us as, without exception, the most vivid and graphic painter
of contemporary history of the anecdotic kind in French or any other
language. His style is incorrect, and sometimes barely grammatical, and
all his work bears the character of notes, hurriedly dashed off, rather
than of a finished and regularly arranged history. Opinions differ as to
his trustworthiness in matters of fact, but it is certain, from his
positive manner of recounting the incidents and the actual words of
interviews at which he could not have been present, and as to which he
is not likely to have had more than hearsay information, that his
testimony is to be received with caution. His prejudices, too, were
extraordinarily strong, and he is in the habit of representing
everything and everybody that he does not like in the blackest possible
colours. His furious denunciation thus makes a curious contrast to the
good-humoured malice of the author with whom he is most likely to be
compared--Madame de Sevigne. But all these drawbacks affect only the
matter, not the manner of his work. The picture which he has given of
the inner life of the court of Versailles during the later years of
Louis XIV. is unrivalled in history. Still more extraordinary is the
power of single passages, such especially as the famous one describing
the Dauphin's death. Saint Simon has often been compared to Tacitus, but
his torrent of words very little resembles the laconic incisiveness of
the Roman. A much nearer parallel, though with remarkable differences,
might be found in the late Mr. Carlyle.

Some memoirs of great extent and interest, valuable as checking Saint
Simon and Dangeau (whom Saint Simon annotated), have recently appeared
for the first time, at least in a form that is to be complete. They are
the work of the Marquis de Sourches[260], a great court officer, and
they cover the last thirty years of Louis's reign. Their chief literary
peculiarity is the formal and almost official character of the text
contrasted with the greater freedom of the numerous notes.

[Sidenote: Madame de Sevigne.]

The most famous and remarkable of all the letter-writers of the
time--perhaps the most famous and remarkable of all letter-writers in
literature--was Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne[261]. She
was born at Paris on the 6th of February, 1626, and died at Grignan, of
small-pox, on the 10th of August, 1696. Her family was a distinguished
one both in war and other ways.