sixth edition was published by Claude Barbin, containing fifty
new maxims, the authenticity of which is uncertain but probable.

The fullest authoritative edition of La Rochefoucauld's Maxims contains
504 separate paragraphs, to which, besides the fifty just noticed, about
another fifty can be added by restoring those which the author
suppressed during his lifetime. The last, which is avowedly a kind of
appendix, and on a different plan from the others, extends to a couple
of pages. But the average length of the remainder is not more than three
or four lines, and many do not contain more than a dozen words. The art
of compressing thought and then pointedly expressing it has never been
pushed so far except by Joubert, and hardly even by him. All La
Rochefoucauld's maxims, without exception, are on ethical subjects, and
with a certain allowance they may be said to be generally concerned with
the reduction of the motives and conduct of men to the single principle
of self-love. In consequence, accusations of misanthropy, of unfairness,
of short-sightedness, have been showered upon the author by those who do
not like a spade to be called a spade. We have nothing to do with the
moral side of the matter here, and it is sufficient to say that La
Rochefoucauld is not an advocate of the selfish or any other school of
moralists. He is simply an observer, setting down with the utmost
literary skill the results of a long life of unusual experience in
business and pleasure of every kind. He is a man of science who has got
together a large collection of facts, and who expounds and arranges them
on a certain coherent and sufficient hypothesis. As a work of literary
art the result of his exposition is unrivalled. The whole of the Maxims,
even with the doubtful or rejected ones, need not occupy more than a
hundred pages, and they contain matter which in the hands of an ordinary
writer would have filled a dozen volumes. Yet there is no undue
compression. It is impossible ever to mistake the meaning, though the
comprehension of the full application of that meaning depends, of
course, on the intellectual equipment and social experience of the
reader. The clearness with which Descartes had first endowed French is
here displayed in its very highest degree. The style, as was unavoidable
in work of the kind, is entirely devoid of ornament. Imagery is wholly
absent, and though metaphorical expressions abound, they are of the
plainest and simples