ment, those published in former editions, and
rejected by the author in the later; the second, the
unpublished Maxims taken from the author's cor-
respondence and manuscripts, and the third, the
Maxims first published in 1692. While the Re-
flections, in which the thoughts in the Maxims are
extended and elaborated, now appear in English
for the first time. And secondly, that it is an
attempt (to quote the preface of the edition of
1749) "to do the Duc de la Rochefoucauld the
justice to make him speak English."



{Translators'} Introduction


The description of the "ancien regime" in
France, "a despotism tempered by epigrams,"
like most epigrammatic sentences, contains
some truth, with much fiction. The society of
the last half of the seventeenth, and the whole of the
eighteenth centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced
by the precise and terse mode in which the popular
writers of that date expressed their thoughts. To a
people naturally inclined to think that every possible
view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is
included in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word
"voila," truths expressed in condensed sentences must
always have a peculiar charm. It is, perhaps, from this