Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/800

786 This separation has, however, been the cause of much entertainment to the public; and as most of Mde. de Sevigné's letters are still extant, they will do her head and her heart honour, and give her readers both pleasure and instruction, as long as any body lives who can relish fine sentiment, wit, humour, and refined taste.

The last journey she made into Provence was in 1694, when she was present at the marriage of her grandson, the Marquis de Grignan, with Mademoiselle de Saint Amant. Soon after, Madame de Grignan had a long and dangerous illness, which so deeply affected her mother, as to disturb that repose so necessary to support old age, and she fell ill of a fever, and after lying fourteen days, died at the age of seventy, under the roof of her beloved and afflicted daughter.

She was acquainted with all the wits and learned men of her time. It is said, she decided the famous dispute between Perrault and Boileau, concerning the preference of the ancients to the moderns, thus: "the ancients are the finest, and we are the prettiest." She left a valuable collection of letters; the best edition of which is that of 1754, at Paris, in 8 vols. 12 mo. "These," says Voltaire, "are filled with anecdotes, written with freedom, and in a natural and animated stile; are an excellent criticism upon studied letters of wit, and still more upon those sublime fictitious letters, which aim to imitate the epistolary stile, by a recital of false sentiments and feigned adventures to imaginary correspondents."