t of La Grande Mademoiselle to Lauzun,
the death of Vatel, the trial of Fouquet, the Vichy sojourn, the meeting
of the states of Britanny, and many others, are not to be surpassed in
this respect. Unlike Saint Simon, too, Madame de Sevigne has no fixed
idea--except that of Madame de Grignan's perfections, which rarely
interferes--to prevent her from taking fresh, original, and acute views
of things in general as distinguished from mere court intrigues. Her
literary criticism is excellent, and if she somewhat overvalues
moralists like Nicole and novelists like Mademoiselle de Scudery, who
ministered to her peculiar tastes, her remarks on the great preachers,
on La Fontaine, on Corneille and Racine, display a singular insight as
well as a singular power of expression. She is, indeed, except in
politics, on which few persons of her class had at the time any clear or
distinct ideas, never superficial; and this union of just thought with
accurate observation and exceptional power of expression makes her
position in literature.

[Sidenote: Tallemant des Reaux.]

Madame de Sevigne, so to speak, dwarfs all other letter-writers of her
time. Yet many of those already mentioned under the head of memoirs left
letters which have been preserved, and which are of merit. It is,
however, not necessary to specify any except Madame de Maintenon, whose
correspondence is voluminous and important both as history and as
literature. It has not the charm of Madame de Sevigne, but it displays
the great intellectual powers of the writer[262]. Of a very different
kind, but not less worthy of notice are the letters of Guy Patin, which
are for the most part violent _Mazarinades_, and full of scandalous
anecdotes, but full also of lively wit. Scandal, indeed, was very much
the order of the day, as appears from the large and curious collection
of broadsheets and pamphlets republished by the late M. Fournier in his
_Varietes Historiques et Litteraires_[263]. These, most of which refer
to the present period, form a kind of appendix to historical and
biographical writing of the more serious kind. There is, however, one
remarkable work which remains to be noticed, and which, for want of a
better place for it, must be noticed here, the _Historiettes_ of
Tallemant des Reaux[264]. The author of this singular book, Gedeon
Tallemant des Reaux, was born at La Rochelle about 1619, and died in
1692. He was of a family not noble but wealthy and well connected, an