It was not, one must insist, the career of a great man of letters. Had Chamfort left nothing behind him but the mediocre literary baggage which fills the greater part of the five volumes of his works edited by M. Auguis in 1824, he would be no more than a name to us, one of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease and most assuredly do _not_ write for posterity. His verses, his _éloges_, his comedies, the tragedy which he wrote since everybody had to father a tragedy, have the dust of oblivion thick upon him, dust little like to be disturbed save by the curious student. It is as a talker, the greatest of his age, that Chamfort survives. His collection of anecdotes, told with inimitable verve and terseness, forms a document of capital importance to the social historian; but it is in the maxims and _pensées_, coinage of his own incisive wit, that we find the man at his best. Comparison with his great predecessor in this field, La Rochefoucauld, is inevitable, but Chamfort emerges from it with little loss of credit. If he lack La Rochefoucauld’s breadth, serenity, restraint, and universality of penetration, he surpasses the elder moralist in passion, daring, and, one may add, sincerity. Chamfort does not stand aloof from the world whose weak points he touches, now in pity, now in scorn; his sayings are instinct with personality; behind the aphorism we behold the man, a latter-day Ecclesiastes, who, nevertheless, has visions at times of a Promised Land beyond the wilderness. As regards form, Chamfort’s _pensées_ are well nigh perfect. He had of course the advantage of writing them in the language best fitted for the purpose, but even this allowed, they are masterpieces of pregnant brevity. “Those people,” said Balzac of Chamfort and his contemporary Rivarol, “put whole volumes into a single _bon mot_, while nowadays ’tis a marvel if we find a _bon mot_ in a volume.” This is the extravagance of praise. In more measured terms John Stuart Mill and Schopenhauer expressed their admiration of the genius displayed in Chamfort’s _pensées_, those “_flèches acérées_,” to quote Sainte-Beuve, “_qui arrivent brusquement et sifflent encore_.” Yes, for, after all, we have not made such wonderful progress since Chamfort’s day, but that some of these keen arrows of his find their mark still. W. G. H. _January, 1902._ ⁂ It is perhaps a point of some interest from a bibliographical point of view, that this is the first translation into English of any of Chamfort’s writings. The Cynic’s Breviary NATURE has not said to me: Be not poor; still less: Be rich. But she cries out to me: Be independent. * * * * *