classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit
as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the
_Fables_ of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the
same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La
Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, writing the one at the beginning, the
other towards the close, of the classical period, both practised the art
of extreme brevity with astonishing success. The DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
was the first French writer to understand completely the wonderful
capacities for epigrammatic statement which his language possessed; and
in the dexterous precision of pointed phrase no succeeding author has
ever surpassed him. His little book of _Maxims_ consists of about five
hundred detached sentences, polished like jewels, and, like jewels,
sparkling with an inner brilliance on which it seems impossible that one
can gaze too long. The book was the work of years, and it contains in
its small compass the observations of a lifetime. Though the reflections
are not formally connected, a common spirit runs through them all.
'Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!' such is the perpetual burden of La
Rochefoucauld's doctrine: but it is vanity, not in the generalized sense
of the Preacher, but in the ordinary personal sense of empty egotism and
petty self-love which, in the eyes of this bitter moralist, is the
ultimate essence of the human spirit and the secret spring of the world.
The case is overstated, no doubt; but the strength of La Rochefoucauld's
position can only be appreciated when one has felt for oneself the keen
arrows of his wit. As one turns over his pages, the sentences strike
into one with a deadly force of personal application; sometimes one
almost blushes; one realizes that these things are cruel, that they are
humiliating, and that they are true. 'Nous avons tous assez de force
pour supporter les maux d'autrui.'--'Quelque bien qu'on nous dise de
nous, on ne nous apprend rien de nouveau.'--'On croit quelquefois haïr
la flatterie, mais on ne hait que le manière de flatter.'--'Le refus de