prettiness of his own invention; but even thus altered he was more orthodox than most of the Frenchmen A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, a little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall in love again (which is a great Passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it) it would be, I think, with Prettiness rather than with Majestical Beauty. He seems very near proclaiming himself a disciple of Epicurus in these lines When Epicurus to the World had taught, That pleasure was the chiefest good, (And was perhaps i' th' right, if rightly understood) His life he to his Doctrine brought, And in a Gardens shade that Sovereign Pleasure sought. There is no need to remark on Cowley's intense love of flowers (so frequent in Greek and English poets) and of gardens. His essay "The Garden," addressed to Evelyn, begins with this truly Epicurean wish I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to Covetousness, as that one which I have had always that I might be master at last of a small House and large Garden, with very moderate Conveniencies joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my Life only to the Culture of them, and study of Nature. One might quote whole essays which are pure Epicureanism of a Latinized or Gallicized kind-not the clear Hellenic beauty recaptured by Landor. The very titles of his essays proclaim his doctrine -“Of Liberty," "Of Solitude," "The Garden," 66 The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company.' He quotes Montaigne, Gassendi, and Epicurus; he translates many famous passages of Latin poetry which are Epicurean in tone, but chiefly from Horace. Seneca, Claudianus, Virgil, and Martial are represented, but not Lucretius, for Cowley's Epicureanism is more Horatian, pastoral, and elegiac than elevated and speculative. It is Church of England Epicureanism; he keeps a gig in his stable. And yet sometimes he does teach that Epicurean charm which is so hard to define, as in that exquisite little Latin prayer which may be left in its original tongue since none will now wish to repeat it Magne Deus, quod ad has vitæ brevis attinet horas, Contentus abibo that is the correct note to end on ; for what is Epicureanism but contentedly minding one's own business in lettered solitude ? X MADAME DU DEFFAND AND Μ VOLTAIRE ME. DU DEFFAND holds a distinguished place in French literature. She is one of that band of brilliant Frenchwomen whose achievements in literature give us reason to say that only the Greeks and the French have produced a body of really excellent work by feminine writers. The writings of the Greek poetesses have reached us only in poignant fragments; we may gather them together piously and parsimoniously, they make but a slender volume, "all roses," it is true, but how few; and we know so little about them. The barbarity of too many centuries of ignorance and turbulence interposes between us and the exquisite shadowy figures of old Greece; we may speculate as we will, imagine life-stories, settings, tragedies for Anyte and Erinna and Nossis, upon whose tablets Love melted the wax," but we shall never possess anything but a handful of doubtful dates, anecdotes, conjectures, and our own fancies. It is 66 very different with these French women writers. So much is known and printed about them, they have been the objects of so many literary studies, that one's difficulty here is that of too great riches. In fact, with that human preference for what we have not over what we have, many of us no doubt would callously sacrifice a portion of our knowledge of the French ladies to know a little more about the Greeks. One would cheerfully exchange the works of Mme. Sand and Mme. Des Houlières, say, for Sappho and Corinna. But time and chance allow us no such bargains, and, failing the Greek women, we must make the best of the French. And within their own limits they have much to give us; not, indeed, that Greek perfection which dissatisfies us for a time with everything else, but another more formal, less inspired, more worldly perfection of their own. In the writings of Mme. de La Fayette, Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de Maintenon, Mme. du Deffand, there is a perfection of taste and wit, politeness, usage du monde, gaiety, agrément. They are the minor French classics, differing in degree from the Rochefoucaulds, the Bruyères, the Montesquieus, the Voltaires, but assuredly of their kind. They possess a polish, an ease, an impeccability, a complete freedom from all that is heavy, ridiculous, tedious, vapid, such as no Romantic writer, not even demi-classic Alfred de Vigny, can show. Put down the letters of Mme. de Maintenon or Mme. du Deffand and take up Corinne " or a novel of George Sand; the difference is astonishing with so short a period intervening. The guillotine and the Code Napoléon had done their work well; the tyran and his minions were abolished, and with them went for ever that distinction of living, thinking, and feeling which made the French aristocracy the arbiters of European manners and the dictators of European culture. In the long period of decline of that society Mme. du Deffand holds a very important place : "Elle est avec Voltaire, dans le prose, le classique le plus pure de cette époque, sans même en excepter aucun des grands écrivain." That is high praise from a delicate critic like Sainte-Beuve, for Mme. du Deffand's life covers the first eighty years of the eighteenth century, a great period in French literature; to share the supremacy in that period with Voltaire alone is to rank high indeed-above Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Marivaux, d'Alembert, to name four only. It is regrettable that the size of this volume of selections from Mme. du Deffand's letters forbade the inclusion of Voltaire's letters to her as well as all hers to him. The comparison is extremely interesting, and in any case a correspondence is a collaboration; to give only one half of the collaboration when the other half is extant |