his genius,
and then passed on. He was not concerned with finding remedies for the
evils of a particular society, but with exposing the underlying evils of
all societies. He would have written as truthful and as melancholy a
book if he had lived to-day.

La Bruyere, in the darkness of his pessimism, sometimes suggests Swift,
especially in his sarcastically serious treatment of detail; but he was
without the virulent bitterness of the great Dean. In fact his
indictment owes much of its impressiveness to the sobriety with which it
is presented. There is no rage, no strain, no over-emphasis; one feels
as one reads that this is an impartial judge. And, more than that, one
feels that the judge is not only a judge, but also a human being. It is
the human quality in La Bruyere's mind which gives his book its rare
flavour, so that one seems to hear, in these printed words, across the
lapse of centuries, the voice of a friend. At times he forgets his gloom
and his misanthropy, and speaks with a strange depth of feeling on
friendship or on love. 'Un beau visage,' he murmurs, 'est le plus beau
de tous les spectacles, et l'harmonie la plus douce est le son de voix
de celle que l'on aime.' And then--'Etre avec les gens qu'on aime, cela
suffit; rever, leur parler, ne leur parler point, penser a eux, penser a
des choses plus indifferentes, mais aupres d'eux tout est egal.' How
tender and moving the accent, yet how restrained? And was ever more
profundity of intimacy distilled into a few simple words than here--'Il
y a du plaisir a rencontrer les yeux de celui a qui l'on vient de
donner'? But then once more the old melancholy seizes him. Even love
itself must end.--'On guerit comme on se console; on n'a pas dans le
coeur de quoi toujours pleurer et toujours aimer.' He is overwhelmed by
the disappointments of life.--'Les choses les plus souhaitees n'arrivent
point; ou, si elles arrivent, ce n'est ni dans le temps ni dans les
circonstances ou elles auraient fait un extreme plaisir.' And life
itself, what is it? how does it pass?--'Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois
evenements: naitre, vivre, et mourir; il ne se sent pas naitre, il
souffre a mourir, et il oublie de vivre.'

The pages of La Bruyere--so brilliant and animated on the surface, so
sombre in their fundamental sense--contain the final summary--we might
almost say the epitaph--of the great age of Louis XIV. Within a few
years of the publication of his book in its complete form (169