elves.

Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly "suppressed" by the author, after
first publication:--

No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always find
something which does not displease us.

Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, "Even in the midst of
compassion, we feel within us an unaccountable bitter-sweet titillation
of ill-natured pleasure in seeing another suffer;" and Burke, after
both, wrote (in his "Sublime and Beautiful") with a heavier hand, "I am
convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in
the real misfortunes and pains of others."

La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than is Montaigne. But, as
a man, he wins upon you less. His maxims are like hard and sharp
crystals, precipitated from the worldly wisdom blandly solute and dilute
in Montaigne.

The wise of this world reject the dogma of human depravity, as taught in
the Bible. They willingly accept it,--nay, accept it complacently,
hugging themselves for their own penetration,--as taught in the "Maxims"
of La Rochefoucauld.

* * *

Jean de La Bruyere is personally almost as little known as if he were an
ancient of the Greek or Roman world, surviving, like Juvenal, only in
his literary production. Bossuet got him employed to teach history to a
great duke, who became his patron, and settled a life-long annuity upon
him. He published his one book, the "Characters," in 1687, was made
member of the French Academy in 1693, and died in 1696. That, in short,
is La Bruyere's biography.

His book is universally considered one of the most finished products of
the human mind. It is not a great work,--it lacks the unity and the
majesty of design necessary for that. It consists simply of detached
thoughts and observations on a variety of subjects. It shows the author
to have been a man of deep and wise reflection, but especially a
consummate master of style. The book is one to read in, rather than to
read. It is full of food to thought. The very beginning exhibits a
self-consciousness on the writer's part very different from that
spontaneous simplicity in which truly great books originate. La Bruyere
begins:--

Every thing has been said; and one comes too late, after more than
seven thousand years that there have been men, and men who have
thought.

La Bruyere has something to say, and that at length unusual for him, of
pulpit eloquence. We select a few specimen sentences:--