with those of mediocre souls deserve these
high names, that greatness and happiness are comparative terms, and that
there is nothing to be said of the estate of man except relatively. This
moralist was Vauvenargues.

Vauvenargues was born of a good Provencal stock at Aix, in the year
1715. He had scarcely any of that kind of education which is usually
performed in school-classes, and he was never able to read either Latin
or Greek. Such slight knowledge as he ever got of the famous writers
among the ancients was in translations. Of English literature, though
its influence and that of our institutions were then becoming paramount
in France, and though he had a particular esteem for the English
character, he knew only the writings of Locke and Pope, and the Paradise
Lost.[4] Vauvenargues must be added to the list of thinkers and writers
whose personal history shows, what men of letters sometimes appear to be
in a conspiracy to make us forget, that for sober, healthy, and robust
judgment on human nature and life, active and sympathetic contact with
men in the transaction of the many affairs of their daily life is a
better preparation than any amount of wholly meditative seclusion. He is
also one of the many who show that a weakly constitution of body is not
incompatible with fine and energetic qualities of mind, even if it be
not actually friendly to them. Nor was feeble health any
disqualification for the profession of arms. As Arms and the Church were
the only alternatives for persons of noble birth, Vauvenargues, choosing
the former, became a subaltern in the King's Own Regiment at the age of
twenty (1735). Here in time he saw active service; for in 1740 the death
of Charles VI. threw all Europe into confusion, and the French
Government, falling in with the prodigious designs of the Marshal
Belle-Isle and his brother, took sides against Maria Theresa, and
supported the claims of the unhappy Elector of Bavaria who afterwards
became the Emperor Charles VII. The disasters which fell upon France in
consequence are well known. The forces despatched to Bavaria and
Bohemia, after the brief triumph of the capture of Prague, were
gradually overwhelmed without a single great battle, and it was
considered a signal piece of good fortune when in the winter of 1742-43
Belle-Isle succeeded, with a loss of half his force, in leading by a
long circuit, in the view of the enemy, and amid the horrors of famine
and intense frost, some thir