authors of Greek and Latin antiquity
stood out in a luminous background, and were harmoniously grouped on
their two heights.

Meanwhile modern literatures were born, and some of the more
precocious, like the Italian, already possessed the style of
antiquity. Dante appeared, and, from the very first, posterity
greeted him as a classic. Italian poetry has since shrunk into far
narrower bounds; but, whenever it desired to do so, it always found
again and preserved the impulse and echo of its lofty origin. It is
no indifferent matter for a poetry to derive its point of departure
and classical source in high places; for example, to spring from
Dante rather than to issue laboriously from Malherbe.

Modern Italy had her classical authors, and Spain had every right to
believe that she also had hers at a time when France was yet seeking
hers. A few talented writers en dowed with originality and
exceptional animation, a few brilliant efforts, isolated, without
following, interrupted and recommenced, did not suffice to endow a
nation with a solid and imposing basis of literary wealth. The idea
of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence,
and which produces unity and tradition fashions and transmits
itself, and endures. It was only after the glorious years of Louis
XIV. that the nation felt with tremor and pride that such good
fortune had happened to her. Every voice in formed Louis XIV. of it
with flattery, exaggeration, and emphasis, yet with a certain
sentiment of truth. Then arose a singular and striking contradiction:
those men of whom Perrauit was the chief, the men who were most
smitten with the marvels of the age of Louis the Great, who even
went the length of sacrificing the ancients to the moderns, aimed at
exalting and canonising even those whom they regarded as inveterate
opponents and adversaries. Boileau avenged and angrily upheld the
ancients against Perrault, who extolled the moderns--that is to say,
Corneille, Moliere, Pascal, and the eminent men of his age, Boileau,
one of the first, included. Kindly La Fontaine, taking part in the
dispute in behalf of the learned Huet, did not perceive that, in
spite of his defects, he was in his turn on the point of being held
as a classic himself.

Example is the best definition. From the time France possessed her
age of Louis XIV. and could contemplate it at a little distance, she
knew, better than by any arguments, what to be classical meant. The
eighteenth century, even in its medley of things, strengthened this
idea through some fine works, due to its four great men. Read
Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV. , Montesquieu's Greatness and Fall of
the Romans, Buffon's Epochs of Nature, the beautiful pages of
reverie and natural description of Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar, and
say if the eighteenth century, in these memorable works, did not
understand how to reconcile tradition with freedom of development
and independence. But at the be ginning of the present century and
under the Empire, in sight of the first attempts of a decidedly new
and somewhat adventurous literature, the idea of a classic in a few
resist ing minds, more sorrowful than severe, was strangely nar
rowed and contracted. The first Dictionary of the Academy (1694)
merely defined a classical author as "a much-approved ancient
writer, who is an authority as regards the subject he treats. " The
Dictionary of the Academy of 1835 narrows that definition still
more, and gives precision and even limit to its rather vague form.
It describes classical authors as those "who have become models in
any language whatever," and in all the articles which follow, the
expressions, models, fixed rules for composition and style, strict
rules of art to which men must conform, continually recur. That
definition of classic was evidently made by the respectable
Academicians, our predecessors, in face and sight of what was then
called romantic--that is to say, in sight of the enemy. It seems to
me time to renounce those timid and restrictive definitions and to
free our mind of them. A true classic, as I should like to hear it
defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its
treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some
moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in
that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed
his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only
provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and
beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in his own peculiar
style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a
style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with
all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at
least have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted
whatever prevented the restoration of the balance of order and
beauty.

If it is desired, names may be applied to this definition which I
wish to make purposely majestic and fluctuating, or in a word, all-
embracing. I should first put there Corneille of the Polyeucte,
Cinna, and Horaces. I should put Moliere there, the fullest and most
complete poetic genius we have ever had in France. Goethe, the king
of critics, said:--

"Moliere is so great that he astonishes us afresh every time we read
him. He is a man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one
has the courage to try and imitate him. His Avare, where vice
destroys all affection between father and son, is one of the most
sublime works, and dramatic in the highest degree. In a drama every
action ought to be important in itself, and to lead to an action
greater still. In this respect Tartuffe is a model. What a piece of
exposition the first scene is! From the beginning everything has an
important meaning, and causes something much more important to be
foreseen. The exposition in a certain play of Lessing that might be
mentioned is very fine, but the world only sees that of Tartuffe
once. It is the finest of the kind we possess. Every year I read a
play of Moliere, just as from time to time I contemplate some
engraving after the great Italian masters. "

I do not conceal from myself that the definition of the classic I
have just given somewhat exceeds the notion usually ascribed to the
term. It should, above all, include conditions of uniformity,
wisdom, moderation, and reason, which dominate and contain all the
others. Having to praise M. Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat said--"If
he derives purity of taste, propriety of terms, variety of
expression, attentive care in suiting the diction to the thought,
from our classics, he owes to himself alone the distinctive
character he gives it all. " It is here evident that the part
allotted to classical qualities seems mostly to depend on harmony
and nuances of expression, on graceful and temperate style: such is
also the most general opinion. In this sense the pre-eminent
classics would be writers of a middling order, exact, sensible,
elegant, always clear, yet of noble feeling and airily veiled
strength. Marie-Joseph Chenier has described the poetics of those
temperate and accomplished writers in lines where he shows himself
their happy disciple:--

"It is good sense, reason which does all,--virtue, genius, soul,
talent, and taste. --What is virtue? reason put in practice;--talent?
reason expressed with brilliance;--soul? reason delicately put
forth;--and genius is sublime reason.