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TITLE: REFLECTIONS; OR SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS
AUTHOR: FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
EBOOK: E00804 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

{Transcriber's notes: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour
instead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); words that
were italicized appear in all CAPITALS; the translators' comments are
in square brackets [...] as they are in the text; footnotes are indicated
by * and appear in angled brackets <...> immediately following the passage
containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of the page);
and, finally, I give corrections and addenda in curly brackets {...}.}

Rochefoucauld

"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew
From Nature--I believe them true.
They argue no corrupted mind
In him; the fault is in mankind."--Swift.

"Les Maximes de la Rochefoucauld sont des proverbs des
gens d'esprit."--Montesquieu.

"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations."--Sir J.
Mackintosh.

"Translators should not work alone; for good ET PROPRIA VERBA
do not always occur to one mind."--Luther's TABLE TALK, iii.

Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

By

Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld,
Prince de Marsillac.

Translated from the Editions of 1678 and 1827 with introduction,
notes, and some account of the author and his times.

By

J. W. Willis Bund, M.A. LL.B
and
J. Hain Friswell

Simpson Low, Son, and Marston,
188, Fleet Street.
1871.

{Translators'} Preface.

Some apology must be made for an attempt
"to translate the untranslatable."  Not-
withstanding there are no less than eight
English translations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly
any are readable, none are free from faults, and all
fail more or less to convey the author's meaning.
Though so often translated, there is not a complete
English edition of the Maxims and Reflections.  All
the translations are confined exclusively to the
Maxims, none include the Reflections.  This may be
accounted for, from the fact that most of the trans-
lations are taken from the old editions of the
Maxims, in which the Reflections do not appear.
Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text
of Rochefoucauld, the various editions were but
reprints of the preceding ones, without any regard
to the alterations made by the author in the later
editions published during his life-time.  So much
was this the case, that Maxims which had been
rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last edition, were
still retained in the body of the work.  To give
but one example, the celebrated Maxim as to the
misfortunes of our friends, was omitted in the last
edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's
life-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim
appears in the body of the work.

M. Aime Martin in 1827 published an edition
of the Maxims and Reflections which has ever since
been the standard text of Rochefoucauld in France.
The Maxims are printed from the edition of 1678,
the last published during the author's life, and the
last which received his corrections.  To this edition
were added two Supplements; the first containing
the Maxims which had appeared in the editions of
1665, 1666, and 1675, and which were afterwards
omitted; the second, some additional Maxims
found among various of the author's manuscripts
in the Royal Library at Paris.  And a Series of Re-
flections which had been previously published in a
work called "Receuil de pieces d'histoire et de litte-
rature."  Paris, 1731.  They were first published
with the Maxims in an edition by Gabriel Brotier.

In an edition of Rochefoucauld entitled "Reflex-
ions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales, augmentees
de plus deux cent nouvelles Maximes et Maximes
et Pensees diverses suivant les copies Imprimees a
Paris, chez Claude Barbin, et Matre Cramoisy
1692,"* some fifty Maxims were added, ascribed
by the editor to Rochefoucauld, and as his family
allowed them to be published under his name, it
seems probable they were genuine.  These fifty
form the third supplement to this book.

*<In all the French editions this book is spoken of as
published in 1693.  The only copy I have seen is in the
Cambridge University Library, 47, 16, 81, and is called
"Reflexions Morales.">

The apology for the present edition of Rochefou-
cauld must therefore be twofold: firstly, that it is
an attempt to give the public a complete English
edition of Rochefoucauld's works as a moralist.
The body of the work comprises the Maxims
as the author finally left them, the first supple-
ment, those published in former editions, and
rejected by the author in the later; the second, the
unpublished Maxims taken from the author's cor-
respondence and manuscripts, and the third, the
Maxims first published in 1692.  While the Re-
flections, in which the thoughts in the Maxims are
extended and elaborated, now appear in English
for the first time.  And secondly, that it is an
attempt (to quote the preface of the edition of
1749) "to do the Duc de la Rochefoucauld the
justice to make him speak English."

{Translators'} Introduction

The description of the "ancien regime" in
France, "a despotism tempered by epigrams,"
like most epigrammatic sentences, contains
some truth, with much fiction.  The society of
the last half of the seventeenth, and the whole of the
eighteenth centuries, was doubtless greatly influenced
by the precise and terse mode in which the popular
writers of that date expressed their thoughts.  To a
people naturally inclined to think that every possible
view, every conceivable argument, upon a question is
included in a short aphorism, a shrug, and the word
"voila," truths expressed in condensed sentences must
always have a peculiar charm.  It is, perhaps, from this
love of epigram, that we find so many eminent
French writers of maxims.  Pascal, De Retz, La
Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Montesquieu, and Vau-
venargues, each contributed to the rich stock of French
epigrams.  No other country can show such a list
of brilliant writers--in England certainly we can-
not.  Our most celebrated, Lord Bacon, has, by
his other works, so surpassed his maxims, that their
fame is, to a great measure, obscured.  The only
Englishman who could have rivalled La Rochefou-
cauld or La Bruyere was the Earl of Chesterfield, and
he only could have done so from his very inti-
mate connexion with France; but unfortunately his
brilliant genius was spent in the impossible task of
trying to refine a boorish young Briton, in "cutting
blocks with a razor."

Of all the French epigrammatic writers La Rochefou-
cauld is at once the most widely known, and the most
distinguished.  Voltaire, whose opinion on the cen-
tury of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight,
says, "One of the works that most largely contributed
to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit
of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims,
by Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld."

This Francois, the second Duc de la Rochefoucauld,
Prince de Marsillac, the author of the maxims, was
one of the most illustrious members of the most illus-
trious families among the French noblesse.  Descended
from the ancient Dukes of Guienne, the founder of
the Family Fulk or Foucauld, a younger branch of
the House of Lusignan, was at the commencement of
the eleventh century the Seigneur of a small town,
La Roche, in the Angounois.  Our chief knowledge of
this feudal lord is drawn from the monkish chronicles.
As the benefactor of the various abbeys and monas-
teries in his province, he is naturally spoken of by
them in terms of eulogy, and in the charter of one of
the abbeys of Angouleme he is called, "vir nobilissimus
Fulcaldus."  His territorial power enabled him to
adopt what was then, as is still in Scotland, a com-
mon custom, to prefix the name of his estate to his
surname, and thus to create and transmit to his
descendants the illustrious surname of La Rochefou-
cauld.

From that time until that great crisis in the history
of the French aristocracy, the Revolution of 1789, the
family of La Rochefoucauld have been, "if not first, in
the very first line" of that most illustrious body.  One
Seigneur served under Philip Augustus against Richard
Coeur de Lion, and was made prisoner at the battle
of Gisors.  The eighth Seigneur Guy performed a great
tilt at Bordeaux, attended (according to Froissart) to
the Lists by some two hundred of his kindred and
relations.  The sixteenth Seigneur Francais was cham-
berlain to Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and stood

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