Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, volume 05 — Selected excerpts

(1823-) Marie Louis Gaston Boissier is known in Paris as one of the most prominent professors of the Collège de France, and to the outside world as the author of a number of scholarly books of essays, most of them on Roman subjects.

Born at Nîmes in 1823, his life has been devoted entirely to literature.

Soon after his graduation from the École Normale he was made professor of rhetoric at Angoulême, and later held the same position at Nîmes.

He has received the degree of Doctor, and occupied a number of high positions, culminating in that of professor of Latin poetry in the Collège de France, which he still holds.

His works have a high value in the world of scholars, and have won him the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, as well as a seat in the Académie Française, which he entered in 1876. His best known works, 'Cicero et ses Amis' (Cicero and His Friends), was crowned by the Académie; and 'Proménades Archéologiques, Rome et Naples,' written in 1880, has been translated into English, as has also his life of Madame de Sévigné, which contains many charming bits of comment on the seventeenth century.

As a biographer, and also as a historian, he is quiet and accurate--never dry.

He has great charm of style, and writes with elegance, correctness, clearness, and originality.

He contributes largely, also, to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to scientific publications.

[Illustration: GASTON BOISSIER] MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AS A LETTER-WRITER

From the 'Life of Madame de Sévigné' The passages just cited appear so simple, and utter so naturally what we all experience, that they are read the first time without surprise.

There seems nothing remarkable about them except this very simplicity and naturalness.

Now, these are not the qualities which attract attention.

It is difficult to appreciate them in works where they occur, and it is only by reading works where they are lacking that we realize all their importance.

But here, as soon as we reflect, we are astonished to perceive that this great emotion is expressed in language strong, confident, and correct, with no hesitation and no bungling.

The lively sequence of these complaints implies that they were poured forth all at once, in a single outburst; and yet the perfection of the style seems impossible of attainment without some study and some retouching.

It is sometimes said that a strong passion at once creates the language to express it.

I greatly doubt this.

On the contrary, it seems to me that when the soul is violently agitated, the words by which we try to express our feelings always appear dull and cold; we are tempted to make use of exaggerated and far-fetched expressions in order to rise to the level of our sorrow or joy.

Hence come sometimes excessive terms, discordant metaphors.

We might be inclined to regard these as thought out at leisure and in cold blood, while on the contrary they are the product of the first impulse of the effort we instinctively make to find an expression corresponding to the intensity of our passion.

There is nothing of this kind in Madame de Sévigné's letters; and however violent her grief may be, it always speaks in accurate and fitting language.

This is a valuable quality, and one extremely rare.

That we may not be surprised at finding it so highly developed in her, we need only remember what has just been said of the way in which she was unconsciously prepared to become a great writer.

Another characteristic of Madame de Sévigné's letters, not less remarkable, is that generally her most loving messages are cleverly expressed.

I do not refer merely to certain isolated phrases that have sometimes appeared rather affected.

"The north wind bound for Grignan makes me ache for your chest."

"My dear, how the burden within you weighs me down!"

"I dare not read your letters for fear of having read them."

These are only occasional flashes; but almost always, when on the point of giving way to all her emotion, she gives her phrase an ingenious turn, she makes witty observations, is bright, pleasing, elegant.

All this seems to some readers to proceed from a mind quite self-possessed, and not so far affected by passion as to be inattentive to elegant diction.

Just now I placed naturalness among Madame de Sévigné's leading qualities.

There are those who are not of this opinion, and contend that naturalness is just the merit she most lacks; but we must define our meaning.

Naturalness for each one is what is conformable to his nature;

and as each one of us has a nature of his own very different from that of his neighbors, naturalness cannot be exactly the same in every instance.

Moreover, education and habit give us each a second nature which often has more control over us than the original one.

In the society in which Madame de Sévigné lived, people made a point of speaking wittily.

The first few times one appeared in this society, it required a little study and effort to assume the same tone as the rest.

One had to be on the watch for those pleasant repartees that, among the frequenters of the Rambouillet and Richelieu houses, gave the new-comer a good reputation; but after a while these happy sayings came unsought.

To persons trained in such a school, what might at first sight appear subtle and refined is ordinary and natural.

Whether they speak or write, their ideas take a certain form which is not the usual one; and bright, witty, and dainty phrases, which would require labor from others, occur to them spontaneously.

To be sure, I do not mean that Madame de Sévigné wrote well without knowing it.

This is a thing of which a witty woman always has an inkling; and besides, her friends did not permit her to be ignorant of it.

"Your letters are delightful," they told her, "and you are like your letters."

It was all the easier to believe this, because she paid to herself in a whisper such compliments as others addressed to her aloud.

One day, when she had recently written to her friend Dr. Bourdelot, she said to her daughter, "Brava!

what a good answer I sent him!

