strained joy or bestial pleasure. I know full well that he is not without reproach. I would not trust him with my purse, he forgets too readily the distinction between meum and tuum; above all, I would not trust him with my wife he is not over-delicate; his escapades at the gambling-table and with women smack too much of the sharper and the briber. But I am wrong to use these big words in connection with him; they are too weighty, they crush so delicate and so pretty a specimen of humanity. These heavy habits of honour or shame can only be worn by serious-minded men, and Grammont takes nothing seriously, neither his fellowmen, nor himself, nor vice, nor virtue. To pass his time agreeably is his sole endeavour. "They had said good-bye to dulness in the army," observed Hamilton, "as soon as he was there." That is his pride and his aim; he troubles himself, and cares for nothing beside. His valet robs him; another would have brought the rogue to the gallows; but the theft was clever, and he keeps his rascal. He left England forgetting to marry the girl he was betrothed to; he is caught at Dover; he returns and marries her: this was an amusing contre-temps; he asks for nothing better. One day, being penniless, he fleeces the Count de Caméran at play. 66 Could Gram mont, after the figure he had once cut, pack off like any common fellow? By no means; he is a man of feeling; he will maintain the honour of France." He covers his cheating at play with a joke; in reality, his notions of property are not over-clear. He regales Caméran with Caméran's own money; would Caméran have acted better or otherwise? What matter if his money be in Grammont's purse or his own? The main point is gained, since there is pleasure in getting the The money, and there is pleasure in spending it. hateful and the ignoble vanish from such a life. he pays his court to princes, you may be sure it is not on his knees; so lively a soul is not weighed down by respect, his wit places him on a level with the greatest; under pretext of amusing the king, he tells him plain truths.1 If he finds himself in London, surrounded by open debauchery, he does not plunge into it; he passes through on tiptoe, and so daintily that the mire does not stick to him. We do not recognise any longer in his anecdotes the anguish and the brutality which were really felt at that time; the narrative. flows on quickly, raising a smile, then another, and another yet, so that the whole mind is brought by an adroit and easy progress to something like good humour. At table, Grammont will never stuff himself; at play, he will never grow violent; with his mistress, he will never give vent to coarse talk; in a duel, he will not hate his adversary. The wit of a Frenchman is like French wine; it makes men neither brutal, nor wicked, nor gloomy. Such is the spring of these pleasures: a supper will destroy neither delicacy, nor good nature, nor enjoyment. The libertine remains sociable, polite, obliging; his gaiety culminates only in the gaiety of others; 2 he is attentive to them as naturally as to himself; and in addition, he is ever on the alert and intelligent repartees, flashes of brilliancy, witticisms, 1 The king was playing at backgammon; a doubtful throw occurs: "Ah, here is Grammont, who'll decide for us; Grammont, come and decide." "Sire, you have lost." "What you do not yet know." . . . "Ah, Sire, if the throw had been merely doubtful, these gentlemen would not have failed to say you had won." • Hamilton says of Grammont, "He sought out the unfortunate only to succour them." sparkle on his lips; he can think at table and in company, sometimes better than if alone or fasting. It is clear that with him debauchery does not extinguish the man; Grammont would say that it perfects him; that wit, the heart, the senses, only arrive at excellence and true enjoyment, amid the elegance and animation of a choice supper. III. When we It is quite the contrary in England. scratch the covering of an Englishman's morality, the brute appears in its violence and its deformity. of the English statesmen said that with the French an unchained mob could be led by words of humanity and honour, but that in England it was necessary, in order to appease them, to throw to them raw flesh. Insults, blood, orgie, that is the food on which the mob of noblemen, under Charles II., precipitated itself. All that excuses a carnival was absent; and, in particular, wit. Three years after the return of the king, Butler published his Hudibras; and with what éclat his contemporaries only could tell, while the echo of applause is kept up even to our own days. How low is the wit, with what awkwardness and dulness he dilutes his revengeful satire. Here and there lurks a happy picture, the remnant of a poetry which has just perished; but the whole work reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the other, and more malignant. It is written, people say, on the model of Don Quixote; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who goes about, like his antitype, redressing wrongs, and pocketing beatings. It would be truer to say that it 1 This saying sounds strange after the horrors of the Commune.-TR resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.1 The short metre, well suited to buffoonery, hobbles along without rest and limpingly, floundering in the mud which it delights in, as foul and as dull as that of the Enéide Travestie.2 The description of Hudibras and his horse occupies the best part of a canto; forty lines are taken up by describing his beard, forty more by describing his breeches. Endless scholastic discussions, arguments as long as those of the Puritans, spread their wastes and briars over half the poem. No action, no simplicity, all is would-be satire and gross caricature; there is neither art, nor harmony, nor good taste to be found in it; the Puritan style is converted into an absurd gibberish; and the engalled rancour, missing its aim by its mere excess, spoils the portrait it wishes to draw. Would you believe that such a writer gives himself airs, wishes to enliven us, pretends to be funny? What delicate raillery is there in this picture of Hudibras' beard! "His tawny beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and die so like a tile, A sudden view it would beguile : The upper part whereof was whey, The fall of sceptres and of crowns: 1 A Spanish author, who continued and imitated Cervantes' Don Quixote. A work by Scarron. Hudibras, ed. Z. Grey, 1801, 2 vols., i canto i. 7. 289, says also: "For as Eneas bore his sire Upon his shoulders through the fire, With grisly type did represent Declining age of government, Its own grave and the state's were made."1 Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he prolongs it for a good many lines: T' “Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew Whose thread of life the fatal sisters Did twist together with its whiskers, In life or death, their fortunes sever; but with his rusty sickle mow Both down together at a blow." 2 The nonsense increases as we go on. Could any one have taken pleasure in humour such as this? 1 Hudibras, part i. canto i. 7. 241–250. 2 Ibid. 1. 253-280. |