Our Library Table,

1. MADAME DE MAINTENON'S Letters.

2. WATSON'S Persia during the Present Century.

3. THE ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN Novels.

4. GILL'S Papal Drama.

5. MISS PARKES' Vignettes.

1. The French classics of the seventeenth century are gradually emerging from a state of corruption and confusion similar to that which enveloped till lately the extant writings of the ancients. The art of printing did not save popular works from errors as gross, and changes as wilful, as those of the medieval copyists. Molière has not yet been edited as accurately as Virgil; and there are fewer variations in the text of Horace's odes than among recent editions of the plays of Corneille. But the injury which is wrought by mistakes that afterwards creep into works published by their authors themselves is insignificant when compared with the effects of interest or malice in the publication of posthumous memoirs or of private correspondence. Defects in the masterpieces of literature are seldom more than an offence against taste. But when memoirs and letters lose their genuine form, it is ruin to the most authentic evidences of historic truth.

Now the literary inheritance of the age of Louis XIV. passed to a generation whose fidelity was strongly tried, and was too frail to resist the least temptation. The work of suppression, mutilation, interpolation, was carried on from various motives of interest, and sometimes without any intelligible motive. Editors sinned by excess of scruple, by unscrupulousness, and by indifference. The letters of Madame de Sévigné were not allowed to appear until they had been disfigured by adaptations which the new ideas of propriety were supposed to require. The fragments of Pascal underwent a treatment which made their real intent and character a mystery until they were deciphered, not many years ago, with as much pains as could be spent on a palimpsest. The Letters of the Duchess of Orleans, the Diary of Dangeau, the Memoirs of Saint-Simon, long continued to be known only through collections of garbled extracts; while the Letters of Bossuet were subjected to a process which completely altered his attitude towards the Holy See, and gave to language, which was often high and urgent, an insolent and angry tone.

In these circumstances panegyric and controversy were at fault. False issues were raised, and wrong conclusions established. The biographer, and still more the historian, moved on ground so unstable that his labours were vain. No learning and no sagacity could save

him from being misled by authorities which he had no means of checking, but the arbitrary and contradictory tests of internal evidence. For some time to come, therefore, the mere drudgery of critical research, and the collation of manuscripts, will accomplish greater things in this branch of literature than all the genius of the Academy. The Duke de Noailles, with considerable talents and the best opportunities for getting knowledge, has for many years been prosecuting a work the express object of which is to redeem the reputation of Madame de Maintenon. Yet the services he has rendered to her memory are eclipsed by those of M. Lavallée, the laborious and self-denying editor of her unvarnished correspondence.*

During a century and a half the name of Madame de Maintenon has borne a vast load of obloquy. Down to the peace of Nimeguen the reign of Louis XIV. had been constantly prosperous and not unpopular. Thenceforward it was marked by great disasters, by grievous suffering and oppression. This change of fortune and of favour coincided nearly with the moral change in the life of the king, which was brought about by the influence of Madame de Maintenon. She, therefore, was made responsible for the misgovernment of France by that army of pamphleteers that assailed Louis in the last thirty years of his life with an extreme, but not unnatural virulence; and she largely shared the blame of unjust wars and unsuccessful campaigns. The court, which she had forced to wear the aspect of a strict morality, avenged itself on her for the unwelcome and prolonged constraint. In literature a still stronger reaction followed against the decorum of the classic age, and it fell heavily on her who had been the chief agent in maintaining it. Protestants attributed to her sinister counsels the booted missionaries, the Revocation, and the detested edict against emigration. The Jansenists, who were as busy as the Protestants in the presses of Holland, accused her of abetting the persecution of their leaders and the proscription of their doctrines. And she made enemies on the opposite side. After the death of Bossuet, under a new pontificate, Fénelon had succeeded to the position and influence of his great adversary. He was the most venerated of the French prelates, the most eloquent of contemporary divines, and, unlike Bossuet, his name stood even higher in Rome than in France. Jansenism had no more able opponent, and he contributed beyond any other man to the final triumph of the Molinist theology. At the same time Fénelon was the most far-sighted and outspoken of those who pleaded the cause of liberty, and urged, before it was too late, the convocation of the States. Yet, whilst he was inspiring the Roman congregations by his letters, whilst his books were more eagerly read than those of any other Frenchman, whilst he was the oracle of the party of reform, and the expected minister who was to heal the wounds of the state, and turn back the strong tide of despotism, he continued in disgrace at

*Correspondance générale de Madame de Maintenon, publiée pour la première fois sur les autographes et les manuscrits authentiques, par Théophile Lavallée. Paris, Charpentier. 4 vols. 1866.

court, and in especial disgrace with Madame de Maintenon. The dark portrait of her which has come down to us was not drawn by the friends of Fénelon. They did not set in motion the foul tongue of Elizabeth-Charlotte, or the malignant pencil of St.-Simon. But the fame of the great archbishop is to thousands the most precious and assured possession that has survived those days, and its brightness has cast a shadow over one who persistently distrusted and disliked him.

A tradition was thus established with general consent, and as the letters and memoirs of her contemporaries successively appeared, it grew more and more unfavourable. The Duke de Noailles thus describes the conventional portrait (iv. 5): "To many eyes Madame de Maintenon is a severe and melancholy person, given to intrigue, ambitions, deceitful, even hypocritical, or at least using piety as a means to her own elevation; of a dry, cold nature; ungrateful to her benefactress, whom she supplants; aiming at her high destiny from the first, compassing it by a course of deep and persevering calculation; and then, from the moment of her success, engrossing power, and ruling the king beneath the yoke of a narrow rigid piety, controlling and preaching to all about her, inspiring all the most fatal resolutions, and putting down pleasure and social life-a person, in short, whose prodigious fortunes excite as much antipathy as admiration."

In his well-known history of France M. Lavallée accepted this popular idea of Madame de Maintenon. He was afterwards led to study her life with greater care in preparing a history of Saint-Cyr, which she founded, which became her favourite retreat, and is now a military school, where M. Lavallée has been a professor. His researches caused him to alter and to retract several opinions of his former work. The novel and unexpected view that opened before him induced him to undertake a complete edition of her correspondence. The result is, that he has been compelled further to modify even the comparatively favourable judgments of the history of Saint-Cyr; and that he has discovered many things to be untrue which the enthusiastic biographer of Madame de Maintenon had found himself unable to refute. This is due in part to new materials, but still more to the establishment of a decisive distinction between the genuine and the spurious letters in the previous collection.

Madame de Maintenon destroyed many of her letters, and the whole of her correspondence with the king. She had always borne with patient fortitude the insults of those who were her husband's enemies. It is probable that this endurance was not a fruit of humility. Spiritual men, who had closely and impartially observed her life, affirmed that, although her spirit was too lofty to be moved by the common voice of fame, yet she was not indifferent to the praises of those whom she esteemed and among whom she lived. Even this sacrifice, so hard to make amid the grandeur of Versailles, became easy in the retirement of her latter years; and she appears before her death to have overcome the most subtle illusion of self-love. She took no care to protect her memory from the effect of the obscurity

VOL. V.

and of the misrepresentation which had fallen on so many portions of her career.

The ladies of Saint-Cyr preserved with religious care many volumes containing her autograph letters and others which had been copied; and a part of the collection was shown to the younger Racine. Racine prepared a volume for the press, but ended by handing over his materials to La Beaumelle, a Genevese Protestant and professor at Copenhagen. Two small volumes appeared in 1752. Afterwards La Beaumelle obtained further papers from Saint-Cyr; and in 1755 he published a larger collection, which was until the last few months the principal source of information from which all who have written on Madame de Maintenon, including the Duke de Noailles himself, have taken their description of her character.

The publication of La Beaumelle was accepted as genuine. Voltaire, who had a deadly feud with him, would have been delighted if he had seen his way to make him out to be a forger. But, in spite of some blunders in the dates, he declared the proof of authenticity to be overwhelming, and regretted that he had not known the letters in time to add some darker touches to the character of Madame de Maintenon in the Siècle de Louis XIV. As to their editor, Voltaire was content to believe that he had stolen them.