That is a foolish thing to say, but I had a good, wide-awake pen that day."

It is very delightful to feel that one has wit, and we can understand how Madame de Sévigné might sometimes have yielded to this feeling with some satisfaction.

In her most private correspondence, that in which she least thought of the public, we might note certain passages in which she takes pleasure in elaborating and decorating her thought, and in adding to it new details more and more dainty and ingenious.

This she does without effort, to satisfy her own taste and to give herself the pleasure of expressing her thought agreeably.

It has been remarked that good talkers are not sensitive to the praises of others only: they also wish to please themselves, independently of the public around them; and like to hear themselves talk.

It might be said in the same sense that Madame de Sévigné sometimes likes to see herself write.

This is one of those pretty artifices which in women do not exclude sincerity, and which may be united with naturalness.

Copyrighted by A. C.

McClurg and Company, Chicago.

FRENCH SOCIETY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

From the (Life of Madame de Sévigné) Studying the seventeenth century in the histories is one thing, and seeking to become acquainted with it by reading contemporary letters is another and a far different thing.

The two procedures give rise to conflicting impressions.

Historians, taking a bird's-eye view of their subject, portray its most general characteristics; they bring out only the prominent features, and sacrificing all the rest, draw pictures whose precision and simplicity captivate our minds.

We finally get into the habit of seeing an epoch as they have painted it, and cannot imagine there was anything in it besides the qualities they specify.

But when we read letters relating, without alteration or selection, events as they took place, the opinions of men and things we have drawn from the historians are greatly modified.

We then perceive that good and evil are at all times mingled, and even that the proportions of the mixture vary less than one would think.

Cousin says somewhere, "In a great age all is great."

It is just the contrary that is true: there is no age so great that there is not much littleness about it; and if we undertake to study history we should expect this, so as not to reckon without our host.

No epoch has been more celebrated, more admired, than the reign of Louis XIV.

; there is danger lest the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné may much abate the warmth of our admiration.

She is constantly telling strange stories that compel us to pause and reflect.

When, in a society represented as so noble, so delicate, so regular, we meet with so many shameful disorders, so many ill-assorted households, so many persons whose fortunes are sustained only by dishonest expedients, with great lords buying and not paying, promising and not keeping their word, borrowing and never returning, kneeling before ministers and ministers' mistresses, cheating at play like M. de Cessac, living like Caderousse at the expense of a great lady, surrendering like Soubise a wife to the king, or like Villarceaux a niece, or insisting with Bussy that "the chariest of their honor should be delighted when such a good fortune befalls their family,"--it seems to me we have a right to conclude that people then were hardly our superiors; that perhaps in some points we are better than they were; and that in any case it is not worth while to set them up as models to the disparagement of our own times.

In one respect, however, they were unlike us.

In those days there were certain subjects on which people were generally agreed, and these were precisely the subjects that now give rise to the greatest divisions,--religion and politics.

Not that all were pious then,--far from it,--but almost all were believers, and almost none contested the principle of royal authority.

To-day, religious belief and belief in monarchy are well-nigh extinct; and there are hardly any left of those commonly received opinions, escaped by none, impregnating all, breathed in like the air, and always found at the bottom of the heart on occasions of grave need, despite all the inward changes that experience has wrought.

Is this a good or an evil?

Should we rejoice at it or regret it?

Each one will answer according to his character and inclinations.

Daring minds that feel strong enough to form their own convictions are glad to be delivered from prejudices interfering with independence of opinion, glad to have free scope.

But the rest, who form the vast majority, who are without such high aims, and whose life is moreover taken up with other cares, are troubled, uncertain, ill at ease, when they have to settle these great problems independently.

They regret that they can no longer find the solutions all worked out, and sadly repeat with Jocelyn:-- "Ah, why was I born in days stormy and dread, When the pilgrim of life hath no rest for his head;

When the way disappears; when the spent human mind, Groping, doubting, still strives some new pathway to find, Unable to trust in the hopes of the Old Or to strike out a New from its perishing mold!"

This sort of anguish of spirit was unknown in the seventeenth century, as Madame de Sévigné's letters clearly show.

HOW HORACE LIVED AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE

From 'The Country of Horace and Virgil' It is very annoying that Horace, who has described with so many details the employment of his days while he remained in Rome, should not have thought it necessary to tell us as clearly how he spent his life in the country.

The only thing we know with certainty is that he was very happy there: he for the first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor.

"I take my meals," said he, "before household gods that are mine own" ("ante larem proprium vescor").

To have a hearth and domestic gods, to fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master, was the greatest happiness that could befall a Roman.

To enjoy it, Horace had waited until he was more than thirty years of age.

