In humour and in irony, and in the talent of debasing and defiling what he hated, we join with all the world in thinking the Dean of St. Patrick's without a rival. His humour, though sufficiently marked and peculiar, is not to be easily defined. The nearest description we can give of it, would make it consist in expressing sentiments the most absurd and ridiculous-the most shocking and atrocious word that can be called fine, or pedantic, has that except 300l. which he got for Gulliver, ho a prodigious variety of good set phrases al- never made a farthing by any of his writings. ways at his command, and displays a sort of Pope understood his trade better, and not homely richness, like the plenty of an old only made knowing bargains for his own English dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy works, but occasionally borrowed his friends' burgess. This taste for the plain and sub-pieces, and pocketed the price of the whole. stantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists This was notoriously the case with thres not on such elements; but was in the highest volumes of Miscellanies, of which the greater degree favourable to the effect of his humour, part were from the pen of Swift. very much of which depends on the imposing gravity with which it is delivered, and on the various turns and heightenings it may receive from a rapidly shifting and always appropriate expression. Almost all his works, after The Tale of a Tub, seem to have been written very fast, and with very little minute care of the diction. For his own ease, therefore, it is probable they were all pitched on a low key, and set about on the ordinary tone of aor sometimes the most energetic and origifamiliar letter or conversation; as that from nal-in a sort of composed, calm, and unconwhich there was a little hazard of falling, scious way, as if they were plain, undeniable, even in moments of negligence, and from commonplace truths, which no person could which any rise that could be effected, must dispute, or expect to gain credit by announcing always be easy and conspicuous. A man-and in maintaining them, always in the fully possessed of his subject, indeed, and gravest and most familiar language, with a confident of his cause, may almost always consistency which somewhat palliates their write with vigour and effect, if he can get extravagance, and a kind of perverted ingeover the temptation of writing finely, and nuity, which seems to give pledge for their really confine himself to the strong and clear sincerity. The secret, in short, seems to conexposition of the matter he has to bring for- sist in employing the language of humble ward. Half of the affectation and offensive good sense, and simple undoubting conviction, pretension we meet with in authors, arises to express, in their honest nakedness, sentifrom a want of matter, and the other half, ments which it is usually thought necessary from a paltry ambition of being eloquent and to disguise under a thousand pretences or ingenious out of place. Swift had complete truths which are usually introduced with a confidence in himself; and had too much real thousand apologies. The basis of the art is business on his hands, to be at leisure to in- the personating a character of great simplicity trigue for the fame of a fine writer;-in con- and openness, for whom the conventional or sequence of which, his writings are more ad- artificial distinctions of society are supposed mired by the judicious than if he had bestowed to have no existence; and making use of this all his attention on their style. He was so character as an instrument to strip vice and much a man of business, indeed, and so much folly of their disguises, and expose guilt in all accustomed to consider his writings merely as its deformity, and truth in all its terrors. Inmeans for the attainment of a practical end-dependent of the moral or satire, of which whether that end was the strengthening of a party, or the wounding a foe-that he not only disdained the reputation of a composer of pretty sentences, but seems to have been thoroughly indifferent to all sorts of literary fame. He enjoyed the notoriety and influence which he had procured by his writings; but it was the glory of having carried his point, and not of having written well, that he valued. As soon as his publications had served their turn, they seem to have been entirely forgotten by their author;-and, desirous as he was of being richer, he appears to have thought as little of making money as immortality by means of them. He mentions somewhere, they may thus be the vehicle, a great part of the entertainment to be derived from works of humour, arises from the contrast between the grave, unsuspecting indifference of the character personated, and the ordinary feelings of the world on the subjects which he discusses. This contrast it is easy to heighten, by all sorts of imputed absurdities: in which case, the humour degenerates into mere farce and buffoonery. Swift has yielded a little to this temptation in The Tale of a Tub; but scarcely at all in Gulliver, or any of his later writings in the same style. Of his talent for reviling, we have already said at least enough, in some of the preceding pages. (January, 1810.) Correspondance inédite de MADAME DU DEFFAND, avec D'Alembert, Montesquieu, le Président Henault, La Duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Choiseul, De Staal, &c. &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809. Lettres de MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE, écrites depuis l'Année 1773 jusqu'à l'Année 1776, &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809. before