The literary merits of the Provincials have been universally acknowledged and applauded. On this point, where Pascal’s countrymen must be considered the most competent judges, we have the testimonies of the leading spirits of France. Boileau pronounced it a work that has “surpassed at once the ancients and the moderns.” Perrault has given a similar judgment: “There is more wit in these eighteen letters than in Plato’s Dialogues; more delicate and artful raillery than in those of Lucian; and more strength and ingenuity of reasoning than in the orations of Cicero. We have nothing more beautiful in this species of writing.”[43] “Pascal’s style,” says the Abbé d’Artigny, “has never been surpassed, nor perhaps equalled.”[44] The high encomium of Voltaire is well known: “The Provincial Letters were models of eloquence and pleasantry. The best comedies of Molière have not more wit in them than the first letters; Bossuet has nothing more sublime than the last ones.” Again, the same writer says: “The first work of genius that appeared in prose was the collection of the Provincial Letters. Examples of every species of eloquence may there be found. There is not a single word in it which, after a hundred years, has undergone the change to which all living languages are liable. We may refer to this work the era when our language became fixed. The Bishop of Luçon told me, that having asked the Bishop of Meaux what work he would wish most to have been the author of, setting his own works aside, Bossuet instantly replied, ‘The Provincial Letters.’”[45] “Pascal succeeded beyond all expression,” says D’Alembert; “several of his bon-mots have become proverbial in our language, and the Provincials will be ever regarded as a model of taste and style.”[46] To this day the same high eulogiums are passed on the work by the best scholars of France.[47] To these testimonies it would be superfluous to add any criticism of our own, were it not to prepare the English reader for the peculiar character of our author’s style. Pascal’s wit is essentially French. It is not the broad humor of Smollet; it is not the cool irony of Swift; far less is it the envenomed sarcasm of Junius. It is wit—the lively, polite, piquant wit of the early French school. Nothing can be finer than its spirit; but from its very fineness it is apt to evaporate in the act of transfusion into another tongue. Nothing can be more ingenious than the transitions by which the author glides insensibly from one topic to another; and in the more serious letters, we cannot fail to be struck with the mathematical precision of his reasoning. But there is a species of iteration, and a style of dovetailing his sentiments, which does not quite accord with our taste; and the foreign texture of which, in spite of every effort to the contrary, must shine through any translation.