e. He had
learnt from Malherbe that a literary craftsman should leave nothing
to chance, that every effect should be exactly calculated. It was
his task to apply to prose the principles which had guided his master
in verse. His _Lettres_, of which a first series appeared in 1624,
and a second twelve years later, are not the spontaneous intercourse
of friend with friend, but rather studious compositions which deal
with matters of learning, literature, morals, religion, politics,
events, and persons of the time. Their contents are of little
importance; Balzac was not an original thinker, but he had the art
of arranging his ideas, and of expressing them in chosen words
marshalled in ample and sonorous sentences. A certain fire he had,
a limited power of imagination, a cultivated judgment, a taste, which
suffered from bad workmanship; a true affection for rural life. These
hardly furnished him with matter adequate to support his elevated
style. His letters were regarded as models of eloquence; but it is
eloquence manufactured artificially and applied to subjects, not
proceeding from them. His _Prince_, a treatise on the virtues of kings,
with a special reference to Louis XIII., was received coldly. His
_Aristippe_, which dealt with the manners and morals of a court, and
his _Socrate Chretien_, a study in ethics and theology, were efforts
beyond his powers. His gift to literature was a gift of method and
of style; others who worked in marble learned something from his
studious modellings in clay.

To regulate thought required an intellect of a different order from
that of Balzac, "emperor of orators." It was the task of RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650). A child of delicate health, born at La Haye, near Tours,
he became, under Jesuit teachers, a precocious student both in
languages and science. But truth, not erudition, was the demand and
the necessity of his mind. Solitary investigations in mathematics
were for a time succeeded by the life of a soldier in the Netherlands
and Holland. The stream of thought was flowing, however, underground.
Suddenly it emerged to light. In 1619, when the young volunteer was
in winter quarters at Neuburg, on the Danube, on a memorable day the
first principles of a new philosophical method presented themselves
to his intellect, and, as it were, claimed him for their interpreter.
After wanderings through various parts of Europe, and a period of
studious leisure in Paris, he chose Holland for his plac