us. That they are authentic, we conceive, is demonstrated by internal evidence; though, if more of them are extant, the selec tion that has been made appears to us to be a little capricious. The correspondence of Madame du Deffand reaches from the year 1738 to 1764;-that of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse extends only from 1773 to 1776. The two works, therefore, relate to different periods; and, being entirely of different characters, seem naturally to call for a separate consideration. We begin with the correspondence of Madame du Deffand, both out of respect to her seniority, and because the va riety which it exhibits seems to afford room for more observation. THE popular works of La Harpe and Mar- Where the letters that are now given to the montel have made the names at least of these world have been secreted for the last thirty ladies pretty well known in this country; and years, or by whom they are at last publishwe have been induced to place their corres-ed, we are not informed in either of the works pondence under one article, both because their history is in some measure connected, and because, though extremely unlike each other, they both form a decided contrast to our own national character, and, taken together, go far to exhaust what was peculiar in that of France. Most of our readers probably remember what La Harpe and Marmontel have said of these two distinguished women; and, at all events, it is not necessary for our purpose to give more than a very superficial account of them. Madame du Deffand was left a widow with a moderate fortune, and a great reputation for wit, about 1750; and soon after gave up her hotel, and retired to apartments in the Couvent de St. Joseph, where she continued to receive, almost every evening, whatever was most distinguished in Paris for rank, talent, or accomplishment. Having become almost blind in a few years thereafter, she found she required the attendance of some intelligent yourg woman, who might read and write for her, and assist in doing the honours of her conversazioni. For this purpose she cast her eyes on Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the illegitimate daughter of a man of rank, who had been boarded in the same convent, and was for some time delighted with her election. By and bye, however, she found that her young companion began to engross more of the notice of her visitors than she thought suitable; and parted from her with violent, ungenerous, and implacable displeasure. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, carried with her the admiration of the greater part of her patroness' circle; and having obtained a small pension from government, opened her own doors to a society not less brilliant than that into which she had been initiated under Madame du Deffand. The fatigue, however, which she had undergone in reading the old marchioness asleep, had irreparably injured her health, which was still more impaired by the agitations of her own inflammable and ambitious spirit; and she died, before she had obtained middle age, about 1776,-leaving on the minds of almost all the eminent men in France, an impression of talent, and of ardour of imagination, which seems to have been considered as without example. Madame du Deffand continued to preside in her circle till a period of extreme old age; and died in 1780, in full possession of her faculties. As this lady's house was for fifty years the resort of every thing brilliant in Paris, it is natural to suppose, that she herself must have possessed no ordinary attraction-and to feel an eager curiosity to be introduced even to that shadow of her conversation which we may expect to meet with in her correspondence. Though the greater part of the letters are addressed to her by various correspondents, yet the few which she does write are strongly marked with the traces of her peculiar character and talent; and the whole taken together give a very lively idea of the struc ture and occupations of the best French society, in the days of its greatest splendour. Laying out of view the greater constitutional gaiety of our neighbours, it appears to us, that this society was distinguished from any that has ever existed in England, by three circumstances chiefly:-in the first place, by the exclusion of all low-bred persons; secondly, by the superior intelligence and cultivation of the women; and, finally, by the want of politi cal avocations, and the absence of political antipathies. By the first of these circumstances, the old Parisian society was rendered considerably more refined, and infinitely more easy and natural. The general and peremptory proscription of the bourgeois, excluded, no doubt, a good deal of vulgarity and coarseness; but it had a still better effect in excluding those feelings of mutual jealousy and contempt, and that conflict of family pride and consequential opulence, which can only be prevented from disturbing a more promiscuous assembly, by means of universal and systematic reserve. Where all are noble, all are equal;-there is | had nothing but society to attend to; whereas, no room for ostentation or pretension of any in the latter, almost all who are cons.de able sort-every one is in his place every where; for ranks or for talents, are continually enand the same manners being familiar to the grossed with politics. They have no leisure, whole society from their childhood, manners therefore, for society, in the first place: in the cease in a great measure to be an object of second place, if they do enter it at all, they are attention. Nobody apprehends any imputa- apt to regard it as a scene rather of relaxation tion of vulgarity; and nobody values himself than exertion; and, finally, they naturally on being free from it. The little peculiarities acquire those habits of thinking and of talkby which individuals are distinguished, are ing, which are better adapted to carry on ascribed, not to ignorance or awkwardness, business and debate, than to enliven people but to caprice merely, or to peculiarity of dis-assembled for amusement. In England, men position; and not being checked by contempt or derision, are indulged, for the most part, as caprice or disposition may dictate; and thus the very highest society is brought back, and by the same causes, to much of the freedom and simplicity of the lowest. of condition have still to perform the high duties of citizens and statesmen, and can only rise to eminence by dedicating their days and nights to the study of business and affairsto the arts of influencing those, with whom, and by whom, they are to act and to the In England, we have never had this ar- actual management of those strenuous conrangement. The great wealth of the mercan- tentions by which the government of a free tile classes, and the privilege which every state is perpetually embarrassed and preman here possesses of aspiring to every situa-served. In France, on the contrary, under tion, has always prevented any such complete the old monarchy, men of the first rank had separation of the high and the low-born, even no political functions to discharge-no control in ordinary society, and made all large assem- to exercise over the government-and no rights blages of people to a certain degree promis- to assert, either for themselves or their fellow cuous. Great wealth, or great talents, being subjects. They were either left, therefore, sufficient to raise a man to power and emi- to solace their idleness with the frivolous ennence, are necessarily received as a sufficient chantments of polished society, or, if they had passport into private company; and fill it, on any object of public ambition, were driven to the large scale, with such motley and dis-pursue it by the mediation of those favourites cordant characters, as visibly to endanger or mistresses who were most likely to be won either its ease or its tranquillity. The pride by the charms of an elegant address, or the of purse, and of rank, and of manners, mutu- assiduities of a skilful flatterer. ally provoke each other; and vanities which were undiscovered while they were universal, soon become visible in the light of opposite vanities. With us, therefore, society, when it passes beyond select clubs and associations, is apt either to be distracted with little jealousies and divisions, or finally to settle into constraint, insipidity, and reserve. People meeting from all the extremes of life, are afraid of being misconstrued, and despair of being understood. Conversation is left to a few professed talkers; and all the rest are satisfied to hold their tongues, and despise each other in their hearts. The superior cultivation of French Women, however, was productive of still more substantial advantages. Ever since Europe became civilised, the females of that country have stood more on an intellectual level with the men than in any other, and have taken their share in the politics and literature, and public controversies of the day, far more largely than in any other nation with which we are acquainted. For more than two centuries, they have been the umpires of polite letters, and the depositaries and the agents of those intrigues by which the functions of government are usually forwarded or impeded. They could talk, therefore, of every thing that men could wish to talk about; and general conversation, consequently, assumed a tone, both less frivolous and less uniform, than it has ever attained in our country. The grand source, however, of the difference between the good society of France and of England, is, that, in the former counry, men It is to this lamentable inferiority in the government and constitution of their country, that the French are indebted for the superiority of their polite assemblies. Their saloons are better filled than ours, because they have no senate to fill out of their population; and their conversation is more sprightly, and their society more animated than ours, because there is no other outlet for the talent and ingenuity of the nation but society and conversation. Our parties of pleasure, on the other hand, are mostly left to beardless youths and superannuated idlers-not because our men want talents or taste to adorn them, but because their ambition, and their sense of public duty, have dedicated them to a higher service. When we lose our constitution-when the houses of parliament are shut up, our assemblies, we have no doubt, will be far more animated and rational. It would be easy to have splendid gardens and parterres, if we would only give up our corn fields and our pastures: nor should we want for magnificent fountains and ornamental canals, if we were contented to drain the whole surrounding country of the rills that maintain its fertility and beauty. But, while it is impossible to deny that the French enjoyed, in the agreeable constitution of their higher society, no slight compensation for the want of a free government, it is curious, and not unsatisfactory, to be able to trace the operation of this same compensating principle through all the departments we have alluded to. It is obviously to our free government, and to nothing else, that we owe that mixture of ranks and of characters, which certainly renders our large society less amiable, and less unconstrained, than that of the old French nobility. Men, possessed of wealth and political power, must be associated with by all with whom they choose to associate, and to whom their friendship or support is material. A trader who has bought his borough but yesterday, will not give his influence to any set of noblemen or ministers, who will not receive him and his family into their society, and agree to treat them as their equals. The same principle extends downwards by imperceptible gradations;-and the whole community is mingled in private life, it must be owned with some little discomfort, by the ultimate action of the same principles which combine them, to their incalculable benefit, in public. looked upon as having renounced both the gay and busy world; and the consequence is, that the gay are extremely frivolous, and the active rash and superficial; while the man of genius is admired by posterity, and finishes his days rather dismally, without knowing or caring for any other denomination of men, than authors, booksellers and critics. This distinction too, we think, arises out of the difference of government, or out of some of its more immediate consequences. Our politicians are too busy to mix with men of study; and our idlers are too weak and too frivolous. The studious, therefore, are driven in a great measure to herd with each other, and to form a little world of their own, in which all their peculiarities are aggravated, their vanity encouraged, and their awkwardness confirmed. In Paris, where talent and idleness met together, a society grew up, both more inviting and more accessible to men of thought and erudition. What they communicated to this society rendered it more intel ligent and respectable; and what they learned from it, made them much more reasonable, amiable, and happy. They learned, in short, the true value of knowledge and of wisdom, by seeing exactly how much they could contribute to the government or the embellishment of life; and discovered, that there were sources both of pride and of happiness, far more important and abundant than thinking, writing, or reading. Even the backwardness or the ignorance of our women may be referred to the same noble origin. Women have no legal or direct political functions in any country in the universe. In the arbitrary governments of Europe, however, they exert a personal influence over those in power and authority, which raises them into consequence, familiarizes them in some degree with business and affairs, and leads them to study the character and the dispositions of the most eminent persons of their day. In free states, again, where the personal inclination of any individual can go but a little way, and where every thing must be canvassed and sanctioned by its legitimate censors, this influence is very inconsiderable; and women are excluded almost entirely from It is curious, accordingly, to trace in the any concern in those affairs, with which the volumes before us, the more intimate and leading spirits of the country are necessarily private life of some of those distinguished occupied. They come, therefore, almost un- men, whom we find it difficult to represent to avoidably, to be considered as of a lower order ourselves under any other aspect, than that of intellect, and to act, and to be treated, upon of the authors of their learned publications. that apprehension. The chief cause of their D'Alembert, Montesquieu, Henault, and sevinferiority, however, arises from the circum-eral others, all appear in those letters in their stances that have been already stated. Most of the men of talent in upper life are engaged in pursuits from which women are necessarily excluded, and have no leisure to join in those pursuits which might occupy them in common. Being thus abandoned in a good degree to the society of the frivolous of our sex, it is impossible that they should not be frivolous in their turn. In old France, on the contrary, the men of talents in upper life had little to do but to please and be pleased with the women; and they naturally came to acquire that knowledge and those accomplishments which fitted them for such society. The last distinction between good French and good English society, arises from the different position which was occupied in each by the men of letters. In France, certainly, they mingled much more extensively with the polite world, incalculably to the benefit both of that world, and of themselves. In England, our great scholars and authors have commonly lived in their studies, or in the society of a few learned friends or dependants; and their life has been so generally gloomy, laborious and inelegant, that literature and intellectual eminence have lost some of their honours, and much of their attraction. With us, when a man takes to authorship, he is commonly true and habitual character, of cheerful and careless men of the world-whose thoughts ran mostly on the little exertions and amusements of their daily society; who valued even their greatest works chiefly as the means of amusing their leisure, or of entitling them to the admiration of their acquaintances; and occupied themselves about posterity far less than posterity will be occupied about them. It will probably scandalize a good part of our men of learning and science (though we think it will be consolatory to some) to be told, that there is great reason for suspecting that the most profound of those authors looked upon learning chiefly as a sort of tranquil and innocent amusement; to which it was very well to have recourse when more lively occupations were not at hand, but which it was wise and meritorious, at all times, to postpone to pleasant parties, and the natural play, either of the imagination