Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/303

Rh of Maximes (1665-1678) which sombre wisdom and perfection of form have made a classic.

The difference between the English and the French wars is not more clearly seen from a comparison of the memoirs than from a study of the philosophic sediment which these wars left behind them in the literature of either country. The most direct effect of the English rebellion and revolution is seen in the political speculations of Hobbes and Locke; and in the cult of moderation in feeling, especially religious and moral feeling, of which the chief spokesman is Addison. Addison's sweet reasonableness is not quite the same thing as Boileau's good sense, for there is in it less of clear reason and more of feeling,—feeling which in Steele has already in it the germ of sensibility. The effect of the French wars is not seen in works on political theory. A war in which no principles were involved created no theoretical problems. Nor did it awaken humanitarian sentiment. That came later, and came from England. The fruit of the Fronde was a clearer insight into human nature, and a somewhat sombre philosophy, a philosophy which detected in every virtue the alloy of self-interest.

This philosophy, which runs through the work of some of the greatest writers of the period treated in the following volume of this series, is presented in its quintessence in the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld. "Les vertus se perdent dans l'intérêt, comme les fleuves se perdent dans la mer." That is the first principle from which his maxims are deduced, and it