he simplicity of a dove, and is like his mother; it is Madame de
Grignan who has all the salt of the family, and is not so simple as to
be ruled. Someone, meaning to take your part, tried to correct her
notion of you, but Ninon contradicted him and said she knew you better.
What a corrupt creature! Because you are beautiful and spirited she must
needs add to you another quality without which, on her principles, you
cannot be perfect. I have been deeply troubled by the harm she is doing
to my son. But do not speak of the matter to him; Madame de la Fayette
and I are doing our best to extricate him from his perilous attachment.

We have been reading for our amusement those little Provincial Letters.
Heavens, what charm they have! How eagerly my son reads them! I always
think of my daughter, and how worthy of her is the incomparable justice
of their reasoning; but your brother says that you complain that the
writer is always saying the same thing. Well, well; all the better! Is
it possible that there should be a more perfect style, or a finer, more
delicate or more natural raillery? Could anything be more worthy of
comparison with Plato's "Dialogues"? But after the first ten letters,
what earnestness, solidity, force and eloquence! What love for God and
for truth, what exquisite skill in maintaining it and making it
understood, characterise these eight last letters with their so
different tone! I understand that you have read them only hurriedly,
enjoying the more amusing passages; but that is not how one reads them
at leisure.

* * * * *

ROBERT SOUTHEY

The Life of Nelson

Robert Southey, man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at
Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a
desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at
Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey,
who had practised verse from early boyhood, and acquired a
strong taste for the drama, being also an ardent republican
and romanticist, was easily enlisted by the elder poet in his
scheme for a model republic, or "Pantisocracy," in the wilds
of America. They married two sisters, the Misses Fricker, and
a third sister married Robert Lovel, also a poet. The
experiment of pantisocracy was fortunately never carried out,
and Southey's career for the next eight years was exceedingly
fragmentary; but in 1803 the