cal the thought and the style penetrate each other inextricably and
almost indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, an inflection of the
voice, a glance of the eye, a French shrug of the shoulders. And such
modulations of the thought seem everywhere to lurk in the turns and
phrases of Pascal's inimitable French. To translate them is impossible.

Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern master of that
indescribably delicate art in expression, which, from its illustrious
ancient exemplar, has received the name of the Socratic irony. With this
fine weapon, in great part, it was, wielded like a magician's invisible
wand, that Pascal did his memorable execution on the Jesuitical system
of morals and casuistry, in the "Provincial Letters." In great part, we
say; for the flaming moral earnestness of the man could not abide only
to play with his adversaries, to the end of the famous dispute. His
lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he had done, and, toward the
last, brandished a sword that had weight as well as edge and temper. The
skill that could halve a feather in the air with the sword of Saladin
was proved to be also strength that could cleave a suit of mail with the
brand of Richard the Lion-hearted.

It is universally acknowledged, that the French language has never in
any hands been a more obedient instrument of intellectual power than it
was in the hands of Pascal. He is rated the earliest writer to produce
what may be called the final French prose. "The creator of French
style," Villemain boldly calls him. Pascal's style remains to this day
almost perfectly free from adhesions of archaism in diction and in
construction. Pascal showed, as it were at once, what the French
language was capable of doing in response to the demands of a master. It
was the joint achievement of genius, of taste, and of skill, working
together in an exquisite balance and harmony.

But let us be entirely frank. The "Provincial Letters" of Pascal are
now, to the general reader, not so interesting as from their fame one
would seem entitled to expect. You cannot read them intelligently
without considerable previous study. You need to have learned,
imperfectly, with labor, a thousand things that every contemporary
reader of Pascal perfectly knew, as if by simply breathing,--the
necessary knowledge being then, so to speak, abroad in the air. Even
thus, you cannot possibly derive that vivid delight from perusing in
bulk the "Provinc