Reflections | Page 2

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.
* 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 Rochefou- cauld 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
supple- 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author in the later; the second, the unpublished Maxims taken from the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
“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 Vau- venargues, each
contributed to the rich stock of French epigrams. No other country can
show such a list of brilliant writers--in England certainly we can- not.
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 Rochefou- cauld or La Bruyère

was the Earl of Chesterfield, and he only could have done so from his
very inti- mate 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 Rochefou- cauld is at once
the most widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose
opinion on the cen- tury 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 of maxims, by Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld.”
This Francois, the second Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de
Marsillac, the author of the maxims, was one of the most illustrious
members of the most illus- trious families among the French noblesse.
Descended from the ancient Dukes of Guienne, the founder of the
Family Fulk or Foucauld, a younger branch of the House of Lusignan,
was at the commencement of the eleventh century the Seigneur of a
small town, La Roche, in the Angounois. Our chief knowledge of this
feudal lord is drawn from the monkish chronicles. As the benefactor of
the various abbeys and monas- teries in his province, he is naturally
spoken of by them in terms of eulogy, and in the charter of one of the
abbeys of Angouleme he is called, “vir nobilissimus Fulcaldus.” His
territorial power enabled him to adopt what was then, as is still in
Scotland, a com- mon custom, to prefix the name of his estate to his
surname, and thus to create and transmit to his descendants the
illustrious surname of La Rochefou- cauld.
From that time until that great crisis in the history of the French
aristocracy, the Revolution of 1789, the family of La Rochefoucauld
have been, “if not first, in the very first line” of that most illustrious
body. One Seigneur served under Philip Augustus against Richard
Coeur de Lion, and was made prisoner at the battle of Gisors. The
eighth Seigneur Guy performed a great tilt at Bordeaux, attended
(according to Froissart) to the Lists by some two hundred of his kindred
and relations. The sixteenth Seigneur Francais was cham- berlain to
Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and stood