or of the affections. It appears, accordingly, not only that they talked easily and familiarly of all their works to their female friends, but that they gave themselves very little anxiety either about their sale, or their notoriety out of the sphere of their own acquaintances, and made and invited all sorts of jokes upon them with unfeigned gaiety and indifference. The lives of our learned men Where all are noble no room f sort; and t whol ceas atte tio b a 1 LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY. or envy-and that air of perpetual jealousy, would be much happier, and their learning simplicity and openness of his character-his much more us tul and amiable, if they could perpetual gentleness and gaiety in societybe persuaded to see things in the same light. the unostentatious independence of his senti the reader to the characters in the volumes superiority to all feelings of worldly ambition, It is more than time, however, to introducements and conduct-his natural and cheerful Madame du Deffand's correspondence con-youth and unassuming kindness, which made sts of letters from Montesquieu, D'Alem-/him so delightful and so happy in the society bert, Henault, D'Argens, Formont, Bernstoril, of women,-are traits which we scarcely exScheffer, &c. among the men,-and Mesdames pect to find in combination with those splendid ed, form but a very inconsiderable part of to question the reality, were we not fortunate Her own letters, as we have already intimat-acter of which we should have been tempted the collection-and, as these distinguished | enough to be familiar with its counterpart in before us. de Staal, de Choiseul, &c. among the women. names naturally excite, in persons out of Paris, more interest than that of any witty mar qualifications; and compose altogether a char one living individual.* It is not possible, perhaps, to give a better chioness whatsoever, we shall begin with idea of the character of D'Alembert, than style of those eminent individuals, who are having refused to go to Berlin, to preside over some specimens of the intimate and private | merely to state the fact, and the reason of his already so well known for the value and the the academy founded there by Frederic. In beauty of their public instructions. known, was answer to a most flattering and urgent appli "La situation où je suis seroit peut-être, mon gouvernement comme tant de gens le sont de la Of these, the oldest and the most popularly cation from that sovereign, he writes thus to Montesquieu, an author who M. D'Argens.† paradoxical, and seems to have studied with sieur, un motif suffisant pour bien d'autres, de refrequently appears profound when he is only | great success the art of hiding in irry sing médiocre; 1700 liv. Na fortune est au-dessous du fantastical style of reasoning in imposing mediocre ; 1700 liv, de rente font tout mon revenu: fect. It is impossible to read the Esprit des je n'ai point de famille qui s'y oppose; oublié du aphorisms, and epigrams of considerable ef entièrement indépendant et maître de mes volontés, Loix, without feeling that it is the work of an Providence, persécuté même autant qu'on peut llent and very ingenious person, who had fits of thoughtfulness and ambition; and had meditated the different points which it comprehends at long intervals, and then connect. ed them as he best could, by insinuations, metaphors, and vague verbal distinctions. There is but little of him in this collection; but what there is, is extremely characteristic. D'Alembert had proposed that he should write the articles Democracy and Despotism, for the Encyclopédie; to which proposal he answers with much naïveté, as follows: "Quant à mon introduction dans l'Encyclopédie, c'est un beau palais où je serais bien glorieux de mettre les pieds; mais pour les deux articles Démocratie et Despotisme, je ne voudrais pas prendre ceux-la; j'ai tiré, sur ces articles, de mon cerveau tout ce qui y était. L'esprit que j'ai est un moule; on n'en tire jamais que les mêmes portraits: ainsi je ne vous dirais que ce que j'ai dit, et peutêtre plus mal que je ne l'ai dit. Ainsi, si vous voulez de moi, laissez à mon esprit le choix de quelques articles; et si vous voulez ce choix, ce fera chez madame du Deffand avec du marasquin. Le père Castel dit qu'il ne peut pas se corriger, parce qu'en corrigeant son ouvrage, il en fait un autre; et moi je ne puis pas me corriger, parce que je chante toujours la même chose. Il me vient dans l'esprit que je pourrais prendre peut-être l'article Goût, et je prouverai bien que difficile est propriè communia dicere."-Vol. i. pp. 30, 31. There is likewise another very pleasing letter to M. de Henault, and a gay copy of verses to Madame de Mirepoix;-but we hasten on to a personage still more engaging. Of all the men of genius that ever existed, D'Alembert perhaps is the most amiable and truly respectable. The great extent and variety of his learning, his vast attainments and discoveries in the mathematical sciences, and the beauty and eloquence of his literary compositions, are known to all the world: But the l'être quand on évite de donner trop d'avantages * It cannot now offend the modesty of any living reader, if I explain that the person here alluded to fessor Playfair. was my excellent and amiable friend, the late Pro This learned person writes in a very affected and précieuse style. He ends one of his letters to D'Alembert with the following eloquent expression:-" Ma santé s'effoiblit tous les jours de plus en plus; et je me dispose à aller faire bientôt mes terai dans ce monde je serai le plus zélé de vos adrévérences au père éternel: mais tandis que je reemirateurs." |