Description

The description of the "ancien regime" inFrance, "a despotism tempered by epigrams," like most epigrammaticsentences, contains some truth, with much fiction. The society ofthe last half of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenthcenturies, was doubtless greatly influenced by the precise andterse mode in which the popular writers of that date expressedtheir thoughts. To a people naturally inclined to think that everypossible view, every conceivable argument, upon a question isincluded in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word "voilà," truthsexpressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm.It is, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so manyeminent French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, LaRochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, and Vauvenargues, eachcontributed to the rich stock of French epigrams. No other countrycan show such a list of brilliant writers—in England certainly wecannot. Our most celebrated, Lord Bacon, has, by his other works,so surpassed his maxims, that their fame is, to a great measure,obscured. The only Englishman who could have rivalled LaRochefoucauld or La Bruyère was the Earl of Chesterfield, and heonly could have done so from his very intimate connexion withFrance; but unfortunately his brilliant genius was spent in theimpossible task of trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in"cutting blocks with a razor."