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François duc de La Rochefoucauld
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664103406
Table of Contents
REFLECTIONS; OR, SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS
REFLECTIONS, EXTRACTED FROM MS. LETTERS IN THE ROYAL LIBRARY.*
REFLECTIONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, BY THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
II. On Difference of Character.
Translator's Preface.
Some apology must be made for an attempt "to translate the untranslatable." Notwithstanding there are no less than eight English translations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly any are readable, none are free from faults, and all fail more or less to convey the author's meaning. Though so often translated, there is not a complete English edition of the Maxims and Reflections. All the translations are confined exclusively to the Maxims, none include the Reflections. This may be accounted for, from the fact that most of the translations are taken from the old editions of the Maxims, in which the Reflections do not appear. Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text of Rochefoucauld, the various editions were but reprints of the preceding ones, without any regard to the alterations made by the author in the later editions published during his life-time. So much was this the case, that Maxims which had been rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last edition, were still retained in the body of the work. To give but one example, the celebrated Maxim as to the misfortunes of our friends, was omitted in the last edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's life-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim appears in the body of the work.
M. Aimé Martin in 1827 published an edition of the Maxims and Reflections which has ever since been the standard text of Rochefoucauld in France. The Maxims are printed from the edition of 1678, the last published during the author's life, and the last which received his corrections. To this edition were added two Supplements; the first containing the Maxims which had appeared in the editions of 1665, 1666, and 1675, and which were afterwards omitted; the second, some additional Maxims found among various of the author's manuscripts in the Royal Library at Paris. And a Series of Reflections which had been previously published in a work called "Receuil de pièces d'histoire et de littérature." Paris, 1731. They were first published with the Maxims in an edition by Gabriel Brotier.
In an edition of Rochefoucauld entitled "Reflexions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales, augmentées de plus deux cent nouvelles Maximes et Maximes et Pensées diverses suivant les copies Imprimées à Paris, chez Claude Barbin, et Matre Cramoisy 1692,"* some fifty Maxims were added, ascribed by the editor to Rochefoucauld, and as his family allowed them to be published under his name, it seems probable they were genuine. These fifty form the third supplement to this book.
*In all the French editions this book is spoken of as published in 1693. The only copy I have seen is in the Cambridge University Library, 47, 16, 81, and is called "Reflexions Morales."
The apology for the present edition of Rochefoucauld must therefore be twofold: firstly, that it is an attempt to give the public a complete English edition of Rochefoucauld's works as a moralist. The body of the work comprises the Maxims as the author finally left them, the first supplement, those published in former editions, and rejected by the author in the later; the second, the unpublished Maxims taken from the author's correspondence and manuscripts, and the third, the Maxims first published in 1692. While the Reflections, 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."
Translator's 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 "voilà," truths expressed in condensed sentences must always have a peculiar charm. It is, perhaps, from this love of epigram, that we find so many eminent French writers of maxims. Pascal, De Retz, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, and Vauvenargues, each contributed to the rich stock of French epigrams. No other country can show such a list of brilliant writers—in England certainly we cannot. Our most celebrated, Lord Bacon, has, by his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their fame is, to a great measure, obscured. The only Englishman who could have rivalled La Rochefoucauld or La Bruyère was the Earl of Chesterfield, and he only could have done so from his very intimate connexion with France; but unfortunately his brilliant genius was spent in the impossible task of trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in "cutting blocks with a razor."
Of all the French epigrammatic writers La Rochefoucauld is at once the most widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion on the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says, "One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection