The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St. Germain,
met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual rate, like a
whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great man, his servants think him
still greater. They passed through Nanterre, when they met a man on
horseback, and in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man
used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but
his horse proved unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six
turned them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was
completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of
amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose almost
miraculously; the man remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping
still, for aught I know; while the servants, the archbishop's
coachman, and the archbishop himself at the head of them, cried out,
"Stop that villain! stop him! thrash him soundly!" The rage of the
archbishop was so great, that afterward, in relating the adventure, he
said if he could have caught the rascal he would have broke all his
bones, and cut off both his ears.
If such things were done by the aristocracy--and the spiritual
aristocracy at that!--in the green tree, what might not be expected from
them in the dry? The writer makes no comment--draws no moral. "Adieu, my
dear, delightful child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you," are
her next words. She rattles along, three short sentences more, and
finishes her letter.
We should still not have done with these letters were we to go on a
hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers have already seen truly
what Madame de Sevigne is. They have only not seen fully all that she
is. And that they would not see short of reading her letters entire.
Horace Walpole aspired to do in English for his own time something like
what Madame de Sevigne had done in French for hers. In a measure he
succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative and affected, where
she was original and genuine.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be named, as, by her
sex, her social position, her talent, and the devotion of her talent,
an English analogue to Madame de Sevigne. But these comparisons, and all
comparison, leave the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her
rank, the most famous letter-writer in the world.
X.
CORNEILLE.
1606-1684.
The two great names in French tragedy are Corneille and Racine. French
tragedy is a very different affair from either modern tragedy in English
or ancient tragedy in Greek. It comes nearer being Roman epic, such as
Lucan wrote Roman epic, dramatized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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