of consideration, as being chiefly employed in eulogy such as
_could_ not be extravagant when applied to the glorious army of martyrs
(although here also, we doubt not, are many libels against men
concerning whom it matters little whether they were libelled or not),
all the rest of the great biographical works are absolutely saturated
with libels. Plutarch may be thought to balance his extravagant slanders
by his impossible eulogies. He sees nothing wonderful in actions that
were far beyond the level of any motives existing under pagan
moralities; and, on the other hand, he traduces great men like Caesar,
whose natures were beyond his scale of measurement, by tracing their
policy to petty purposes entirely Plutarchian. But he was a Greekling in
a degenerate age of Grecians. As to the French Memoirs, which are often
so exceedingly amusing, they purchase their liveliness by one eternal
sacrifice of plain truth. Their repartees, felicitous _propos_, and
pointed anecdotes are but one rolling fire of falsehoods. And,
generally, it may be laid down as a rule, that all collectors of happy
retorts and striking anecdotes are careless of truth. Louis XIV. _does_
seem to have had a natural gift of making brilliant compliments and
happy impromptus; and yet the very best of his reputed _mots_ were
spurious. Some may be traced to Cicero, Hierocles, Diogenes; and some to
his modern predecessors. That witty remark ascribed to him about the
disposition of Fortune, as being a lady, to withdraw her favours from
old men like himself and the Marechal Boufflers, was really uttered
nearly two centuries before by the Emperor Charles V., who probably
stole it from some Spanish collection of jests. And so of fifty in every
hundred beside. And the French are not only apt beyond other nations to
abuse the license of stealing from our predecessor _quod licuit
semperque licebit_, but also, in a degree peculiar to themselves, they
have a false de-naturalized taste in the humorous, and as to the limits
of the extravagant. We have formerly illustrated this point, and
especially we noticed it as a case impossible to any nation _but_ the
French to have tolerated the pretended 'absences' of La Fontaine--as,
for instance, his affecting to converse with his own son as an entire
stranger, and asking the lady who had presented him what might be the
name of that amiable young man. The _incredulus odi_ faces one in every
page of a French memoir; veracity is an un