Kind and gentle to all, lending himself with facility to every call made on him; polite, from the pure source of politeness, benevolence of heart;—every one was welcomed, every one satisfied. A friend one day made excuses for interrupting him in a work he was desirous of finishing: "Do not distress yourself," he replied: "you do more good to me by interrupting me, than I should have done to others by working." Though of a sensitive and vivacious temperament, he was never betrayed into any show of temper. During the first years of his exile, when he severely felt his estrangement from the refined and enlightened society of the capital, and from friends dear to his heart, he was still equable and cheerful; always alive to the interests of others, never self-engrossed. He had the art of adapting himself to the capacities and habits of every one:—"I have seen him," says Ramsay, "in a single day, mount, and descend all ranks; converse with the noble in their own language, preserving throughout his episcopal dignity; and then talk with the lowly, as a good father with his children, and this without effort or affectation."
If he were thus to his acquaintance, to the friends whom he loved, he was far more. From the divine love which he cherished, as the source of every virtue, sprung a spirit of attachment pure, tender, and generous. His own sentiments with regard to friendship, when he expatiates on it, in a letter to the duke of Burgundy, are conceived in the noblest and most disinterested sense. In practice, he was forbearing and delicate; he bore the faults of those around him, yet seized the happy moment to instruct and amend. He felt that self-love rendered us alive to the imperfections of another; and that want of sympathy arose from being too self-engrossed. He knew it was the duty of a friend to correct faults; but he could wait patiently for years to give one salutary lesson. In the same spirit, he begged his friends not to be sparing in their instructions to him. His great principle was, that all was in common with friends. "How delightful it would be," he sometimes said, "if every possession was a common one; if each man would no longer regard his knowledge, his virtues, his enjoyments, and his wealth, as his own merely. It is thus, that in heaven, that the saints have all things in God, and nothing in themselves. It is a general and infinite beatitude, whose flux and reflux causes their fulness of bliss. If our friends below would submit to the same poverty, and the same community of all things, temporal and spiritual, we should no longer hear those chilling words thine and mine; we should all be rich and poor in unity." The death of one he loved could move him to profound grief; and he could say—"Our true friends are at once our greatest delight and greatest sorrow. One is tempted to wish that all attached friends should agree to die together on the same day: those who love not, are willing to bury all their fellow-creatures, with dry eyes and satisfied hearts; they are not worthy to live. It costs much to be susceptible to friendship; but those who are, would be ashamed if they were not; they prefer suffering to heartlessness." Religion alone could bring consolation:—"Let us unite ourselves in heart," he wrote, "to those whom we regret; he is not far from us, though invisible; he tells us, in mute speech, to hasten to rejoin him. Pure spirits see, hear, and love their friends in the common centre." Such are the soothing expressions of Fénélon; and such as these caused d'Alembert to remark, "that the touching charm of his works, is the sense of quiescence and peace which he imparts to his reader; it is a friend who draws near, and whose soul overflows into yours: he suspends, at least for a time, your regrets and sufferings. We may pardon many men who force us to hate humanity, in favour of Fénélon who makes us love it."
Most of his works are either pious or written for the instruction of his royal pupil. The duke de Beauvilliers had copies of most of those letters and papers, addressed to the duke of Burgundy, which Louis XIV. destroyed. Among these, his directions with regard to the conscience of a king, is full of enlightened morality.
He had a great love for all classic learning. His Telemachus is full of traits which show that he felt all the charm of Greek poetry. He was made member of the French academy the 31st of March, 1693, in the place of Pelisson. His oration on the occasion was simple and short. He afterwards addressed his Dialogues on Eloquence to the academy. These prove the general enlightenment of his mind, and the justice of his views. His remarks on language are admirable. When he speaks of tragedy, he rises far above Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, in his conception of the drama; in that, as in every other species of composition, he tried to bring back his countrymen to simplicity and nature. He desired them to speak more from the heart, less from the head. He shows how what the French falsely deemed to be delicacy of taste, took all vivid colouring and truth from their pictures, giving us a high enamel, in place of vigorous conception and finished execution. He gives just applause to Molière; his only censure is applied to the Misanthrope: "I cannot pardon him," he says, "for making vice graceful, and representing virtue as austere and odious." All his works are essentially didactic; and they have the charm which we must expect would be found in the address of one so virtuous and wise, and calm, to erring passion-tost humanity.
