PASCAL AND HIS EDITOR BOSSUT.
(Vol. ii., p. 278.)
Although I am not afraid of the fate with which that unfortunate monk met, of whom it is said,—
"Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello,"
yet a blunder is a sad thing, especially when the person who is supposed to commit it attempts to correct others.
Now the printer of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" has introduced, in my short remark on Pascal, the very error which has led the author of the article in the British Quarterly Review, as well as many others, to mistake the Bishop of Meaux for the editor of Pascal's works. Once more, that unfortunate editor is BOSSUT, not BOSSUET; and if it may appear to some that the difference of one letter in a name is not of much consequence, yet it is from an error as trifling as this that people of my acquaintance confound Madame de Staël with Madame de Staal-Delauney, in spite of chronology and common sense. Again, by the leave of the Christian Remembrancer (vol. xiii. no. 55.), the elegant and accomplished scholar to whom we owe the only complete text of Pascal's thoughts, is M. Faugère, not Fougère. All these are minutiæ; but the chapter of minutiæ is an important one in literary history.
Another remarkable question which I feel a wish to touch upon before closing this communication, is that of impromptus. Your correspondent MR. SINGER (p. 105.) supposes Malherbe the poet to have been "ready at an impromptu." But, to say the least, this is rather doubtful, unless the extemporaneous effusions of Malherbe were of that class which Voiture indulged in with so much success at the Hôtel de Rambouillet—sonnets and epigrams leisurely prepared for the purpose of being fired off in some fashionable "ruelle" of Paris. Malherbe is known to have been a very slow composer; he used to say to Balzac that ten years' rest was necessary after the production of a hundred lines: and the author of the Christian Socrates, himself rather too fond of the file, after quoting this fact, adds in a letter to Consart:
"Je n'ai pas besoin d'un si long repos après un si petit travail. Mais aussi d'attendre de moi cette heureuse facilité qui fait produire des volumes à M. de Scudéry, ce serait me connaître mal, et me faire une honneur que je ne mérite pas."
Malherbe certainly had a most happy influence on French poetry; he checked the ultra-classical school of Ronsard, and began that work of reformation afterwards accomplished by Boileau.
As I have mentioned Voiture's name, I shall add a very droll "soi-disant" impromptu of his, composed to ridicule Mademoiselle Chapelain, the sister of the poet. Like her brother, she was most miserly in her habits, and not distinguished by that virtue which some say is next to godliness.