The letters published by La Beaumelle contain all those sharp hard sayings on which the view of Madame de Maintenon's detractors has hitherto so firmly rested. In a letter of 1680, shortly after the dismissal of Madame de Montespan, and in the lifetime of the queen, occurs that shameful passage which has given colour to the insinuation that she was the rival of both: "Je le renvoie toujours affligé et jamais désespéré." In 1696, when Noailles was made Archbishop of Paris, she writes like a warm partisan of the Jansenists: "Les Jésuites ne lui pardonneront pas de s'être élevé au siége de Paris sans leur participation; s'ils se fâchent, je prierai le pape de le faire cardinal." The king's confessor is censured in antithetical phrase: "Le père de la Chaise est un honnête homme; mais l'air de la cour gâte la vertu la plus pure, et adoucit la plus sévère." Of Bossuet the same letter says: "Il a beaucoup d'esprit, mais il n'a pas celui de la cour." Sneers of this kind occur frequently. One has been quoted again and again: "Je le crois (Louvois) là-dessus plus volontiers que M. Colbert, qui ne pense qu'à ses finances, et presque jamais à la religion."

Many passages afford ground for the belief that Madame de Maintenon encouraged the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. As early as October 1679 she is in the secret of the intended measure : "Il pense sérieusement à la conversion des hérétiques, et dans peu on y travaillera tout de bon." And on the 24th of August 1681: "Le roi commence à penser sérieusement à son salut et à celui de ses sujets; si Dieu nous le conserve, il n'y aura plus qu'une religion dans son royaume." The date of this letter is significant, for it represents the persecution of the Huguenots as an immediate and natural consequence of the king's conversion from his scandalous

ways.

Sometimes it would appear that the writer shared with La

Chaise the credit of the Revocation: "On est fort content du père de la Chaise; il inspire au roi de grandes choses. Bientôt tous ses sujets serviront Dieu en esprit et en vérité." She cannot even assure her Protestant brother of the king's good opinion without a gibe at his religion (16th July 1684): "Il vous estime autant qu'il peut estimer un hérétique." This apparent zeal is mixed with levity, and content with external conformity. Pellisson managed the funds for the relief of voluntary converts. The gratification caused by the efficacy of this inducement finds expression in these words: "On n'auroit jamais osé espérer que toutes ces conversions fussent si aisées. M. Pellisson fait des prodiges; M. Bossuet est plus savant, mais lui, il est persuasif." In October 1685 there is a distinct declaration that sincerity is not required in a convert, and that compulsory submission possesses real value: "Je crois bien, avec vous, que toutes ces conversions ne sont pas également sincères; mais Dieu se sert de toutes voies pour ramener à lui les hérétiques. Leurs enfants seront du moins Catholiques, si les pères sont hypocrites; leur réunion extérieure les approche du moins de la vérité; ils en ont les signes de commun avec les fidèles."

Here, it must be admitted, are the signs of ambition and dishonourable artifice of a cold heart, a narrow understanding, and an odious species of religious zeal. The defenders of Madame de Maintenon have been painfully embarrassed by the testimony she thus bears against herself, and have been driven to awkward shifts in order to soften or to explain it away. Now every one of the passages just quoted was invented by La Beaumelle. One only is taken from a genuine letter, and is founded on words which Madame de Maintenon actually wrote. The manner in which they were altered for the press exhibits the nature and purpose of La Beaumelle's manipulations. In the letter of July 16, 1684, the words really written stood thus: "Il vous estime autant que vous pouvez le désirer.”

Suspicion has long been awakened by the collection of La Beaumelle. There were some glaring inconsistencies, and it was found that several letters were omitted in later editions. Recent critics, especially Walckenaer and Monmerqué, believed that a part was fabricated by the editor. It is strange that the truth should never have been established by the examination of the original manuscripts until M. Lavallée undertook the task. Racine could not be deceived. He at once detected the fraud, and covered his own copy with notes, marking those letters which were spurious, those which were genuine, and those which were corrupt. But he forgot that he had contracted an obligation towards the guardians of the letters, who had shown them to him for no purpose but to serve the memory of the writer. He concealed his discovery, and spared the friend who had betrayed his confidence, and whom he never saw again. His annotated copy has been found, and his notes tested, by M. Lavallée.

The genuine letters are at variance with the common opinion respecting Madame de Maintenon, and with the impression which was made by the authorities for her history which were known in