Eighteenth-century writers.
When I read over again the majority of the writers of the eighteenth century, I am amazed to think of the renown which they achieved and of my former admiration for them. Whether it be that the language has made progress, or that it has gone backward, or that we have advanced in civilization or retreated towards barbarism, it is certain that I find something threadbare, antiquated, grizzled, cold, and lifeless in the authors who were the delight of my youth. I find even in the greatest writers of the Voltairean age things that are poor in sentiment, thought, and style.
Whom am I to blame for my disappointment? I fear the chief guilt lies with myself; born innovator that I am, I may perhaps have communicated to younger generations the malady with which I was seized. Terror-stricken, in vain I cry to my children, "Do not forget your French!" They reply in the words of the Limosin to Pantagruel, that they come "from alme, inclyte and celebrate academy, which is vocitated Lutetia[260]."
This habit of latinizing and hellenizing our language is not new, as we see: Rabelais cured it, it reappeared in Ronsard[261]; Boileau attacked it. In our time it has been revived by science; our revolutionaries, great Greeks by nature, have compelled our merchants and farmers to calculate in hectares, hectolitres, kilometers, millimeters, decagrams: politics have "ronsardized" everything.
I might have spoken here of M. de La Harpe, whom I knew at that time, and to whom I will return; I might have added M. de Fontanes' portrait to my gallery; but although my acquaintance with that excellent man began in 1789, it was not until we met in England that I became united to him in a friendship which ever increased with bad, and never diminished with good fortune: I will tell you of him later in all the effusion of my heart. I shall have no talents to depict but those which no longer console the earth. The death of my friend has occurred at the moment when my recollections were leading me to trace the commencement of his life[262]. So great a flight is our existence that, if we do not write down in the evening what has happened in the morning, our work obstructs us, and we no longer have the time to keep it posted up. This does not prevent us from wasting our years, from flinging to the winds the hours which are for men the seeds of eternity.
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While my inclination and that of my two sisters threw me into this literary society, our position obliged us to frequent another set; the family of my brother's wife was naturally the centre for us of this second circle.
The Président Le Peletier de Rosanbo, who since died with such great courage[263], was at the time of my arrival in Paris a model of frivolity. At that period, men's minds and manners were in every way unsettled, a symptom of a coming revolution. Magistrates were ashamed to wear the robe, and mocked at the gravity of their fathers. The Lamoignons, the Molés, the Séguiers, the d'Aguesseaus[264] wished to fight instead of judging. The Presidents' wives ceased to be respectable mothers of families and left their gloomy mansions in order to seek brilliant adventures[265]. The priest in the pulpit avoided pronouncing the name of Jesus Christ and spoke only of the "Law-giver of the Christians;" the ministers were falling pell-mell; power slipped through each one's fingers. The height of fashion was to be American in town, English at Court, Prussian in the army; to be anything except French. All that was said, all that was done, was one long series of inconsistencies. They wished to keep up the commendatory clergy, and would have none of religion; none could be an officer who was not of gentle birth, whereas the nobility was railed at; equality was introduced into the drawing-rooms together with flogging into the camps.
M. de Malesherbes.
M. de Malesherbes had three daughters[266], Mesdames de Rosanbo, d'Aulnay, and de Montboissier; he loved Madame de Rosanbo the best, because her opinions resembled his own. The Président de Rosanbo[267] also had three daughters, Mesdames de Chateaubriand, d'Aulnay[268], and de Tocqueville, and one son, whose brilliant mind clothed itself in Christian perfection. M. de Malesherbes was happy in the midst of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Time after time I have seen him, in the early days of the Revolution, arrive at Madame de Rosanbo's, all heated with politics, fling off his wig, lie down upon the carpet of my sister's room, and submit to the uproarious teasing of the rebellious children. His manners would have been considered almost vulgar, if he had not possessed a certain brusqueness which saved him from being commonplace: at the first words he uttered, one recognized the bearer of an old name and the superior magistrate. His natural virtues were somewhat tainted with affectation, thanks to the philosophy which he mingled with them. He was full of knowledge, honesty, and courage, but impetuous and passionate to such an extent that he once said to me, speaking of Condorcet: