art of the maxims are founded. The most famous of
them all is the saying that "Hypocrisy is a sort of Homage which Vice
pays to Virtue," but there are others that fly from mouth to mouth, and
treat more definitely of self-love. "The reason why Ladies and their
Lovers are at ease in one another's company, is because they never talk
of anything but themselves"; or "There is something not unpleasing to us
in the misfortunes of our best friends." These are, perhaps, the three
most famous, though we doubt whether the last of them has enough truth
in it for a first-rate maxim. Might one not rather say that the
perpetual misfortunes of our friends are the chief plague of existence?
Goethe came nearer the truth when he wrote: "I am happy enough for
myself. Joy comes streaming in upon me from every side. Only, for
others, I am not happy." But Rochefoucauld had to play the cynic, and a
dash of cynicism adds a fine ingredient to a maxim.

Nevertheless, after reading this book of _Maxims_ through again, all the
seven hundred and more (a hideous task, almost as bad as reading a whole
volume of _Punch_ on end), I incline to think Rochefoucauld's reputation
for cynicism much exaggerated. It may be that the world grows more
cynical with age, unlike a man, whose cynical period ends with youth. At
all events, in the last twenty years we have had half a dozen writers
who, as far as cynicism goes, could give Rochefoucauld fifty maxims in a
hundred. In all artificial and inactive times and places, as in
Rochefoucauld's France, Queen Anne's England, the London of the end of
last century, and our Universities always, epigram and a dandy cynicism
are sure to flourish until they often sicken us with the name of
literature. But in Rochefoucauld we perceive glimpses of something far
deeper than the cynicism that makes his reputation. It is not to a
cynic, or to the middle of the seventeenth century in France, that we
should look for such sayings as these:

"A Man at some times differs as much from himself as he
does from other People."

"Eloquence is as much seen in the Tone and Cadence of
the Eyes, and the Air of the Face, as in the Choice of proper
Expressions."

"When we commend good Actions heartily, we make them
in some measure our own."

Such sayings lie beyond the probe of the cynic, or the wit of the
literary man. They spring from sympathetic observation and a quietly
serious mind. And there is something equally fresh