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and begged I would, therefore, have the bonte to choose another apartment.
“Carry my luggage forthwith,” said I, “to the Hotel de Mirabeau:” and that very evening I changed my abode.
I am happy in the opportunity this incident affords me of especially recommending the Hotel de Mirabeau, Rue de la Paix, to any of my countrymen who are really gentlemen, and will not disgrace my recommendation. It is certainly the best caravansera in the English quartier.
I was engaged that day to a literary dinner at the Marquis D’Al—; and as I knew I should meet Vincent, I felt some pleasure in repairing to my entertainer’s hotel. They were just going to dinner as I entered. A good many English were of the party. The good natured (in all senses of the word) Lady—, who always affected to pet me, cried aloud, “Pelham, mon joli petit mignon, I have not seen you for an age—do give me your arm.”
Madame D’Anville was just before me, and, as I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were full of tears; my heart smote me for my late inattention, and going up to her, I only nodded to Lady—, and said, in reply to her invitation, “Non, perfide, it is my turn to be cruel now. Remember your flirtation with Mr. Howard de Howard.”
“Pooh!” said Lady—, taking Lord Vincent’s arm, “your jealousy does indeed rest upon ‘a trifle light as air.’”
“Do you forgive me?” whispered I to Madame D’Anville, as I handed her to the salle a manger. “Does not love forgive every thing?” was her answer.
“At least,” thought I, “it never talks in those pretty phrases.”
The conversation soon turned upon books. As for me, I never at that time took a share in those discussions; indeed, I have long laid it down as a rule, that a man never gains by talking to more than one person at a time. If you don’t shine, you are a fool—if you do, you are a bore. You must become either ridiculous or unpopular—either hurt your own self-love by stupidity, or that of others by wit. I therefore sat in silence, looking exceedingly edified, and now and then muttering “good!” “true!” Thank heaven, however, the suspension of one faculty only increases the vivacity of the others; my eyes and ears always watch like sentinels over the repose of my lips. Careless and indifferent as I seem to all things, nothing ever escapes me: the minutest erreur in a dish or a domestic, the most trifling peculiarity in a criticism or a coat, my glance detects in an instant, and transmits for ever to my recollection.
“You have seen Jouy’s ‘Hermite de la Chaussee D’Antin?’” said our host to Lord Vincent.
“I have, and think meanly of it. There is a perpetual aim at something pointed, which as perpetually merges into something dull. He is like a bad swimmer, strikes out with great force, makes a confounded splash, and never gets a yard the further for it. It is a great effort not to sink. Indeed, Monsieur D’A—, your literature is at a very reduced ebb; bombastic in the drama—shallow in philosophy—mawkish in poetry, your writers of the present day seem to think, with Boileau—
“‘Souvent de tous nos maux la raison est le pire.’”
“Surely,” cried Madame D’Anville, “you will allow De la Martine’s poetry to be beautiful?”
“I allow it,” said he, “to be among the best you have; and I know very few lines in your language equal to the two first stanzas in his ‘Meditation on Napoleon,’ or to those exquisite verses called ‘Le Lac;’ but you will allow also that he wants originality and nerve. His thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus—(you remember, D’A—, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that ‘there is something august in the shades;’ but he has applied this thought wrongly—in his obscurity there is nothing sublime—it is the back ground of a Dutch picture. It is only a red herring, or an old hat, which he has invested with such pomposity of shadow and darkness.”
“But his verses are so smooth,” said Lady—.
“Ah!” answered Vincent.
“‘Quand la rime enfin se trouve au bout des vers, Qu’importe que le reste y soit mis des travers.’”
“Helas” said the Viscount D’A—t, an author of no small celebrity himself; “I agree with you—we shall never again see a Voltaire or a Rousseau.”
“There is but little justice in those complaints, often as they are made,” replied Vincent. “You may not, it is true, see a Voltaire or a Rousseau, but you will see their equals. Genius can never be exhausted by one individual. In our country, the poets after Chaucer in the fifteenth century complained of the decay of their art—they did not anticipate Shakspeare. In Hayley’s time, who ever dreamt of the ascension of Byron? Yet Shakspeare and Byron came like the bridegroom ‘in the dead of night;’ and you have the same probability of producing—not, indeed, another Rousseau, but a writer to do equal honour to your literature.”
“I think,” said Lady—, “that Rousseau’s ‘Julie’ is over-rated. I had heard so much of ‘La Nouvelle Heloise’ when I was a girl, and been so often told that it was destruction to read it, that I bought the book the very day after I was married. I own to you that I could not get through it.”
“I am not surprised at it,” answered Vincent; “but Rousseau is not the less a genius for all that: there is no story to bear out the style, and he himself is right when he says ‘ce livre convient a tres peu de lecteurs.’ One letter would delight every one—four volumes of them are a surfeit—it is the toujours perdrix. But the chief beauty of that wonderful conception of an empassioned and meditative mind is to be found in the inimitable manner in which the thoughts are embodied, and in the tenderness, the truth, the profundity of the thoughts themselves: when Lord Edouard says, ‘c’est le chemin des passions qui m’a conduit a la philosophie,’ he inculcates, in one simple phrase, a profound and unanswerable truth. It is in these remarks that nature is chiefly found in the writings of Rousseau: too much engrossed in himself to be deeply skilled in the characters of others, that very self-study had yet given him a knowledge of the more hidden recesses of the heart. He could perceive at once the motive and the cause of actions, but he wanted the patience to trace the elaborate and winding progress of their effects. He saw the passions in their home, but he could not follow them abroad. He knew mankind in the general, but not men in the detail. Thus, when he makes an aphorism or reflection, it comes home at once to you as true; but when he would analyze that reflection, when he argues, reasons, and attempts to prove, you reject him as unnatural, or you refute him as false. It is then that he partakes of that manie commune which he imputes to other philosophers, ‘de nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.’”
There was a short pause. “I think,” said Madame D’Anville, “that it is in those pensees which you admire so much in Rousseau, that our authors in general excel.”
“You are right,” said Vincent, “and for this reason—with you les gens de letters are always les gens du monde. Hence their quick perceptions are devoted to men as well as to books. They make observations acutely, and embody them with grace; but it is worth remarking, that the same cause which produced the aphorism, frequently prevents its being profound. These literary gens du monde have the tact to observe, but not the patience, perhaps not the time, to investigate. They make the maxim, but they never explain to you the train of reasoning which led to it. Hence they are more brilliant than true. An English writer would not dare to make a maxim, involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most important of moral truths, without bringing pages to support his dictum. A French essayist leaves it wholly to itself. He tells you neither how he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion, ‘le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.’ Consequently, if less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, and ought rather to be considered as models of terseness than of reflection. A man might learn to think sooner from your writers, but he will learn to think justly sooner from ours. Many observations of La Bruyere