e quantity of books available for the ordinary reader. How the
eighteenth century would envy us our innumerable novels, our
biographies, our books of travel, all our easy approaches to knowledge
and entertainment, our translations, our cheap reprints! In those days,
even for a reader of catholic tastes, there was really very little to
read. And, of course, Madame du Deffand's tastes were far from
catholic--they were fastidious to the last degree. She considered that
Racine alone of writers had reached perfection, and that only once--in
_Athalie_. Corneille carried her away for moments, but on the whole he
was barbarous. She highly admired 'quelques centaines de vers de M. de
Voltaire.' She thought Richardson and Fielding excellent, and she was
enraptured by the style--but only by the style--of _Gil Blas_. And that
was all. Everything else appeared to her either affected or pedantic or
insipid. Walpole recommended to her a History of Malta; she tried it,
but she soon gave it up--it mentioned the Crusades. She began Gibbon,
but she found him superficial. She tried Buffon, but he was 'd'une
monotonie insupportable; il sait bien ce qu'il sait, mais il ne s'occupe
que des betes; il faut l'etre un peu soi-meme pour se devouer a une
telle occupation.' She got hold of the memoirs of Saint-Simon in
manuscript, and these amused her enormously; but she was so disgusted by
the style that she was very nearly sick. At last, in despair, she
embarked on a prose translation of Shakespeare. The result was
unexpected; she was positively pleased. _Coriolanus_, it is true, 'me
semble, sauf votre respect, epouvantable, et n'a pas le sens commun';
and 'pour _La Tempete_, je ne suis pas touchee de ce genre.' But she was
impressed by _Othello_; she was interested by _Macbeth_; and she admired
_Julius Caesar_, in spite of its bad taste. At _King Lear_, indeed, she
had to draw the line. 'Ah, mon Dieu! Quelle piece! Reellement la
trouvez-vous belle? Elle me noircit l'ame a un point que je ne puis
exprimer; c'est un amas de toutes les horreurs infernales.' Her reader
was an old soldier from the Invalides, who came round every morning
early, and took up his position by her bedside. She lay back among the
cushions, listening, for long hours. Was there ever a more incongruous
company, a queerer trysting-place, for Goneril and Desdemona, Ariel and
Lady Macbeth?

Often, even before the arrival of the old pensioner, she was at work
dictating a letter, us