must therefore be
twofold: firstly, that it is an attempt to give the public a complete
English edition of Rochefoucauld's works as a moralist. The body of the
work comprises the Maxims as the author finally left them, the first
supplement, those published in former editions, and rejected by the
author in the later; the second, the unpublished Maxims taken from the
author's correspondence and manuscripts, and the third, the Maxims first
published in 1692. While the Reflections, in which the thoughts in the
Maxims are extended and elaborated, now appear in English for the first
time. And secondly, that it is an attempt (to quote the preface of the
edition of 1749) "to do the Duc de la Rochefoucauld the justice to make
him speak English."

Introduction

{Translators'}
The description of the "ancien regime" in France, "a despotism tempered
by epigrams," like most epigrammatic sentences, contains some truth,
with much fiction. The society of the last half of the seventeenth, and
the whole of the eighteenth centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced
by the precise and terse mode in which the popular writers of that date
expressed their thoughts. To a people naturally inclined to think that
every possible view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is
included in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word "voila," truths
expressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm. It
is, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so many eminent
French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere,
Montesquieu, and Vauvenargues, each contributed to the rich stock of
French epigrams. No other country can show such a list of brilliant
writers--in England certainly we cannot. Our most celebrated, Lord
Bacon, has, by his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their fame
is, to a great measure, obscured. The only Englishman who could have
rivalled La Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere was the Earl of Chesterfield,
and he only could have done so from his very intimate connexion
with France; but unfortunately his brilliant genius was spent in the
impossible task of trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in "cutting
blocks with a razor."

Of all the French epigrammatic writers La Rochefoucauld is at once the
most widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion
on the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says,
"One of the works that most largely cont