CHAPTER VIII
TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The spiritual life was interpreted from within by Fénelon. The facts of the moral world, as seen in society, were studied, analysed, and portrayed by La Bruyère and Saint-Simon.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE (1645-96), a Parisian of the bourgeoisie, appointed preceptor in history to the grandson of the great Condé, saw with the keen eyes of a disenchanted observer the spectacle of seventeenth-century society. In 1688, appended to his translation of the Characters of Theophrastus, appeared his only important work, Les Caractères ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle; revised and enlarged editions followed, until the ninth was published in 1696. "I restore to the public," he wrote, "what the public lent me." In a series of sixteen chapters, each consisting of detached paragraphs, his studies of human life and of the social environment are presented in the form of maxims, reflections, observations, portraits. For the maxims a recent model lay before him in the little volume of La Rochefoucauld; portraits, for which the romances of Mlle. de Scudéry had created a taste, had been exhibited in a collection formed by Mlle. de Montpensier—the growth of her salon—in collaboration with Segrais (Divers Portraits, 1659). Aware of his mastery as a painter of character, La Bruyère added largely to the number of his portraits in the later editions. Keys, professing to identify his character-sketches with living persons, enhanced the interest excited by the work; but in many instances La Bruyère aims at presenting a type rather than an individual, a type which had been individualised by his observation of actual persons.
A profound or an original thinker he was not. Incapable of employing base means to attain worldly success, his honourable failure left a certain bitterness in his spirit; he regarded the life around him as a looker-on, who enjoyed the spectacle, and enjoyed also to note the infirmities of those who took part in the game which he had declined. He is neither a determined pessimist, nor did he see realities through a roseate veil; he neither thinks basely of human nature nor in a heroic fashion: he studies its weakness with a view, he declares, to reformation, but actually, perhaps, more in the way of an observer than of a moral teacher. He is before all else a "naturalist," a naturalist with a sufficient field for investigation, though the life of the provinces and that of the fields (save in their more obvious aspect of mournful toil) lie beyond his sphere. The value of his criticisms of men and manners arises partly from the fact that he is not pledged to a system, that he can take up various points of view, and express the results of many moods of mind. Now he is severe, and again he is indulgent; now he appears almost a cynic, and presently we find that his heart is tender; now he is grave, and in a moment mirthful; while for every purpose and in every mood he has irony at his command. He divines the working of the passions with a fine intelligence, and is a master in noting every outward betrayal or indication of the hidden processes of the heart.
The successive chapters deal with the intellect and authorship, personal merit, women, the heart, society and conversation, the gifts of fortune, the town, the court, men in high station, the King and commonwealth, the nature of man, judgments and criticism, fashion, customs, the pulpit; and under each head are grouped, without formal system, those notes on life and studies of society that had gradually accumulated in the author's mind. A final chapter, "Des Esprits Forts," expresses a vague spiritual philosophy, which probably was not insincere, and which at least served to commend the mundane portion of his book to pious readers. The special attraction of the whole lies in its variety. A volume merely of maxims would have been too rigid, too oracular for such a versatile spirit as that of La Bruyère. "Different things," he says, "are thought out by different methods, and explained by diverse expressions, it may be by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor or some other figure, a parallel, a simple comparison, a complete fact, a single feature, by description, or by portraiture." His book contains all these, and his style corresponds with the variety of matter and method—a style, as Voltaire justly characterises it, rapid, concise, nervous, picturesque. "Among all the different modes in which a single thought may be expressed," wrote La Bruyère, "only one is correct." To find this exact expression he sometimes over-labours his style, and searches the vocabulary too curiously for the most striking word. In his desire for animation the periodic structure of sentence yields to one of interruptions, suspensions, and surprises. He is at once a moralist and a virtuoso in the literary art.
The greater part of Saint-Simon's life and the composition of his Mémoires belong to the eighteenth century; but his mind was moulded during his early years, and retained its form and lineaments. He may be regarded as a belated representative of the great age of Louis XIV. If he belongs in some degree to the newer age by virtue of his sense that political reform was needed, his designs of political reform were derived from the past rather than pointed towards the future. LOUIS DE ROUVRAY, DUC DE SAINT-SIMON, was born at Versailles in 1675. He cherished the belief that his ancestry could be traced to Charlemagne. His father, a page of Louis XIII., had been named a duke and peer of France in 1635; from his father descended to the son a devotion to the memory of Louis XIII., and a passionate attachment to the dignity of his own order.
Saint-Simon's education was narrow, but he acquired some Latin, and was a diligent reader of French history. In 1691 he was presented to the King and was enrolled as a soldier in the musketeers. He purchased by-and-by what we should now call the colonelcy of a cavalry regiment, but was ill-pleased with the system which had transformed a feudal army into one where birth and rank were subjected to official control; and in 1702, when others received promotion and he was passed over, he sent in his resignation. Having made a fortunate and happy marriage, Saint-Simon was almost constantly at Versailles until the death of the King, and obtained the most intimate acquaintance with what he terms the mechanics of the court. He had many grievances against Louis XIV., chief among them the insult shown to the nobility in the King's legitimatising his natural offspring; and he justly regarded Madame de Maintenon as his enemy.
The death of the Duc de Bourgogne, to whose party he belonged, was a blow to Saint-Simon's hopes; but the Regent remained his friend. He helped, on a diplomatic mission to Spain, to negotiate the marriage of Louis XV.; yet still was on fire with indignation caused by the wrongs of the dukes and peers, whom he regarded as entitled on historical grounds to form the great council of the monarchy, and almost as rightful partners in the supreme power. His political life closed in 1723 with the death of the Regent. He lived in retirement at his château of La Ferté-Vidame, sorrowfully surviving his wife and his sons. In Paris, at the age of eighty (1755), Saint-Simon died.