than a smile. Yet the contempt of this is more
crushing than that of the bitterest invective. In the later letters
indeed the mask of irony is to a certain extent dropped, and a more
serious tone is taken. But effective as these are they are not the most
effective part of the _Provinciales_. That part is the earlier one, in
which, without dry scholastic argument, without the coarse abuse which
the sixteenth century had regarded as inseparable from theological
controversy, and at the same time with almost absolute accuracy of
statement--for the misrepresentations which two centuries of eager and
able apologists for the Order have been able to detect are
insignificant--the author carried the discussion out of the schools into
the drawing-room, made every man of fair education and breeding a judge
of it, and triumphantly brought the judgment of the vast majority of
such men on his side. To this day Pascal, with Swift and Courier, is the
greatest example in modern literature of irony, excelling Swift as much
in elegance and good-breeding as he falls short of him in sombre force,
and having the advantage over his brilliant follower at the beginning of
this century in depth and nobility of thought.

The _Pensees_ supply the reverse side of Pascal's character, and the
supplement to any proper estimate of his literary genius. But from the
circumstances already referred to, they are evidence of a less complete
though an even more genuine kind than the _Provinciales_. The scepticism
which ate so deeply into the heart of the seventeenth century affected
Pascal, though he rarely wavered in point of abstract faith. To few men,
however, was doubt more painful, and as no clearer or more piercing
intellect has ever existed, so to none was doubt more constantly
present. The _Pensees_ in their genuine form exhibit the thoughts to
which this conflict of opinion gave rise in him, and are in remarkable
contrast with the polished and sedate badinage of the letters. But few
if any of them are finally worked up into the form in which the author
would have been likely to present them to the public, and therefore,
from the point of view of pure literary criticism, they require less
notice here than the sister volume.

The revolution, as far as style is concerned, which in point of time is
already noticeable in Descartes, has entirely accomplished itself in
Pascal. The last vestige of archaism, of quaintness of phrase, of
clumsiness in the archi