His Telemachus has become, to a great degree, a mere book of instruction to young persons. In its day, it was considered a manual for kings, inculcating their duties even too strictly, and with too much regard for the liberties of the subject. In every despotic country, where it is considered eligible that the sovereign should be instructed and the people kept in ignorance, this work is still invaluable, if such a one can be found; but, in a proper sense, it cannot, except in Turkey and Russia. There is much tyranny, but the science of politics is changed: the welfare of nations rests on another basis than the virtues and wisdom of kings;—it rests on knowledge, and morals of the people. The proper task of the lawgiver and philanthropist is to enlighten nations, now that masses exert so great an influence over governments. A king, as every individual placed in a conspicuous situation, must be the source of much good and evil, happiness or misery, within his own circle; but in England and France the influence of the people is so direct as to demand our most anxious endeavours to enlighten them; while, in countries where yet they have no voice in government, the day is so near at hand when they shall obtain it, that it is even more necessary to render them fit to exert it; so that when the hour comes, they shall not be fierce as emancipated slaves,—but, like free men, just, true, and patient. This change has operated to cast Telemachus into shade; and the decay of Catholicism has spread a similar cloud over Fénélon's religious works; but the spirit of the man will preserve them from perishing. His soul, tempered in every virtue, transcends the priestly form it assumed on earth; and every one who wishes to learn the lessons taught by that pure, simple, and entire disinterestedness, which is the foundation of the most enlightened wisdom and exalted virtue, must consult the pages of Fénélon. He will rise from their perusal a wiser and a better man.
[103]Plato's Symposium.
[104]Among such, how beautifully is the following thought expressed: "On voit tous les dieux de la terre dégradés et abimés dans l'éternité, comme les fleuves demeurent sans nom et sans gloire, mêlés dans l'océan avec les rivières les plus inconnues." More known is the apostrophe on the sudden death of Henrietta of England, duchess of Orleans, when his audience wept, as he exclaimed, "O nuit désastreuse, nuit effroyable, où retentit tout-à-coup, comme un éclat de tonnerre, cette accablante nouvelle, madame se meurt, madame est morte!" D'Alembert praises yet more the conclusion of his oration on the great Condé, when he took leave for ever of the pulpit, and, addressing the hero whom he was celebrating, said, "Prince, vous mettrez fin à tous ces discours. Au lieu de déplorer la mort des autres, je veux désormais apprendre de vous à rendre la mienne sainte; heureux, si averti par ces cheveux blancs du compte que je dois rendre de mon administration, je réserve au troupeau, que je dois nourrir de la parole de vie, les restes d'une voix qui tombe, et d'un ardeur qui s'eteint." "The touching picture," says D'Alembert, "which this address presents of a great man no more, and of another great man about to disappear, penetrates the soul with a soft and profound melancholy, by causing us to contemplate the vain and fugitive splendour of talents and reputation, the misery of human nature, and the folly of attaching ourselves to so sad and short a life."
[105]D'Alembert well remarks, that the criterion by which to judge of kings, is the men in whom they place confidence. He enumerates those most trusted and favoured by Louis XIV. The dukes de Montauzier and Beauvilliers, governors to his son and grandson; Bossuet and Fénélon, their preceptors; with Huet and Fleury, men of learning and rare merit, under them. Added to these selections for one especial object, we may name Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg, Colbert, and Louvois, as his generals and ministers; and when we also recollect the appreciation he displayed for Boileau, Racine, Molière, and others, we may conclude that this monarch deserved much of the applause bestowed on him. Had madame de Maintenon been a woman of enlightened and noble mind, and added to her persuasive manners and the charms of her intellect a knowledge of the true ends of life, and have induced Louis to seek right in the study of good, instead of the dicta of churchmen, his latter days had been as glorious as his first, and it would not have remained for evermore a stain on the French church, that his persecutions and bigotry sprung from his confidence in its clergy. We are told, indeed, that she exerted herself meritoriously on occasion of the choice of Fénélon. Louis did not perceive the merit of this admirable man, calling him a mere bel-esprit. Madame de Maintenon advocated his being chosen preceptor, from his being the most virtuous ecclesiastic at court; a consideration which persuaded the king.