an obsession for dukedoms almost amounting to mania: but he had in
addition an incredibly passionate temperament combined with an
unparalleled power of observation; and these two qualities have made his
book immortal.

Besides the intrinsic merits of the work, it has the additional
advantage of being concerned with an age which, of enthralling interest
on its own account, also happened to be particularly suited to the
capacities of the writer. If Saint-Simon had lived at any other time,
his memoirs would have been admirable, no doubt, but they would have
lacked the crowning excellence which they actually possess. As it was, a
happy stroke of fortune placed him in the one position where he could
exercise to the full his extraordinary powers: never, before or since,
has there been so much to observe; never, before or since, so miraculous
an observer. For, at Versailles, in the last years of Louis, Saint-Simon
had before him, under his very eyes as a daily and hourly spectacle, the
whole accumulated energy of France in all its manifestations; that was
what he saw; and that, by the magic of his pen, is what he makes us see.
Through the endless succession of his pages the enormous panorama
unrolls itself, magnificent, palpitating, alive. What La Bruyère saw
with the spiritual gaze of a moralist rushed upon the vision of
Saint-Simon in all the colour, the detail, the intensity, the frenzy, of
actual fact. He makes no comments, no reflections--or, if he does, they
are ridiculous; he only sees and feels. Thus, though in the profundity
of his judgement he falls so infinitely below La Bruyère, in his
character-drawing he soars as high above him. His innumerable portraits
are unsurpassed in literature. They spring into his pages bursting with
life--individual, convincing, complete, and as various as humanity
itself. He excels in that most difficult art of presenting the outward
characteristics of persons, calling up before the imagination not only