Faret Page 112 To Mounsieur Coeffetean Bishop of Marseillis Page 113 To Mounsieur Pouzet Page 114 An answer to a letter sent to Balzac from a learned old Lady Madamoiselle de Gourney Page 114 To Mounsieur Berniere Page 117 To Mounsieur de Voiture Page 117 To Mounsieur de Vaugelas Page 118 To Mounsieur de Racan Page 120 To the Abbot of S. Cyran Page 121 To Mounsieur Malherb Page 126 To Mounsieur de Vaugelas Page 127 To the same Page 128 To the same Page 129 To the same Page 130 To the same Page 131 To Hydasp Page 132 Another Page 135 Another Page 136 Another Page 137 Another Page 138 Another Page 139 Another Page 141 A Table of the letters contained in the second volume Lib. I. TO Mounsieur Moreau Page I. To Mounsieur Râ—gault Page 3 To Mounsieur da Moulin Page 5 To Mounsieur the Abbot of Baume Page 8 To Mounsieur Bouthilier Page 10 To Mounsieur the Earle of Exceter Page 11 To Mounsieur de Boyssat Page 12 To Mounsieur Huggens Page 14 To the Baron of S. Surin Page 16 To Cardinall de la Valette Page 17 Another Page 18 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 19 To Mounsieur de Soubran Page 22 To Mounsieur de la Nauue Page 24 To Mounsieur Chaplain Page 25 To Mounsieur de Nesmond Page 26 To Mounsieur de Pontac Monpleisir Page 28 To Mounsieur Huggens Page 30 To Mounsieur de la Nauue Page 32 To Mounsieur Conrage Page 33 To Page 35 To Mounsieur Godeau Page 37 To Mounsieur de Thibaudiere Page 38 To Mounsieur Gyrard Page 39 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes Page 43 Another Page 44 Another Page 45 To Page 46 To Mounsieur du Pleix Page 47 To Mounsieur Maynard Page 48 To Mounsieur de Descourades Page 49 To Mounsieur d' Andilly Page 50 To Mounsieur Conrart Page 52 To the same another Page 53 To my Lord the Mareschall Defiat Page 56 To Mounsieur Grainer Page 57 To Mounsieur Gaillard Page 58 To Mounsieur the Master Advocate in the Parliament Page 58 Lib. 2. in the second vol. To my Lord the Earle of Exceter Page 61 To my Lord the Arch Bishop of Thoulouse Page 62 To Mounsieur Arnaut Abbot of S. Nicholas Page 65 To Mounsieur Ogier Page 67 To Mounsieur Sirmond Page 69 To Mounsieur Collombiers Page 70 To Page 71 To Mounsieur Coeffeteau Page 72 To my Lord the Earle of Brassac Page 74 To Mounsieur de la Nauve Page 76 To Mounsieur Heinsius Page 77 To Mounsieur de la Pigionniere Page 79 To Mounsieur Chaplain Page 79 To Mounsieur Maynard Page 81 To Page 81 To Mounsieur Arnaut Page 82 To Mounsieur Nesmond Page 83 To Mounsieur de Borstell Page 85 Another Page 86 Another Page 86 Another Page 87 Another Page 88 Another Page 89 Another Page 89 Another Page 90 Another Page 91 Another Page 92 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 93 To Mounsieur Descartes Page 94 To Mounsieur de la Motte Aigron Page 95 To Mounsieur de Grainer Page 96 To Mounsieur de la Nauve Page 97 Another Page 98 Another Page 99 Another Page 100 To Mounsieur Bardyn Page 101 To Mounsieur de Aiguebere Page 103 Another Page 105 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert Page 106 Another Page 107 Another Page 108 To Mounsieur the master Advocate in the Parliament Page 110 Another Page 112 Another Page 112 To Mounsieur de Caupeau ville Page 113 To Page 114 To Mounsieur Trovillier Page 115 To Mounsieur Gerard Page 116 To my Lord the Bishop of Nants Page 118 Another Page 118 A Table of all the letters in the third volume lib. 1. TO my Lord the Cardinall de la Valet page I. To the same page 2 To Mounsieur Godea page 2 3 To Mounsieur Conrart page 4 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes page 5 Another page 6 To Mounsieur de la Nauve page 7 To Mounsieur de la Motte le Voyer page 8 To Madam de Villesavin page 9 To Mounsieur de Gomberville page 10 To Mounsieur de Villiers Hottoman page 12 To Mounsieur de Borstell page 13 To Madam page 15 To Mounsieur Hobbier page 17 To Mounsieur de Copiauville page 18 To Mounsieur de Forgues page 19 To Madam d'Anguitur page 20 To Mounsieur Balthazar page 22 To Mounsieur de Serizai page 23 Another page 24 Another page 25 To Mounsieur Ogier page 26 Another page 27 To Madam Desloges page 28 Another page 29 To page 30 To Madam Desloges page 31 Another page 32 Another page 35 Another page 36 Another page 37 Another page 38 To Mounsieur de la Nouve page 39 To Madam Desloges page 40 Another page 41 Another page 42 Another page 43 Another page 44 Another page 45 Another page 46 Another page 47 Another page 48 Another page 49 Another page 50 To page 51 To page 52 To page 53 To Mounsieur de Coignet page 54 To Mounsieur de Nuluic page 55 To Madam Desloges page 56 Another page 58 To Madam du Fos page 59 To Madam de Campagnole page 61 Another page 62 Another page 63 Another page 64 The second part of the third volume To my Lord the Cardinall Duke of Richelieu page 69 Another page 74 Another page 75 To Mounsieur Cytois page 77 To Mounsieur de Chastelet page 78 To Mounsieur de Bois Robert page 81 To Mounsieur Favereau page 83 Another page 86 To Mounsieur Girard page 87 To my Lord the Earle of Port page 88 To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes page 89 To Mounsieur Senne page 90 The opinion of Cicero concerning the stile which Philosophers use in their writings page 92 To Mounsieur Granier page 92 To Mounsieur de Brye page 93 To Mounsieur de Silhon page 94 To Mounsieur de S. Marte page 99 To Mounsieur D'Argenton page 100 To the most Reverend Father Leon page 101 To Mounsieur Chaplain page 102 To Mounsieur Bonnaud page 105 To Mounsieur Souchote page 106 To Mounsieur Tissander page 106 The letter of Peter Bembo to Hercules Strotius page 108 Another page 108 Another page 109 To the Duke of Falete page 110 To the Bishop of Poitiers page 112 To Mounsieur Guyet page 113 To Mounsieur de L'orme page 114 To my Lord page 115 To Mounsieur Senne page 115 To Mounsieur de Piles Cleremont page 116 To Mounsieur de Voiture page 117 Another page 118 To Mounsieur Mestivier page 119 To Mounsieur de Mesmes D'Auvur page 120 To Mounsieur de Thure page 121 To Mounsieur de Vougelas page 122 To Mounsieur Girard page 123 Another page 125 Clarissimo Balzacio Facultas Theologiae Pariensiensis S. page 126 Another page 127 To Mounsieur Talon page 128 Another page 129 To Mounsieur D'Espernon page 130 To Mounsieur Rous sines page 131 To Mounsieur Breton page 133 Another page 134 Another page 136 To
Mounsieur Gerard page 137 To Mounsieur de Gues page 139 To Mouns de Bois Robert page 143 A Table of the Letters contained in the fourth volume TO Mouns Conrart page I. To Mounsieur du Moulin page 3 To Mouns L'Huillier page 4 To Mounsieur the Abbot of Bois Robert page 6 To my Lord the Earle of Exceter page 7 To my Lord the Duke de la Valett page 8 To Mouns Drovet page 9 To Mouns De-Bonair page 10 To Mouns Huggens page 11 To Mouns de Racan page 12 To Mouns De St. Chartres page 13 To Mouns Baudoin page 14 To Mouns de Coignet page 15 To Madam Cesloges page 16 To my Lord Keeper of the Seals Seguier page 17 To Mounsieur de Morins page 18 To Mouns de Vaugulas page 19 To Mouns de la Motte Aigron page 21 To Mouns de Borstel page 22 To Mouns the chief Advocate page 23 To Mounsieur de Maury page 24 To Mouns de Mondory page 24 To Mounsieur le Guay page 26 To Mouns de Silhon page 26 To Mouns de la Fosse page 27 To Mouns D'Espesses page 29 To the same page 30 To Mouns de Couurelles page 32 To page 32 To my Lord the Bishop of Angoulesme page 33 To Mounsieur de page 34 To Mounsieur de Serizay page 39 To Mouns Habert Abbot of Cerizy page 40 To Mouns de Galliard page 41 To the same page 42 To Madam Desloges page 43 To Mouns de page 44 To Mouns Girard page 46 To the same page 47 To the same page 48 To the same page 49 To Madamoisel de Campagnole page 50 To Mouns the Abbot of Bois Robert page 51 To the same page 52 To the same page 53 To Mouns de Savignac page 54 To Mouns Chaplain page 56 To the same page 57 To the same page 58 To the same page 59 To the same page 60 To the same page 62 To the same page 63 To the same page 64 To the same page 65 To the same page 66 To Mounsieur de Silhon page 67 To Mouns Gerard Secretary to the Duke of Espernon page 68 To the same page 69 To Mouns de la Mothe le Vayer page 70 To Mouns de page 71 The Letters of MONSIEUR de BALZAC The first Book A Letter from the Cardinal Richelieu to the Signior of BALZAC LETTER I. SIR THough I have formerly delivered my opinion to a friend of yours concerning some of your letters he shewed me yet can I not satisfie my self before these lines afford you a more Authentical approbation thereof It is not any particular affection I bear to your person which inviteth me to this allowance but truth it self carrying with it such a Prerogative that it compelleth all who have their eys and spirits rightly placed for the delivering an unpartial opinion to represent them without disguise My censure shall be seconded by many others if there be any of a contrary conceit I dare assure you time will make them know that the defects they finde in your Letters proceed rather from their Spirits than from your Pen and how nearly they resemble the Ictericks who having the Jaundise in their eys see nothing which seemeth not unto them to carry the same colour Heretofore mean Wits admired all things above the pitch of their capacitie but now their judgements seconding their sufficiencies they approve nothing but what is within the compass of their Talent and blame all whatsoever exceedeth their Studies I dare without presumption say in what concerneth you herein that I see things as they are and declare them to be such as I see them The conceptions of your Letters are strong and as transcendent above ordinary imaginations as they are conformable to the common sense of such who are of sound judgement The Language is pure and the Words perfectly well chosen without affectation the Sense is clear and neat and the Periods accomplished with all their numbers This censure of mine is by so much the more ingenuous as that approving whatsoever is your own in your Letters I have not concealed to a certain friend of yours that I found some rectification to be desired concerning certain things you insert of other mens fearing least the liberty of your Pen should cause many to imagine that it is too often dipped in their humours and manners and draw such as are more acquainted with you by name than conversation to be otherwise conceited of you then you willingly could wish The manner wherewith you have received this my Advise causeth me that continuing my former freedom I will conclude in advertizing you that you shall be answerable before God if you suffer your Pen to sleep and that you are obliged to imploy it upon more grave and important Subjects being contented that you shall blame me if in so doing you receive not the satisfaction to see that what you perform herein shall be praised and esteemed even by those who would willingly pick occasion to controul them which is one of the most sure marks of the perfection of any Work You shall receive some in this kinde out of my Affection when I may have the opportunity to assure you that I am Your well affectionate to serve you the Cardinal of Richelieu From Paris the 4. of February 1621. To the Lord Cardinal of Richelieu from BALZAC LETTER II. MY LORD I Am as proud of the Letter you did me the Honour to write unto me as if there were a thousand Statues erected for me or as if I were assured by infallible authority of my works excellency Truly to be commended by that man our Age opposeth to all antiquity and upon whose wisdom God might well intrust the whole earths Government is a favour I could not wish for without presumption and which I am yet doubtfull whether I have really received or onely dreamed some such matter But if it be so that my eys have not deceived me and that you are he who hath bestowed that voice upon me which hath been chosen by all France to present her Petitions to the King and by the King him self to convey his Commands into Cities and Armies My Lord I must humbly then acknowledge you have already payed me before hand for all the services I can ever possibly perform unto you and I should shew my self very ungratefull if I should hereafter complain of my fortunes since upon the matter the goods and honours of this World are most ordinarily none other than the inheritance of Sots or rewards of Vice Estimation and Commendation being onely reserved for Virtue Ought I not then to rest highly satisfied having received from your mouth the same prize which Conquerours expect for their Victories yea all that your self could hope for in lieu of your great and immortal actions if there were another Cardinal of Richelieu to give them their due commendations But truely my Lord that is a thing which will always be wanting to your glorie for when by your onely presence you
doe not know whether this be either the cowardize of the age or the impatience of the Naetion or the fear of poverty and famine presented to their imagination or to speak more favourably of the present occasions a Christian tendernesse and common sense of humanity so vehemently doth all the world desire peace that I think Heaven cannot send a better Present to the Earth I think that should be imployed upon such a pious occasion and chosen one of the Agents for Coloigne If he would bring us that excellent Donative of Heaven he deserved to enter the Academy in triumph and that Monsieur the President should make the speech himself For my part I should receive him after such a Negotiation with more respect then if he came from commanding an Army And to tell you the truth the pacifick Angels doe please me farre better then the destroying Angels Think it not strange Sir that the desire of glory is not the passion of Villagers and that dreaming sometimes of the Crabbats I pitch upon the same though with the Poet Impius haec tam culta novalia Miles habebit Barbarus has segetes These are thoughts which are bred in my rural walke and which spring from lownesse of spirit into which I am apt to fall as soon as I have lost the sight of you Therefore be pleased to take the pains to fortifie me from time to time and to send me some preservatives against the bad news which flie about These would help to entertain good thoughts while we expect the conclusion of the Treatie and make my Neighbours know that a man cannot be ill inform'd that maintains intelligence with you and make them believe that I am indeed what I professe my self to be which is Sir Your c. Balzac 17. Octob. 1616. To my Lord the Earl of Excester LET. V. MY Lord having not enjoyed my health or as least having had no leisure at all since the time that your Letter was delivered me I could not any sooner render you thanks for the testimonies of your esteem and affection which you vouchsafed me therein I will not any way seem to suspect or doubt of a news that makes for me and I doe readily believe that my works that were sent you from the Queen your Mistresse have been your welcome home among your friends But herein I doe acknowledge their good fortune far beyond my deserts and the Influences that descend from the Court beyond all the favors they can receive from a Countrie Village Those hands so great and powerful that gave you this small Present do ennoble whatsoever they touch and are able to effect rarer transmutations than those which Alchymy boasts of with their mark a trivial Fable may passe for Authentick History and the Nether-Britton should surpasse the native Frenchman I have therefore my Lord no thought of deserving that Elogie which I owe to so illustrious a circumstance nor do I mean to glorie in the travails which my Book as you inform me hath made beyond the Rhine Your name being one of its principal Ornaments is that to which I must owe my frame in those Climates and it was upon your recommendation and credit that all the Courts in the North and some of their Schools too have entertain'd my Books I do here solemnlie promise you never to abuse this favor at leastwise never to write anie thing of your Iland that might give anie distast in the reading and that will not testifie particularlie of you that I am most intirelie My Lord Your c. Balzac Sept. 20. 1636. To my Lord the Duke de la Valette Governor and Lieutenant General for the King in Guyen LET. VI. My Lord I Do not mean to tempt your valor it were precipitate rashness to dare it yet I shall make bold to tell you that you have no lesse Art and dexteritie in conquering than in winning men and that in you that which intreats and perswades hath no lesse efficacie than that which commands and enforceth It doth nothing avail me to shun the world the better to enjoy my self in the desart Three words from your mouth make me lose all the freedom I enjoy there and I see my self surprized in that Sanctuary in which I thought to save my self I must confess my Lord that there is no such absolute independence over which you cannot claim some power that there is none so discontented and averse that you cannot allure or so wild and disorderlie that you cannot tame Since you have done me the honor as to write that you have sent me your heart I should betray verie tittle skill or judgement in rare and excellent things if I were not ravisht with such a present and if I did not esteem it above all that ambition can desire or Fortune bestowe It may be the hearts of Giants were more vast and lesse limited by reason but the hearts of the Heroes were not more noble or of any other elevation then yours is of and be that speaks of this speaks of a place hallowed and purged from all the vices of this age and where all the ancient Virtues have taken Sanctuary Loe here my Lord what gift you have sent after which I have nothing to wish for in this world which I have abandoned since this is the most pure and refin'd part of it in which goodness cohabits with power and greatness combines with love To which I must of necessitie stoop and yield and my heart were more vile than yours is generous if I were not My Lord Your c. Balzac Jan. 10. 1637. To Monsieur Drovet Doctor of Physick LET. VII SIR YOur sorrow is too accurate and studied to be true and an afflicted person that writes such brave things hath no great need of anie thing of mine to solace him I will therefore forbear a taske which I conceive to be so needless and will be contented to tell you that I know how to discover counterfet sorrows No man could act a Desperato better than you Panigarola made not such exclamations when he preacht that there will be signes in the Sun and in the Moon And it is a pleasure to see you write of the end of the world of the falling of the Starres and the final ruine of Nature and all this upon occasion of my Niâ—câ— laboring of a feaver This is to give Virgil the lie that calles your profession a dumb Science For indeed to finde so manie Ornaments and Tropes upon such a vulgar Theme could not be without having a Treasurie of words without teaching this Mute Rhetorick Yet me thinks you should husband manage this treasure more thriftilie have more care than you had of the modestie of a poor Maid Are you not afraid to make her fall into vain-glorie and marre all the pains of that good Father that guides her conscience if I did not furnish her with counter-poison you would infect her minde and cast her into a worse maladie
from Gods hands who loveth silence and who is found in solitary retirements what Phylosophy affoordeth not nor is to be practised among the throng of people I would enlarge my self upon other examples to shew you how my Village hath at all times been frequented by Heroical Hermits and how the steps of Princes and great Siegniours art as yet newly trodden in my ordinary paths But the more to envite you to come hither I suppose it sufficient to say that Virgil and my self do here attend you if therefore you be accompanied in this Voyage with your Muses and other Manuscripts we shall not need to intertain the time with Court news nor with the Germain troubles Let me not live if ever I saw any thing comparable to your Spiritual Meditations and if the least part of the work you shewed me be not of more worth than all Frankford Mart and all those great Books which come to us from the North bringing cold weather and Frosts along with them I assure you the President of THOU who was as worthy a Judge of Latine Eloquence as of the life and Fortunes of men and who had left an exact History behinde him had he pleased to retract some things made no small esteem of these my Countrey-men But I cannot as yet conceive what caused him to affect certain wits so contrary to his own and who never were acquainted nor did so much as dream of that Roman purity you pursue with so great scrupulosity and exact diligence You will let these men see I assure my self yea and those wise Transalpines themselves likewise who think all such to be Scythians who are not Italians even in what fashion they spake in Augustus his age yea and in a time more clear from the corruption of good customs In a word besides the propriety of terms and chastity of stile which lendeth a luster to your elaborate writings your conceits are so sublime and so full of courage that it is very probable the ancient Republick of Rome was adorned with the like at what time it was victorious over the world and when the Senate conceived insemblable terms the Commandments they prescribed to greatest Princes and the answers it addressed to all Nations on earth I will speak further when you appear where I expect you and where instead of Flowers Fruits and Shades which I prepare for you I hope to receive from you all the riches of Art and Nature In the interim to use my Lord the Cardinal d'Ossats term I bid you good night and let you know that if you seek excuses not to come I am no longer Your most humble and faithfull servant BALZAC The 26. September 1622. To Mounsieur de bois Robert from BALZAC LETTER XVI SIR I Was upon the point not to have written any more unto you and to have contented my self in sending you single commendations since I see my Letters procure you Enemies and for that you are in dayly contestation for defending them if therefore you desire continuance of our conference in this kinde live hence-forward reposedly and reconcile your self to choice wits from whom I should be sorry you should separate your self for my sake it is far better to conceal a small truth than to disturb a general peace and I should hold my Eloquence as pernicious as the perfections of Helena should it prove any cause of your quarrels Since there have been found men who have carped at the Worlds composure and spied spots in the Sun it is very likely inferiour things cannot be more perfect and that there is nothing so absolutely approved against which there hath not been some thing disputed and certain weak reasons alleadged I confess I write as men build Temples and Pallaces and that I sometimes fetch my Materials a far off as we are to make a voyage of two thousand Leagues to transport the Treasures of America into Spain But if Pearls be not precious because they grow not in the sands of Seine or if in what I do some condemn me it sufficeth that I am not of their minde if the worst come I appeal to my Lord the Cardinal of Richelieu of whose approbation I esteem more than of popular favour or applause of Theaters It is long since I understood from him that I exceeded others not excepting even those who strive to aspire to a kinde of Tyranny and to usurp a more absolute Authority over wits than is either lawfull or reasonable This being so I should much wrong that great person on whose books God hath placed the Truth we seek after as well as the Eloquence all of us imagine we have attained should I digress from his opinion to regard what four or five of those composers of Romand of the Rose say who have no other Language but Legends if I would content my self with my Infant conceptions or determined to write as an honest Woman should speak they would happily finde their own facility in my Works though truely if I take any pains therein I assure my self they will sooner guess at then gain my conceptions But truely he who purposeth to himself the Idea of perfection and who labours for Eternity ought not to let any thing escape his Pen till after long and serious consultation with himself Yet will I tell you and all the World may easily understand that my writings smell more of Musk and Amber than of Oyl or sweat whereas out of that great labouriousness they so much frame to themselves there will infallibly arise obscurity which none but the Blinde can tax me with But as for those fellows it is always night with them and they are rather to accuse their Mothers of their defects and not colours or the light I indeavour in what I may to make all my conceptions popular and to be intelligible among Women and Children even when I speak of things beyond their Capacity but if your friends suppose certain of my conceits to be over-far fetcht let them throughly observe whether they transcend my subject or their conceptions or whither I go astray or they loose sight of me There are divers things above reason which yet are not contrary thereto An Heroical virtue making use of excesses and heighth of passions goeth as far beyond vulgar Virtue as it surmounteth Vice we are not therefore to shut up all Wits within the same limits nor presently to censure that as Exorbitant which is onely extraordinary Otherwise we should resemble that poor Norvegian who the first time he saw Roses durst not touch them for fear of burning his fingers and was much amazed to see as he supposed Trees to bear fire Surely as Novelty is not of force to make Monsters well featured so ought it not to hinder our affections to excellent things though unknown unto us If for the understanding my language it were necessary to learn two or that Anxietie Decrepitude and the Irritaments of Despair were familiar phrases with me if I made use of
thereof assure your self that it is in this Countrey where felicity doth attend you and that being once in this place you will esteem all those as banished persons whom you have left behinde you in France BALZAC The 25. of December 1621. To the Count of Schomberg from BALZAC LETTER XXIV My LORD I Send you the papers you have formerly seen and whereto you have attributed so much as I should be ashamed to assent thereto were it not that I hold it less presumption to believe I have merited the same then to imagine I can have a flatterer of your fashion I had need be elevated to a more soveraign fortune then the state of Kings to expect complacency from a man who could never be procured to approve evil and of whose disfavour one can hardly finde other cause then the onely truth he hath declared Howsoever it be since you are now in Lymosin and take not any journey in those parts without having a thousand old debates to reconcile and as many new ones to prevent it is very propable that after so painfull an imployment and so great disquiet of minde my book will fall into your hands just at such time as you cannot finde any thing more tedious unto you then what you come from treating of For should I presume that in your pleasant walks of Duretal where all your minutes are pleasing and all your hours precious there could be any time spare for me and my works it were as much as to be ignorant of the diversions there attending you or not to be acquainted with the great affluence of noble company daily repairing thither to visite you But were it so that you had none with you save onely the memory of your fore-passed actions your solitariness hath no need of books to make it more pleasing nay if all this were not yet if you desire to seek contentment out of your self you cannot finde any more pleasing then in the presence of your Children and particularly of that Divine daughter of yours from whom I daily learn some miracle It is therefore in her absence and in solitary walks where I have the ambition to finde entertainment and to receive gracious acceptance In all other places without presuming either to pass for Oratour or Poet it shall highly suffice me in being honoured with the assurance that I am My Lord Your most humble servant BALZAC The 25. of May 1624. A Letter from the Count of Schomberg to Mounsieur de BALZAC LETTER XXV SIR THe stile you travail in causeth the Pens of all such who attempt an answer to fall out of their hands and Eloquence may so properly be called yours that it is no marvel though others have but a small share therein I would therefore have you know that if I understand any thing in Letters yours do obscure whatsoever hath hitherto been esteemed of in our Language and that without flattering you there can be no diversion so pleasing which ought not to give place to the perusing of those Lines you sent me This occupation is worthy the Cabinets of Kings and of the richest Eare curtins of France and not as you would have it of my solitarie retirements in Lymosin from whence I am ready to be gone with resolution never to retire from the affection I have promised you whence you shall at all times draw effectual proofs whensoever you please to imploy them for your service Sir Your most affectionate servant SCHOMBERG The 1. of June 1624. The Letters of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC The fourth Book To my Lord Mashall of Schomberg LETTER I. My Lord I Should be insensible of publick good and an enemy to France had I not as I ought a true taste of the good news your Foot-man brought me I will not mention the Obligations I owe you being no small ones if that be not a slight matter to be esteemed by you But since I make profession to honour virtue even in the person of one departed or an enemy and at all times to side with the right were there onely my self and Justice for it you may please to believe I complain in your behalf for the miseries of our times and that I am most joyfull to see you at this present where all the World mist you Certainly your retirement from Court hath been one of the fairest pieces of your life during which you have made it apparent you are the same in both fortunes since I can witness that no one word then passed from you unsuitable to your resolution Yet this rare virtue being there hidden in one of the remote corners of the World having but a very small circuit to dilate it self must necessarily be contented with the satisfaction of your conscience and slender testimonies In the mean time the authority of your enemies hath been obnoxious to all honest eyes There was no means to conceal from strangers the States infirmities or what reason to affoard them for the disgrace of so irreproachable a Minister nor was there any who grieved not that by your absence the King lost so many hours and services For my part my Lord reflecting upon you in that estate it seemed to me I saw Phidias or some other of those ancient Artists their hands bound and their costly materials as Marble Gold or Ivory taken from them But now that better time succeed each thing being again reduced to its place it is time to rejoyce with all good French men that you shall no more want matter and that the King hath at length found how unusefull your absence hath been to his affairs Truely be it that he content himself to govern his people wisely or that the afflictions of his poor Neighbours set near his heart and that his Justice extend further then his Jurisdiction No man doubts whatsoever he doth but you shall be one of the principal instruments of his designs and that as well Peace as War have equal use of your conduct All men have well perceived you have not contributed any thing to the administration of the Kings treasure save onely your pure spirit to wit that part of the Soul separated from the terrestrial part being free from passions which reasoneth without either loving or desiring and that you have managed the Riches of the State with as great fidelity as one ought to govern another mans goods with as much care as you conserve your own and with as great scruple as we ought to touch sacred things But in truth it is no great glory for that man to have been faithfull to his Master who knows not how to deceive any And did I believe you were onely able to abstain from ill I would barely commend in you the Commencements of virtue I therefore pass further and am assured that neither the fear of death which you have slighted in all shapes and under the most dreadfull aspects it could possibly appear nor complacency which often overpasseth the best Counsels to transport it self to
the most pleasing ones nor any private interest which makes us rather regard our selves then the Publick shall at all hinder you either from purposing undertaking or executing eminent matters Posterity which will peradventure judge of our age upon the report I shall make will see more elsewhere then I can here relate and I shall rest sufficiently satisfied if you please to do me the honour as to remember that mine affection is no Childe of your prosperity and how in two contrary seasons I have been equally My Lord Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC To the Bishop of Angoulesme LETTER II. SIR I Will no longer complain of my poverty since you have sent me â—easures of Roses Ambergreece and Suger it being of such pleasing commodities I pretend to be Rich leaving necessary wealth to the Vulgar Two Elements have joyntly contributed the best they have to furnish matter for your Liberality and smally valuing either Gold or Pearls as I do I could wish for nothing either from Sea or Land I finde not among your presents You have bestowed with a full hand what is offered upon Altars but sparingly which men reckon by grains and whereof none the King of Tunnis excepted is so prodigal as your self In a word this profusion of forraign odours you have cast into your Comfitures obligeth me to speak as I do and to tell you if you feed all your flock as this rate there will not be any one in all your Diocess who will not cost you more by the day then the Elephant doth his Master I see therefore Sir I am the dearest Childe you have under your conduct nor should I receive so delicate and precious nourishment from you did not your affection force you to believe my life to be more worth then ordinary and consequently that it deserveth more carefully to be preserved then ony other But to return you complements for such excellent things were as much as to under value their worth should I strive to acquit my self that way our Language is too poor and unable to lend me wherewith to pay you And since in Homers judgement the words of the most eloquent among the Grecians were esteemed little better then Honey the food of Shepheards there is small probability mine should be comparable to Ambergreece and Suger the delicacies of Princes I therefore fear I shall be forced to be all my life time indebted unto you for the favours I have received from you and that it must be onely in my heart where I can be as liberal as your self But I well know you are so generous as to content your self with this secret acknowledgement and that in me you affect my naked good-meaning which must supply the place of those other more fine and subtile virtues I cannot learn at Court Truely as I expect no commendations being the second perfumes you present me in that I hold my self unworthy thereof so do I suppose you cannot refuse me your affection since it is a kinde of deserving it to be passionately as I am Sir Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 25. of Decemb 1626. To Father Garrasso LETTER III. Father YOu have found the place whereat I confess I am the most easily surprized and to oblige me to yield your Courtesie hath left nothing for your courage to perform since therefore you imploy all your Muses to require my friendship and have already payed of your own I can no longer keep it to my self but as another mans goods But if this were not so my resentments are not of such value with me as not often to bestow them upon more slender considerations then those were which produced them nor do my passions so transport me but that I will at all times remain in the power of Religion and Philosophy Hitherto I can defend a just cause but in farther resisting what you desire I should force right it self to be in the wrong were it on my side And out of bare enmity which in some Common wealths hath been tollerated I should even pass to Tyrannie a thing odious to all men Since our lives are momentary it is no reason our passions should be immortal or that men should glut themselves with revenge whereof God hath as well forbidden the use as the excess It is a thing he hath soly reserved to himself and since none but he truely knoweth how to use this part of Justice he would no more put it into the hands of men then he doth Thunder and Tempests Let us therefore stop in our first motions for it is already too much to have begun Let us not term the hardness of our hearts Courage and if you have prevented me in the overture of the peace we treat of repent not your self since you have thereby bereaved me of all the honour there had been in acquiring it Heretofore Magnanimity and Humility might have been esteemed two contrary things but since the Maxims of Morality have been changed by the principles of Divinity and that Pagan vices are become Christian virtues there are even weak actions a man of courage ought to practice nor is true glorie any longer due to those who have triumphed over innocents but to those Martyrs they have made and to such persons whom they have oppressed But to pass from general considerations to what is particular between you and me it is no way likely a religious man would disturb the tranquility of his thoughts or quit his conversation with God and Angels to intermeddle with wicked Mortals and to make himself a party in our disorders I should likewise have less reason to seek for an enemy out of the World wherein there are so many adversaries to dislike and so many Rebels to subdue Now Father whatsoever opinion you have had and notwithstanding any thing I have said in the beginning of this Letter I never intended to commence any real War against you I have not at all felt the emotion I shewed all my choller being but artificial when at any time certain of my speeches seemed disadvantagious unto you so as I freely consent that what was written to Hydasp shall pass as a flash of my brain and not as any testimonie of my belief onely to let men know I had a desire to shew how able I was to contest with truth if I had no minde to side with it This science having been sufficiently daring to undertake to perswade that a Quartan Ague was better then health Rhetorick I say which hath invented praises for Busiris made Apologies for Nero and obliged all the people of Rome to doubt whether Justice were a good or a bad thing may yet in these dayes exercise it self upon subjects wholy separated from common opinions and by gracefull fictions rather excite admiration in mens spirits then exact any credence It raiseth Fantomes with purpose to deface them It hath paintings and disguisements to alter the purity of all worldly things It changeth sides
when most of his followers were in danger to become his Martyrs It should seem perchance I stand in need of the memory of what is past and that I make my precedent good Offices appear to the end to cause them to over-way my present offences No my Lord I intend not to make use of what now is not for the justification of mine actions nor am I ignorant that never any woman was so vicious who hath not heretofore been a Virgin nor criminal who cannot prescribe some time preceding his bad life I speak of to day as well as of heretofore and do protest unto you with all the Oaths able to make truth appear holy and inviolably that I never had one single temptation against my duty and that my fidelity is spotless as if you so pleased it might be without suspicion I must confess that you having declared your self no way desirous to trench upon my liberty and that you left it wholy to my self I have sometimes made use thereof imagining that without wronging that first resolution I vowed to your service it might be lawfull for me to have second affections I will not expect the rack to force me to confess it I have loved a man whom the misfortunes of Court and the divers accidents happening in worldly affairs have separated from some friends of yours and have cast him into other interests then theirs But besides that he was extracted from a Father who did not more desire his own good then your contentment and since I am most assured how amidst all the fore-passed broils he at all times conserved his inclinations for you I must needs tell you I was in such sort obliged unto him as had he declared War against my King and against my Countrey I could not have chosen any side which had not been unjust I therefore at this day bewail him with warm tears and if ever I take comfort in the loss I have sustained I shall esteem my self the most unworthy and ingratefull person living Your self my Lord knowing as you do how much I owe unto his amity would sooner adjudge me to die with him then blame my resentments I assure my self all my actions are disguised unto you on purpose to cause you to dislike them Howsoever I will not dispair but the time to come will right me for what is past You will one day see the wrong you offer to my innocency in admitting false witnesses in prejudice thereof and what you now term my fault you will then be pleased to say it was my unhappy fate or my hard fortune in the interim I am resolved to continue in well doing and though there were no other but my conscience to acknowledge my fidelitie yet inviolably to remain Your most humble and most faithfull servant BALZAC The 30. of Decemb 1626. To the Lord Bishop of Nantes LETTER IV. SIR AS the bearer hereof can testifie the obligations I owe you so may he bear witness of my perpetual resentments and will tell you that were I born your Son or subject you could have but the same power over me you now possess nay I am perswaded I yet owe somewhat more to your virtue then to the right of Nations or nature If power hath made Princes and chance Parents reason well deserves a further kinde of obedience It was that which overcame me upon the first conference I had with you causing me to prostrate all my presumption at your feet after having rightly presented to my thoughts how impossible it is to esteem my self and know you I am sure this language is no way pleasing to you and that you will look awry at my Letter but do what you please I am more a friend to truth then to your humour and my spirits are so replenished with what I have seen and heard as I can no longer conceal my thoughts I must tell you Sir you are the greatest Tyrant this day living your authoritie becomes awfull to all Souls and when you speak there is no further means to retain private opinions if they be not conformable to yours I speak this seriously and with my best sence you have often reduced me to such extreamities that coming from you without knowing what to answer you I have been ready to exclaim and say in the rapture wherein I was Restore me my opinion which you have violently forced from me and take not from me the liberty of conscience the King hath given me But truely it is no small pleasure to be constrained to be happy and to fall into his hands who useth no violence but to their avail who suffer For my part I have at all times departed your presence fully perswaded in what I ought to believe I never gave you a visite which cured me not of some passion I never came into your chamber so honest a man as I went forth How often with one short speech have you elevated me above my self and bereaved me of whatsoever was fleshly and prophane in me How often hearing you discourse of the World to come and of true felicity have I longed after it and would willingly have purchased it at the price of my life How often could I have followed you would you have conducted me to a higher pitch of perfection then all ancient Philosophers ever attained So it is that you onely have bestowed the love of invisible things upon me causing me to distaste my first and most violent affections I should still have been buried in flesh had not you drawn me forth nor had my spirit been other then a part of my body had not you taken the pains to unloose it from sensual objects and to sever the eternal from the perishable part You caused me at the first encounter to become suspicious to the wicked and to favour the better side before I was of it you have made those remedies pleasing which all others affrighted me with and in the midst of vice you have constrained me to confess virtue to be the most beautifull thing on earth Think not therefore that either the pomp of the Roman Court or the glitter of that of France can dazel those eyes of my Soul whereto you have shewed so many excellent things It is the beams and lightning of those eminent Virtues you have discovered unto me which cast so forceable reflections upon the eyes of my Soul and which cause me though I formerly resolved to slight all things yet at least now to admire something But yet Sir assure your self it is not the World I admire for I rather reflect upon it as on that which hath deceived me these eight and twenty years I have been in it and wherein I scarce ever saw any thing but how to do evil and counterfeit to be good In all places on earth whether my curiosity hath transporteth me beyond Seas or on the other side the Alpes in free States or in Kingdoms of Conquest I have observed among men onely a fare of
in stead of repelling them with force and my patience hath been such that many have called it want of courage If this be so you will grant me Sir that you trouble your self about that which cannot be that another mans praises should be insupportable to me when I have not been sensible of my own Calumnies I am not like to be in haste to hinder by my violence the making of friendship who have by my remisseness as it were consented to my own hatred There is no colour to think that I should complain of words seigned and such as declaimers use in sport who have not so much as spoken a word of the most cruel action that ever the most premeditated malice could bring forth Let our friend if he please make an Epitaph or a deifying of let him imploy all his Morter and all his Art to build him either a Sepulcher or a Temple and to speak after the manner of let him erect him a shrine and place him amongst his houshold saints I say nothing against all this nor condemne his proceeding whether it be that he honour the memory and merit of the dead or that he stand in awe of the credit and faction of his heirs I easily bear with these small spots in my friends and exact no more of them than they can well spare I know that Greek and Latine make not men valiant nor are things that descended to the bottom of the Soul they scarce reach to the uttermost superficies they stay commonly in the memory and in the imagination and polish the tongue without fortifying the heart I should therefore desire too much if I should desire at all that these goodly knowledges should get a new virtue for my sake and should work a greater effect in the spirit of than they wrought in the Poet Lucan whom fear constrained to accuse his Mother and to praise a Tyrant If it stay but upon me that this dear Childe should see the light after so many sower looks and so many throws I am ready my self to serve for a Midwife I am content it shall be published to day and to morrow be translated into all languages that the Author may not lose a day in his glory and that his glory be not bounded within River or Mountain Never fear that I will impair his ill nights or add the care of one process to his ordinary watchings if he have no other unquietness but what he is like to have from me he may be sure to enjoy a perpetual calm and a perfect tranquility if he be not awaked but by the noise you think I will make him he may sleep as long as Epimenides who going to bed a young man was fifty years elder when he rose Besides I have too much care of my own quiet to go about to trouble his and I love his contentmens too well not to procure it being to cost me nothing but the dissembling his weakness And this I entreat you Sir to assure him from me But knowing you to be wise and virtuous in the degree you are I doubt not but of your own head you will tell him that it becomes not a man of his gravity to countenance such petty things and in a point of Schollarship to use as much formality and ceremony as if it were the Negotiation of an Ambassador but much more that it is a base quality to juggle with his friends and after having said a truth which was not for all mens taste to make a Comment upon it of a Sophister I have read Tacitus and the books of and therefore should know the stile of Tyberius and the Art of Equivocation but I should be loath to seem ingenious to the prejudice of mine honour and to make use of poyson though I had one so subtil that would kill without leaving any mark to be seen I have loved man in affliction and have made use of men in misery Lightning hath not driven me from places which it hath made frightfull I have given testimony of my affection not onely where it could not be acknowledged but where it was in danger to be punished I am not now so dealt withall my self and yet if the justice of my cause were not as it is to be regarded me thinks the violence of my adversaries ought to procure me some favour doth not even honour oblige those that have any feeling of it not to joyn with the multitude which casts it self upon a single man Oppression hath alwayes been a sufficient ground for protection and noble mindes never seek better Title for defending the weake than the need there is of them and to take part with a stranger it is cause enough that many assault him and few assist him and such also I doubt not is your minde I am not less perswaded of the generousness of your minde than of the greatness of your spirit and assure my self you are not the less on my side because I have many persecutors as because also I am firmly Sir Your c. To Mounsieur Huggens Secretary to my Lord the Prince of Orange LETTER VIII SIR I Complain no more of fortune she hath done me at least some courtesie amongst her many injuries and since she suffers that you love me it is a sign she hath some care of amidst her persecutions this good news I have learned by a Letter of yours to M. the Baron of Saint Surin who will bear me witness that after I had read it I desired nothing more for perfecting my joy but that I might be such a one as you make me and be like my picture If this be the coal of Holland with which you make such draughts it surpasseth all the colours that we use here to paint withall and yet the beauty costs you nothing but you shall hardly make me believe it I know Gold and Azure and can easily distinguish it from coal I see Sir the Ambushes you lay for me The facility of your stile covers the force of it but weakens it not and under a shew of carelesness I finde true Art and Ornaments It serves not your turns to do better in the place where you are than we and shutting us out to hold possession of the ancient and solid virtue but you go about to take from us all that is any way passable in corrupt estates I mean the glory of language and not suffer us to have this little toy to comfort our selves withall for the loss of all our truer treasures After fifty years Victories you will now be perswading a parley and will make your selves masters of men by a more sweet and humane way than the former as much in effect as to be that you have sometimes been termed the brothers of the people of Rome and Heirs of the old Catoes who made profession of severity and yet were nor enemies of the graces This is to perfume Iron and Copper and to the liberty and discipline of Sparta to add the
bravery and dainties of Athens M. de Saint Surin hath hereof made us excellent relations and you have sent him back to us with his heart wounded and his minde tainted with that he hath seen he wants not much of being become a bad French-man at least he reteins nothing for his Country but a dutifull and reverent affection his love your Island hath gotten possession of and I am much afraid you will finde more load-stones to draw him to you than we shall finde chains to hold him with us He is full of the objects he hath left behinde him and when I talk to him of our Court and of our confusions he answers with telling me of your government and good order And here you shall pardon me if I change my complement into blame and require to be righted by you for debauching a friend who with one look of his countenance allayes and sweetens all the bitterness of my life The number of my persecutours is in a manner infinite but for how many think you I account so brave a champion Take him from me and you leave me quite disarmed against ill fortune I loose my comfort for adversitie and my example for virtue And finding you the principal Author of this disgrace I know not how I should but hate you and persevere in the resolution I have taken to be most affectionately Sir Your c. To the Baron of Saint Surin LETTER IX Sir I Learn by the Gazette that you have received a wound at Mastrick so it be light I forgive it you but though it be but a scratch I love you too well not to accuse you of too much forwardness They that are poor in reputation ought to press up to the trenches and such fervour is as well beseeming fresh Souldiers as young Fryers but for you you have seen too many wars to be called by the first name and your valour having been shewed in the presence of the Prince and approved by the testimony of the very enemy it seems to me that your part is not so much to bring it forth as a new matter as to keep it up as a known good I would have you make good actions as you use to do but I would have you do it now if it might be had with a body charmed and with inchanted Arms that leaving behinde you all danger you might have before you nothing but glory If God had given us three or four lives we might at any time venture one and sometimes in a bravery let one go being assured we have another in store but to be prodigal in poverty and to be careless of ones head when no art can make him a new this is a point hath no apparence of reason We must not set so light by the beauties of heaven and the Rayes of visible things nor turn our eyes from a spectacle so magnificently erected for us I offend perhaps the ears of your courage with this discourse and you are like to send my counsel away as it came yet take not distastefully an officious injury and think it not strange that I acquaint you with my fears seeing a goddess was not ashamed to attire her Son in Womans habit to preserve him it would grieve me exceedingly to see you come halting home or with but one eye and to bring such untoward favours from the Wars I will not be bound to flatter your grief with that word of a Lacedemonian mother Courage my Son you cannot now take a step that puts you not in minde of your virtue and less with that example in the Histories of Salust he made ostentation of a face remarkable onely for skars and for having but one eye wherein he took a pleasure though it made him deformed and cared not for losing one part of himself which made all the rest the fuller of honour Spare me I beseech you this kinde of consolation which I should give you if you suffer the like losses and be not so hot in seeking after a fair death which can gain you nothing but a fair Epitaph Give me belief onely this once and after this I will leave you to your own belief and commend you to your good Angel You shall have leave to dispose of your time some otherwise than thus but remember that Melons are past and make not stand waiting too long for you Our Rivers never ran more clear nor our Meddows were ever more green I make use Sir of all things both reasonable and insensible to perswade your return In the name of God come and draw me out of the unquietness you have put me in I have something I know not what lies heavy at my heart and nothing will lighten it but your company That which a superstitious man would do for a dream or for some idle presage do you I pray you for a friend who carries you alwayes in his minde and who is more than any in the World Sir Your c. To my Lord the Cardinal de la Valette LETTER X. SIR the Letter you did me the honour to write unto me the thirteenth of the last Moneth came not to my hands till the beginning of this otherwise I had sooner given testimony how dear these last marks of your remembring me are unto me and how much I receive of secret glorie seeing all other is denied me in that I have done any thing which seems not altogether unpleasing to you It is no small matter to entertain eyes that use not to stay upon vulgar Objects and to minister pleasure to a minde which hath nothing in it but lawfull passions and indeed Sir the height of my ambition is bounded there If I had no other payment for all my travail but onely your good opinion of it I should not complain for being ill paid and your goodness hath made me full recompence for all the wrongs I have received The number of my enemies is great I see it well the time doth not favour me I confess it but having your favour Sir what can I fear under so powerfull a protection Seeing those to whom God hath given clearer eyes than to other men and a more soveraign reason as well as a more soveraign dignity have no ill opinion of my opinions what need I care for the censure of the base World and how can I but hope that the truth assisted by a few sages will be alwayes able to withstand a multitude of Sophisters I now send you Sir my answer to such of their Objections that seem worth the refuting and which have but any spark of apparance to dazle the eyes of simple people the rest are so ridiculous that I dare not oppugne them for fear you should think I had devised them my self to make matter for discourse or that I coaped with them about points where I were sure they could do me no hurt And yet why should I dissemble my ill hap Those ridiculous Objections finde abettours uphoulders although I have
and that you would refuse even felicity it self if it were offered you without having something to do You do well to love a burden that graceth you more than it weighs and not to think it a trouble to be in a race which you have entered with as much applause as they can desire that are going out You have been mens joy from the instant you were first seen and your many imployments that have since so happily succeeded have but ratified the good opinion that was had of you being yet unknown There are some men that get more reputation by playing upon advantage but yours is a lawfull acquest and this integrity which hath nothing in it either fierce or fearfull this learning which is neither clownish nor quarrelsom this course which can avoid Precipices without turning out of the right way are none of the qualities with which men use to abuse the World none of the enchantments which you make use of to dazle our eyes And though our eyes were not capable of illusion yet having merited the grace and favour of a Prince the clearest sighted the Heavens ever made and whose gift I value less than his judgement It is not for us any longer to examin your sufficiency seeing he hath chosen you for an instrument of managing his affairs You would not believe the pleasures that Madam Compagnole and my self take in the consideration of this matter and what reflection we receive of all those good successes that accrew unto you I can assure you she forgets you not in her devotions and if God but hear her prayers you need not make any wishes for your self We promised our selves we should see you in our desarts but since your honour calls you otherwere it is reason we rest satisfied with so sweet a necessity and to hear with patience that the publick hath need of your service It is far from me to prefer a short satisfaction of my eyes before the long and dureable joyes I expect from the progress of your reputation and if I should desire that for your coming hither you should put your self the farther off from your ends my desires should be indiscreet and I should not be the man I ought to be Sir my dear Cosin Your c. From Balzac 1. Oct. 1632. To Mounsieur de Pontac Monplesir LETTER XVII SIR MY dear Cosin if the counsel I have given you did not give an interest in the resolution you have taken yet I could not chuse but acknowledge it to be good considering the good success it hath produced It is true that till now I never liked of long deliberations nor of staid lovers but seeing your wisdom hath concluded in favour of your love and that it is no longer an idle contemplation of the person you love I seem to conceive the design you had in drawing out the lines of your love to such a length in which it cannot be said there hath been time lost but that you would taste all the sweetness of hope before you would come to that of possession this is not to be irresolute but subtill and not to make a stop of contentments but to husband them This is not to have an apprehension of being happy but to have a desire to be happy twice so that in this point you are fully justified This circumspection which I accused wrongfully and which is equally removed from Fury and Effeminateness puts the passions into a just and dureable temper and makes the minde capable of its felicity by a serious preparation and I vow unto you that the life you have begun was well worthy you should take some time to study it It is not fit to enter the state of marriage rashly and by the conduct of Fortune all the eyes that prudence hath are not too many to serve for a guide in this business many men fall into a snare whilest they think to finde a treasure and errours are their mortal where repentance is unprofitable but God be thanked you are out of danger and your happiness is in sanctuary There is no Nectar nor Roses now but for you accept from me I pray this one word of a wedding Complement and in the estate you are in what are you not Since a Conquerour that is crowned is but the figure of a lover that injoyes the lover receiving that really which the Conquerour but dreams You offend not the peoples eyes with proud inscriptions nor astonish them with the clamour of your conquest you celebrate your triumphs covertly and draw no mans envy upon you you raign by your self alone and all the pomp which greatness draws after it is not comparable to that which you injoy in secret I am not acquainted with lawfull pleasures and ought not to be with forbidden but I have heard it said that in the first there is a certain peace of spirit and a confident contentment which is not found in the other And as the Honey is less gathered from the flowers then from the dew which falls from the Stars so these chaste pleasures are seasoned from Heaven and receive their perfection from the heavenly grace and not from their own nature I have learned from the ancient Sages that there is not a more ancient nor a more excellent friendship than this that in this sweet society griefs are divided and joyes doubled and that a good wife is a Catholicon or universal remedy for all the evils that happen in life I doubt not but she whom you have chosen is worthy of this name and though I should hold your testimony in suspition yet I have heard it deposed with so great advantage on her part and by so tender and judicious spirits that I am not onely glad in your behalf for the good company you have gotten you but give you thanks also in my own behalf for the good alliance you have brought me I am exceeding impatient till I see her that I may between her hands abjure my wrong opinions and if need be make honourable amends before her for all the blasphemies I have heretofore written against marriage I solemnly by this Letter ingage my self to do it and intreat you to dispose her that she may accept my retractions which proceed from a heart truely penitent and full of passion to testifie to you both that I am Sir My dear Cosin Your c. From Balzac 23. Sept. 1633. To Mounsieur Huggens Counsellour and Secretary to my Lord the Prince of Orange LETTER XVIII SIR YOur Letter hath run great hazards before it arrived here It wandred about seven moneths together and that now at last it is come to my hands I ascribe it to the remorse of a man unknown who being but half wicked contented himself onely with opening it but would not by any means that I should lose it Happy were I if I could as well recover other things I grieve for and that I could say he were but strayed whom I loved with my heart but I
flash which pleaseth instantly as beauty doth and makes things to be lovely before one knows they are good Your words are no way unworthy of your Authour they neither weaken his conceits by stretching them out at length nor scatter the sence by spreading it out in breadth But contrariwise the powerfull spirit which was streightened within the bounds of a concise stile seems to breath at ease in this new liberty and to encrease it self as much as it spreads it self he seems to pass from his fetters into triumph and to go forth of the prisons of Rome where Nero shut him up to enter into a large Kingdom into which you bring him with royal magnificence There are some so curious palats they cannot relish the language of the Son of God and are so impudent as to accuse the holy Scriptures of clownishness and Barbarisme which made Mounsieur who died Archbishop of Benevent that he durst not say his Breviary for fear to mar his good Latin by contagion of the bad and least he should take some tincture of impurity that might corrupt his eloquence I will not speak at this time what I conceive of his scruple onely I say that if in the vulgar Translation there be Barbarism yet you have made it civil and if our good Malherb should come again into the World he would finde nothing in your Paraphrase that were not according to the strictness of his rules and the usage of the Court whereof he spake so often Some other time we will confer about the Preface and the Letters I received which I have in a manner all by heart but especially I have culled out these dear words to print in my memory and to comfort my spirits A little patience will crown you all their throws seem like those of sick men a little before they die in which I think there is neither malice nor force if you can but dispise them Prefer the better side before the greater and the Closet before the Theater Honest persons are for you and I make account you care not much for pleasing others The people have often times left Terence for dancers upon the Rope and banished Philosophers to gratifie Jesters I have nothing to add to this and will take heed how I sow Purple with pack-thâ—ead I content my self Sir at this time to assure you that I passionately am Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of May 1632. To Mounsieur de Thibaudiere LETTER XXIII SIR I Will not raise to you the price of my tears though I have shed them for you eight dayes together I content my self to tell you that I am now comforted since the news of your death it changed into tidings of your hurt and that I am made assured you may be quitted of it for a little pain and a little patience I know well that virtue is more happily imployed in well using honest pleasures than in patient bearing troublesom crosses and that without an absolute distemper in the taste one can never finde any sweetness in pain yet you shall confess unto me that there is a kinde of contentment in being lamented and though the joyes of the minde be not so sensible as those of the body yet they are more delicate and more subtill at least you have come to know of what worth you are by the fear which all honest men were in to lose you and that in a time when half the World is a burthen to the other and every one reserves his lamentation for his own miseries yet all in general have mourned for you in such sort Sir that you have had the pleasure to hear your own Funeral Oration and to enjoy the continuance of a happy life after receiving the honours done to worthy men after death If the War of Italy continue till Winter I will come and learn from your own mouth all the particulars of your adventures and I shall then know if your Philosophy have not been moved and waxed pale at the sight of the Probe and of the Rasour In the mean time do me honour to be mindefull of him who exceedingly honours you and to keep for me that part in your affection which you have promised me since I truely am Sir Your c. At Balzac 29. of July 1630. To Mounsieur Gyrard Secretary to my Lord the Duke de Espernon LETTER XXIV SIR I Had heard that before which you sent me word of by your footman and had rejoyced already for the new Dignity of Mounsieur the President Segnior It seems you think he is made Lord Keeper of the Scales for none but for you and that no Feast for the joy of it should be kept any where but at Cadillac Within these four dayes you shall see it kept all the Countrey over it is a favour the King hath done the whole Realm It is not so much for the purity of the air and for the fruitfulness of the earth that we ought to call it a happy year as for the election of worthy Magistrates I therefore take a joy in this news as I am a subject of the Kings and this is the first Right I claim in it but beyond this I have a second Right of rejoycing in that I am interessed in the advancement of a modesty which I know and make account to be made happy by the prosperity of him of whose honesty I am assured I put not forth this last word at adventure I am ready to make it good against whosoever shall think it rash and I know he hath preservatives against all the poysons of the Court and a judgement that cannot be corrupted with all the bribes of Fortune There is nothing of so high a price for which he would be willing to leave his virtue if he had lived in Neroes time he had been a constant Martyr but living now under a just Prince he will prove a profitable Officer To preserve a life which is to continue but a few dayes he would not obscure that life which ought to last in the memory of many ages and the least spot upon his honour would be more insupportable to him than the effusion of all his bloud He knows that in the administration of Justice being the interpreter of God he cannot work of himself that this Divine Act ought to be a general Suspension from all humane affections and that in the exercise thereof he is no longer at his liberty to shew love or hatred revenge or gentleness He considers that he makes not law but onely declares it that he is a Minister and not a Master of his Authority and that the Soveraignty is in the Law and not in himself This is the reason why in every cause he censures he bethinks himself of his own proper cause which shall one day be censured he so judgeth as if Posterity were to take a review of his judging and as though the present time were but subalternate to the future Thus I have heard him to make
and which most of all startles me in reading his books If he would have it that his watchings and abstinence had dried up his bloud and made him look gastly that to the burnt colour of Africk he added also that of burnt Melancholy and of overflowing choler it may perhaps be granted him yet I will not accuse either the Sun of his Countrey or the temperature of his body but leave every one in his natural estate and so should he have done But to go about to disfigure the most beautifull amongst the Children of men and to eclipse all the beams and lustre of a Divine countenance this is a sullen humour which no patience can bear with no charity can ever pardon You wondered at this strange opinion when I last shewed it unto you and I perceived you suspected I did him wrong now therefore to justifie my credit with you and to let you see I did it not to abuse you I send you here the passages I promised you to look out The first is in his book of Patience where Christ is called Contumeliosus sibi ipsi The second in his book against the Jews where he is said to be Ne aspectu quidem honestus but hear the third which will fright you to hear in his Tract of the flesh of Christ Adeo utâ—nec humanae honestatis corpus fuit â—acentibus apud nos quoque Prophetis de ignobili aspectu ejus ipsae passiones ipsaeque contumeliae loquuntur passiones quidem humanam carnem contumeliae vero inhonestam An ausus esset aliquis ungue summo perstringere corpus novum Sputaminibus contaminare faciem nisi merentem c. Let us see what Mounsieur Rigaut thinks of this and whether he be of these sharp and sour ones that would take from Heaven its stars and from the Earth its flowers Certainly my censurer is of this number for I perceive beauty offends him and he would easily subscribe to Tertullians opinion Yet say no more to him of all this but that which he must needs know and spare sending out a second Process against a man that hath too much of the first and deserves you should take some care of his quiet since he is from the bottom of his heart Sir Your c. From Balzac 10. of March 1633. To My Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XXV SIR IT is told me from all parts that you speak of me as one that is dear unto you and of my ill fortune as of a thing that concerns you If this tenderness proceed from a soft effeminate spirit yet it would not be without merit and oblige me infinitely unto you but now that it comes from a feeling of the purest spirit in the World and the least capable of weakness how much ought I to esteem it and of how great price to value it It wants not much of making me love that grief which procures me so glorious a consolation and I vow unto you that to be pittied of you is a more pleasing thing than to be favoured of the Court. In that Countrey men go upon snares and ruines the best places there are so slippery that few can stand upright and if the miserable pretenders avoid a sudden falling it is by enduring a tedious tossing receiving perpetual affronts and returning perpetual submissions I therefore like much better to hide my self here with your good favour and my own good quiet than to bear a shew there with their frights and sour looks and I bless the windes and count my Shipwrack happy which hath cast me back upon my old home Some that were more sensible than my self would in this case complain of the World but I content my self to forget it I will neither have War nor commerce with the world I have sounded a retreat to all my passions as well those that be troublesom as those that be pleasing and I protest unto you Sir I should read with more delight a relation of one of your walks at Cadillac than the most delightsom passage of all the German History when I think upon you in company with me thinks I see Laelius come to visite Scipio and confirming him in the resolution he hath taken to stand aloof from the tumults and turbulencies of worldly affairs and by a quiet retreat to place his virtue and his glory in a sure hold I am extreamly glad of the honour he will do my Father to pass this way and bring you along with him and you may well think that after this I shall not reckon our Village inferiour to Tempe or to Tyvoly If it were not for the sit of an Ague which is now leaving me but very quickly to return I would go as far as Rochel to meet with this good fortune that I might be at the first opening of those Largesses of the Church which a mouth so holy and eloquent as yours must needs distribute But I am not happy enough to see you and gain a Jubilee both at once It must be your pleasure to be so gracious as to accept of such a complement as I am capable of and to rest assured with my assuring you by this messenger that I am and alwayes will be with all the forces of my Soul Sir Your c. At Balzac 13. May 1633. Another to the same LETTER XXVI SIR THere are some of your bounties I have cause to complain of they are such as cannot be acknowledged and in the least of your actions you are so great that if I take measure of my self by you I cannot appear but very little Your liberality makes me rich but withall it discovers my necessity there being no proportion between you and me how extream soever my possession be it can be no competent price for yours and in the Commerce that is between us I return you but Flints for Diamonds yet I present them to you but informa pauper is not as a Mountibank know I give you nothing though I keep nothing for my self I am well assured Sir that I honour you infinitely but am infinitely unsatisfied to offer you so mean a thing there is no reasonable man that doth not as much since so much is due to you for onely your virtue how much am I to pay you more for your affection Of this last moyity I am altogether Non-solvent my services my bloud are not all worth it and I confess unto you I shall never be able to deserve but these four words of your Letter Non discedo abs te Mi Fili sed avellor nor those Delicias in Christo meas nor this Dulce decus meum with which you graced me at another time Mounsieur Gyrard who knows all my secrets and offers to be an agent for me with you will tell you with a better grace how sensible I am of your so great favours and how proud of so illustrious an adoption as you are pleased to honour me with of which I make far greater reckoning
