onde fatal Qu'on ne repasse jamais."

Rochefoucauld left behind him only two works, the one, Memoirs of his
own time, the other the Maxims. The first described the scenes in which
his youth had been spent, and though written in a lively style, and
giving faithful pictures of the intrigues and the scandals of the court
during Louis XIV.'s minority, yet, except to the historian, has ceased
at the present day to be of much interest. It forms, perhaps, the true
key to understand the special as opposed to general application of the
maxims.

Notwithstanding the assertion of Bayle, that "there are few people so
bigoted to antiquity as not to prefer the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld
to the Commentaries of Caesar," or the statement of Voltaire, "that the
Memoirs are universally read and the Maxims are learnt by heart," few
persons at the present day ever heard of the Memoirs, and the knowledge
of most as to the Maxims is confined to that most celebrated of all,
though omitted from his last edition, "There is something in the
misfortunes of our best friends which does not wholly displease us." Yet
it is difficult to assign a cause for this; no book is perhaps oftener
unwittingly quoted, none certainly oftener unblushingly pillaged; upon
none have so many contradictory opinions been given.

"Few books," says Mr. Hallam, "have been more highly extolled, or more
severely blamed, than the maxims of the Duke of Rochefoucauld, and that
not only here, but also in France." Rousseau speaks of it as, "a sad and
melancholy book," though he goes on to say "it is usually so in youth
when we do not like seeing man as he is." Voltaire says of it, in the
words above quoted, "One of the works which most contributed to form the
taste of the (French) nation, and to give it a spirit of justness
and precision, was the collection of the maxims of Francois Duc de la
Rochefoucauld, though there is scarcely more than one truth running
through the book--that 'self-love is the motive of everything'--yet
this thought is presented under so many varied aspects that it is
nearly always striking. It is not so much a book as it is materials for
ornamenting a book. This little collection was read with avidity, it
taught people to think, and to comprise their thoughts in a lively,
precise, and delicate turn of expression. This was a merit which, before
him, no one in Europe had attained since the revival of letters."

Dr. Johnson speaks of it as "the only book w