PIERRE BAYLE
After Chéreau
Pierre Coste seems very anxious to clothe his thoughts in appropriate literary dress, and his anxiety is shared by Suson. At times the tone strikes one as so conventional that Coste might be suspected of insincerity if one did not bear in mind that even the language of true love must follow the fashion. At any rate Suson is sincere, and nothing is more touching than her very awkwardness when she tries her hand at the "sublime style." It is hardly possible to improve upon this very obvious statement without venturing upon unsafe ground. These old-fashioned lovers' emotions are tantalisingly unintelligible. Mark that they write to each other quite openly without even hinting at marriage. No doubt a wealthy merchant's daughter could not wed a penniless tutor, but then the Bruns, Durands, and Rouvières are respectable members of the French congregation in Amsterdam over whom watches a Consistory as strict on questions of morality as a Scottish Kirk. So we must fall back upon the hypothesis of a platonic friendship paralleled in England by no less eminent contemporaries than Locke[298] and Bishop Burnet.[299] Perhaps these letters of Coste shed some light on Swift's Journal to Stella.
Yet another observation may be added: though the tragic element is absent, there is pathos, if it be pathetic for exiles to sigh after their native land. Pierre Bayle called Paris the earthly paradise of the scholars, Barbeyrac said that Amsterdam was fit only for merchants to live in. Coste could not brook the Dutch, and Suson laughed at them in unison, instinctively regretting Languedoc and Provence. Such was the way in which the refugees, though devoid of poetic sentiment, "hanged their harps upon the willows by the rivers of Babylon."
FOOTNOTES:
[283] Lettres choisies, ii. p. 770.
[284] Reprinted in Locke's Works, x. pp. 161 ff.
[285] See our Influence politique de Locke, p. 346.
[286] Locke, Works, x. p. 162. The most amusing detail in this literary quarrel is that fifteen years before Desmaizeaux had actually offered Bernard, the editor of the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, a paper vehemently criticizing Locke. But La Motte interfered, and the offer was declined. However, La Motte kept Desmaizeaux' letter and threatened to publish it. Add. MSS., 4281, fol. 144, and 4286, fol. 242.
[287] Mémoires pour l'histoire des Sciences et des Beaux-Arts (1707), ii. pp. 934-945.