Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/301

Rh Presbyterians nor the Army would yield—and the tragi-comedy of the Fronde, when the only persons whom self-interest made loyal to France were the Austrian Queen Mother and the Italian Minister.

The difference is felt acutely when one turns from Clarendon's dignified and moving narrative, or Cromwell's turgid but earnest letters, to the most brilliant of the many memoirs of these years—those of the libertine, ambitious, intriguing, demagogic Cardinal de Retz, and the more impersonal narrative of the equally egotistic and intriguing, but more reflective, critical Hamlet-like Duc de la Rochefoucauld.

The Mémoires of Jean-François-Paul de Gondy, Cardinal de Retz (1613-1679), are not to be trusted with regard to anything which it was for his interest to falsify; but they give, nevertheless, a vivid picture of events and actors, and of his own character and motives. A libertine who entered the Church to secure his family rights in the Archbishopric of Paris, a turbulent and ambitious temperament, a restless and intriguing mind, a born demagogue, De Retz's life was one long conflict for power, for the office of first minister, which he never attained. His style reflects his lucid, unquiet mind. It is not classical French prose. It wants the delicacy, the studied ease and grace of the writers whose style was moulded by the Provinciales and by the salons. But it is vigorous, coloured, and pointed. His narrative is vivid; his expositions of policy lucid and comprehensive; his character-sketches discriminating and piquant masterpieces.