We have seen that his domain, when he took possession of it, was very much neglected, and that the house was falling into ruins.

He first had to build and plant.

Do not let us pity him; these cares have their charms.

One loves one's house when one has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land costs us attaches us to it.

He came to it as often as he could, and always with pleasure.

Everything served him as a pretext to leave Rome.

It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia were approaching--an unbearable time of the year, when all the town was out of doors; it was the moment to finish a work which Mæcenas had pressingly required.

Well, how could anything good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street, the bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part of your time?

So he put Plato with Menander into his portmanteau, took with him the work he had begun, promising to do wonders, and started for Tibur.

But when he was at home, his good resolutions did not hold out.

He had something to do quite different from shutting himself up in his study.

He had to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers.

He went to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself.

He dug the spade into the field, took out the stones, etc. , to the great amusement of the neighbors, who marveled both at his ardor and his clumsiness:-- "Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem."

In the evening he received at his table a few of the neighboring proprietors.

They were honest folk, who did not speak ill of their neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had not for sole topic of conversation the races or the theatre.

They handled most serious questions, and their rustic wisdom found ready expression in proverbs and apologues.

What pleased Horace above all at these country dinners was that etiquette was laughed at, that everything was simple and frugal, that one did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which Varro had drawn up, and which had become the code of good company.

Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for the guests the number of cups that must be drained.

Every one ate according to his hunger and drank according to his thirst.

"They were," said Horace, "divine repasts" ("O noctes cenæque Deum").

Yet he did not always stay at home, however great the pleasure he felt in being there.

This steady-going, regular man thought it right from time to time to put a little irregularity into one's life.

Does not a Grecian sage--Aristotle, I think--recommend that one excess per month be indulged in, in the interest of health?

It serves at least to break the round of habit.

Such also was the opinion of Horace.

Although the most moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occasional wildness ("dulce est desipere in loco").

With age these outbursts had become less frequent, yet he still loved to break the sage uniformity of his existence by some pleasure jaunt.

Then he returned to Præneste, to Baiæ, or to Tarentum, which he had loved so much in his youth.

Once he was unfaithful to these old affections, and chose for the goal of his journey spots that were new to him.

The occasion of the change was this: Antonius Musa, a Greek physician, had just cured Augustus of a dangerous illness, which it had been thought must prove fatal, by means of cold water.

Hydrotherapeutics at once became fashionable.

People deserted the thermal springs, formerly so much sought after, to go off to Clusium, to Gabii, into the mountains, where springs of icy water were found.

Horace did like the rest.

In the winter of the year 730, instead of going as usual towards Baiæ, he turned his little steed towards Salerno and Velia.

This was the affair of a season.

Next year Marullus, the Emperor's son-in-law and heir, falling very ill, Antonius Musa was hastily sent for, and applied his usual remedy.

But the remedy no longer healed, and hydrotherapeutics, which had saved Augustus, did not prevent Marullus from dying.

They were at once forsaken, and the sick again began following the road to Baiæ.

When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took a change of diet.

"At home," said he, "I can put up with anything; my Sabine table wine seems to me delicious; and I regale myself with vegetables from my garden seasoned with a slice of bacon.

But when I have once left my house, I become more particular, and beans, beloved though they be of Pythagoras, no longer suffice me."

So before starting in the direction of Salerno, where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to question one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come back home again as fat as a Phæacian.

Above all, he is anxious to know what is drunk in those parts.

He wants a generous wine to make him eloquent, and "which will give him strength, and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his young Lucanian sweetheart."

We see he pushes precaution a considerable length.

He was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ, Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman fashionable world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria nota"), where he used to put up.

When Seneca was at Baiæ, he lived above a public bath, and he has furnished us a very amusing account of the sounds of all kinds that troubled his rest.

Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet, could not make a very long stay in those noisy places.

His whim gratified, he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid the fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks made it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him.

One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that his affection for his country estate goes on constantly increasing.

At first, when he had passed a few weeks there, the memory of Rome used to re-awaken in his thoughts.

Those large towns, which we hate when we are forced to live in them, have only to be left in order to be regretted!

When Horace's slave, taking an unfair advantage of the liberty of the Saturnalia, tells his master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches him with never being pleased where he is:-- "Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem Tollis ad astra levis?"

He was himself very much vexed at his inconstancy, and accused himself of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur, and only thinking of Tibur from the moment he found himself in Rome."

However, he cured himself at last of this levity, which annoyed him so much.

To this he bears witness in his own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-house next door.

"As for me," he tells him, "thou knowest that I am self-consistent, and that each time hated business recalls me to Rome I leave this spot with sadness."

He doubtless arranged matters so as to live more and more at his country house.

He looked forward to a time when it would be possible for him scarcely ever to leave it, and counted upon it to enable him to bear more lightly the weight of his closing years.

