d'Essex_ history is transformed to a romance.
Perhaps the greatest glory of Thomas Corneille is that his reception
as an Academician became the occasion for a just and eloquent tribute
to the genius of his brother uttered by Racine, when the bitterness
of rivalry was forgotten and the offences of Racine's earlier years
were nobly repaired.

CHAPTER IV
SOCIETY AND PUBLIC LIFE IN LETTERS

Before noticing the theories of classical poetry in the writings of
its master critic, Boileau, we must glance at certain writers who
belonged rather to the world of public life and of society than to
the world of art, but who became each a master in literary craft,
as it were, by an irresistible instinct. Memoirs, maxims, epistolary
correspondence, the novel, in their hands took a distinguished place
in the hierarchy of literary art.

FRANCOIS VI., DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Prince de Marsillac, was born
in 1613, of one of the greatest families of France. His life is divided
into two periods--one of passionate activity, when with romantic
ardour he threw himself into the struggles of the Fronde, only to
be foiled and disillusioned; and the other of bitter reflection,
consoled by certain social successes, loyal friendships, and an
unique literary distinction. His _Maximes_ are the brief confession
of his experience of life, an utterance of the pessimism of an
aristocratic spirit, moulded into a form proper to the little world
of the _salon_--each maxim a drop of the attar not of roses but of
some more poignant and bitterly aromatic blossom. In the circle of
Mme. de Sable, now an elderly _precieuse_, a circle half-Epicurean,
half-Jansenist, frivolously serious and morosely gay, the
composition of maxims and "sentences" became a fashion. Those of La
Rochefoucauld were submitted to her as to an oracle; five years were
given to shaping a tiny volume; fifteen years to rehandling and
polishing every phrase. They are like a collection of medals struck
in honour of the conquests of cynicism. The first surreptitious
edition, printed in Holland in 1664, was followed by an authorised
edition in 1665; the number of maxims, at first 317, rose finally
in 1678 to 504; some were omitted; many were reduced to the extreme
of concision; under the influence of Mme. de la Fayette, in the later
texts the indictment of humanity was slightly attenuated. "Il m'a
donne de l'esprit," said Mme. de la Fayette, "mais j'ai reforme son
coeur."

The motto o