They are heavy, whatever one may do, and age never comes without bringing many griefs.

Firstly, the long-lived must needs leave many friends upon the way.

Horace lost some to whom he was very tenderly attached.

He had the misfortune to survive Virgil and Tibullus ten years.

What regrets he must have felt on the death of the great poet, of whom he said he "knew no soul more bright, and had no better friend"!

The great success of Virgil's posthumous work could only have half consoled him for his loss, for he regretted in him the man as well as the poet.

He had also great cause to grieve for Mæcenas, whom he so dearly loved.

This favorite of the Emperor, this king of fashion, whose fortune all men envied, finished by being very unhappy.

It is all very well to take every kind of precaution in order to insure one's happiness--to fly from business, to seek pleasure, to amass wealth, to gather clever men about one, to surround one's self with all the charms of existence; however one may try to shut the door on them, troubles and sorrows find a way in.

The saddest of it all is that Mæcenas was first unhappy through his own fault.

Somewhat late in life this prudent, wise man had been foolish enough to marry a coquette, and to fall deeply in love with her.

He had rivals, and among them the Emperor himself, of whom he dared not be jealous.

He who had laughed so much at others afforded the Romans a comedy at his own expense.

His time was passed in leaving Terentia and taking her back again.

"He has been married more than a hundred times," said Seneca, "although he has had but one wife."

To these domestic troubles illness was added.

His health had never been good, and age and sorrows made it worse.

Pliny tells us that he passed three whole years without being able to sleep.

Enduring pain badly, he grieved his friends beyond measure by his groans.

Horace, with whom he continually conversed about his approaching end, answered him in beautiful verses:-- "Thou, Mæcenas, die first!

Thou, stay of my fortune, adornment of my life!

The gods will not allow it, and I will not consent.

Ah!

if Fate, hastening its blows, should tear from me part of myself in thee, what would betide the other?

What should I henceforth do, hateful unto myself, and but half of myself surviving?"

In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he was growing old.

The hour when one finds one's self face to face with age is a serious one.

Cicero, when approaching it, tried to give himself courage in advance, and being accustomed to console himself for everything by writing, he composed his 'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he tries to deck the closing years of life with certain beauties.

He had not to make use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we do not know whether he would have found them sufficient when the moment came.

That spirit, so young, so full of life, would I fear have resigned itself with difficulty to the inevitable decadences of age.

Nor did Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars Poetica' he has drawn a somewhat gloomy picture of it.

He had all the more reason to detest it because it came to him rather early.

In one of those passages where he so willingly gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair whitened quickly.

As a climax of misfortune he had grown very fat, and being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to him.

Augustus, in a letter, compares him to one of those measures of liquids which are broader than they are high.

If, in spite of these too evident signs which warned him of his age, he had tried to deceive himself, there was no lack of persons to disabuse him.

There was the porter of Neæra, who no longer allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was obliged to put up with without complaining.

"My hair whitening," said he, "warns me not to quarrel.

I should not have been so patient in the time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul."

Then it was Neæra herself who declined to come when he summoned her, and again resigning himself with a good enough grace, the poor poet found that after all she was right, and that it was natural love should prefer youth to ripened age.

"Ahi, Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces."

Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his friends Tibullus and Virgil.

He even had opinions on the subject of melancholy which differ widely from ours.

Whereas, since Lamartine, we have assumed the habit of regarding sadness as one of the essential elements of poetry, he thought on the contrary that poetry has the privilege of preventing us from being sad.

"A man protected by the Muses," said he, "flings cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away."

His philosophy had taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills.

However painful they be, one makes them lighter by bearing them.

So he accepted old age because it cannot be eluded, and because no means have yet been found of living long without growing old.

Death itself did not frighten him.

He was not of those who reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by never thinking about it.

On the contrary, he counsels us to have it always in mind.

"Think that the day which lights you is the last you have to live.

The morrow will have more charm for you if you have not hoped to see it:"-- "Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;

Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora."

This is not, as might be supposed, one of those bravadoes of the timid, who shout before Death in order to deaden the sound of his footsteps.

Horace was never more calm, more energetic, more master of his mind and of his soul, than in the works of his ripe age.

The last lines of his that remain to us are the firmest and most serene he ever wrote.

Then, more than ever, must he have loved the little Sabine valley.

When we visit these beautiful tranquil spots, we tell ourselves that they appear made to shelter the declining years of a sage.

It seems as if with old servants, a few faithful friends, and a stock of well-chosen books, the time must pass there without sadness.

But I must stop.

Since Horace has not taken us into his confidence respecting his last years, and nobody after him has told us of them, we are reduced to form conjectures, and we should put as few of them as possible into the life of a man who loved truth so well.