two such broken Bables it were better he left individuals and fell to judge of species in general and that he would consider other mens follies without partaking of them It were better to discredit vice by scorn then to give it reputation by invectives and to laugh with success then to put himself in Choler without profit Though there be many sorts of disciplining men and correcting their manners yet I for my part am for this sort and finde nothing so excellent as a Medicine that pleases Many men fear more the bitterness of the potion that is given them then the annoyance of the infirmity that offends them we would fain go to health by a way of pleasure and he should be a much abler man that could purge with Raspices then he that should do it with Rhubarbe Our Gentleman by his leave is none of these for commonly he neither instructs nor delights he neither heals nor flatters their passions that read him he hath neither inward treasure nor outward pomp and yet I can tell you as beggarly and wretched as he is he hath been robbed and ransacked in France He could not save himself from our Theeves and you may see some of his spoils which I present you here My fidling Doctor in his visage various Had twice as many hands as had Briareus There was not any morsel in the dish Which he with eyes and fingers did not fish And so forth You see we live in a Countrey where even Beggars and Rogues cannot pass in safety though they have nothing to lose yet they lose for all that and men pull the hairs even from them that are bald There is no condition so ill but is envied of some no pvoerty so great which leaves not place for injuries Cottages are pillaged as well as Pallaces and though covetousness look more after great gains yet it scorns not small But all this while you must remember that my discourse is allegorical and that I speak of Poets and not of Treasurers I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 25. of Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Mareschall Deffiat LETTER XXXV SIR THough I know your life is full of business and that it hath neither festival nor day of rest yet I am so vain as to fancy to my self that I shall be able to suspend this your continual action and that the recreation I send you shall finde some place amidst your affairs you are not one to be wrought upon you know the true value of things and see in Arts those secrets which none but Artists themselves see There is no thinking therefore to deceive you by a shew of good and by false flashes of reputation no way to gain estimation with you but by lawfull wayes and rather by seeking commendation from ones self than testimony from others This is the cause that I come alwayes directly to your self and never seek to get a favour by canvasing and suit which is not to be gotten but by merit If my book be good it will be a sollicitour with you in my behalf and if it make you pass some hours with any contentment you will let me understand it when you have read it Howsoever I hope you will grant that the Pension which the King gives me is no excess that needs reformation and that none will accuse you of ill husbandry if you please to pay me that which is my due There have been heretofore in the place that you are now in certain wilde unlettered persons who yet made show of valuing humane learnings and to respect those graces in others which were wanting in themselves forcing their humour and sweetning their countenances to win the love of learned men and either out of opinion or out of vanity have revered that which you ought to love out of knowledge and for the interest you have in it I say for the interest because besides the virtues of peace having in you the virtues of war it concerns you not to leave your good atchievements to adventure but to cast your eyes upon such as are able to give your merits a testimony that may be lasting I dare not say that I my self am one of that number but thus much I can assure you most truly that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Octob. 1633. To Mounsieur Granier LETTER XXXVI SIR I have received your Letter of the 27. of the last moneth but it makes mention of a former which never came to my hands and it must needs be that fortune hath robbed me of it for fear I should be too happy and should have two pleasures in Sequence This is an accident which I reckon amongst my misfortunes and I cannot sufficiently complain of this Violatour of the Law of Nations who hath been so cruel as to break our Commerce the very first day of our entring into it and to make me poor without making himself rich I am more troubled for this loss than for all that shall be said or written against me Slander hath a goodly catch of it to be at war with me it shall never make me yield it is an evil is it not a glory for a private man to be handled in such manner as Princes their Officers are And is it not a mark of greatness to be hated of those one doth not know I never sought after the applause of which cannot chuse but have corrupt affections in such sort that did they praise me I should ask what fault I had done Though their number were greater than you make it this would be no great novelty to me who know that truth goes seldom in the throng and hath in all times been the Possession but of a few Even at this day for one Christian there are six Mahometans and there was a time when Ingemuit orbis se Arrianum esse miratus est If God suffer men to be mistaken in matters of so great importance where their salvation is at stake why should I expect he should take care to illuminate them in my cause which no way concerns them and to preserve them from an errour which can do them no hurt Whether I be learned or ignorant whether my eloquence be true or false whether my Pearls be Oriental or but of Venice what is all this to the Common-wealth There is no cause the publick should trouble it self about so light a matter and the fortunes of France depend not upon it Let the Kings subjects believe what they list let them enjoy the liberty of conscience which the Kings Edicts allow them A man must be very tender that can be wounded with words and he must be in a very apt disposition to die that lets himself be killed by Philarchus or Scioppius his Pen. For my self I take not matters so to heart nor am sensible in so high a degree The good opinion of honest mindes is to me a soveraign remedy against all the evils of this nature I oppose a little choise number
against a tumultuary multitude and count my self strong enough having you on my side and knowing you to be as vigorous a friend of mine as I am Sir Your c. From Balzac 15. Feb. 1633. To Mounsieur Gaillard LETTER XXXVII SIR I Am unfortunate but I am not faulty I was assured you had written to me but I received not your Letters You have been my defendour and I have been a long time without knowing to whom I was bound for defending me whether it were a man or an Angel that was come to my succour These are honest subtelties and generous supererogations This is to deceive in charity and to his advantage that is deceived This is to bring again that good time wherein Knights unknown came to Freemen that were oppressed without telling their names or so much as lifting up the Beavers of their Helmets You have done in a manner the like you have hidden your self under a borrowed shape thereby to take away from a good action all apparence of vain glory and to let them that are interessed see that you are virtuous without looking for reward For my self I do not think I am bound to follow the intention of this scrupulous virtue If you have a will to shun noise and the voice of the people yet you cannot refuse the acknowledgement of an honest man nor let me from paying what I owe you Because you are modest I must not therefore be ungratefull as I am not by my good will I assure you You possess my heart as absolutely as you have justly purchased it I am yours by all the sorts of right not forgetting that of the wars I will even believe that my enemy hath gotten a full victory to the end I may more justly call you my Redeemer and that you may have the Crown that was due to him had saved a Citizen Mounsieur Borstill whose wisdom and integrity you know will answer for the truth of my words and for my self I shall need no surety when I shall be able to testifie unto you by my actions that there is not in the World a man more than my self Sir Your c. From Balzac 22. April 1630. To Mounsieur the Master Advocate in the Parliament LETTER XXXVIII SIR I Have too great a care of your reputation to seek to have you be found a liar It shall not lie upon me that you be not a man of your word and that your friend is not contented and seeing it is expected to see this present day what I have written of his company It is not fit to put off till to morrow the effect of your promise or that he should languish in the expectation of so small a thing It is true my book is not here and my memory is not now so faithfull that I dare trust it to deliver that I gave it to keep yet I conceive after I have stirred it up in your name which is so dear unto me I shall finde enough to satisfie your desire and receive from it this good office I seem therefore to remember I said that after so many years that the Christian Muses have been in France he is the onely man hath entertained them with honour and hath built a Pallace for this soveraign science to which all other are subject and inferiour He hath drawn her our of an obscure and close mansion where like the poor Socrates she discoursed in prison of the supream felicity to place her a seat worthy of her and to set up a stately and sumptuous race for the exercise of her Children From hence we may apprehend the dignity and merit of our Sorbon for which a man the fullest of business in all the World hath yet had so particular a care amidst the most violent agitation of his thoughts that the design of the house he erects for her hath found place in his breast amidst the Forts and Rampires of Rochell If our predecessors the Gaules next to their Gods gave the second place of honour to their Druides who shewed them but a dim and confused light of the state of our Souls after this life what respect then what reverence can be too great for those venerable Fathers who teach us by a knowledge most infallible what the chief and supream good is who discover to us in certainty the things that are above the Heavens who make us true relation of that admirable Common-wealth of happy Citizens that live without bodies and are immaterial and who deliver to us the wonders of the intellectual World more pertinently and more directly than we relate to blinde men the ornaments of this visible World With them are had the springs of pure Doctrine where with others but onely Brooks and Streams with them are had resolutions of all doubts remedies for all poisons with them time wrongs not antiquity nor doth old age either need painting or fear tainting with them this sixteenth age of the World beholds Christianity preserved and kept in its first lustre Seing the memory of the most part of the Romane Lords is perished together with their Baths their Aqueducts their Races their Amphitheaters whereof the very ruins are themselves ruined and lost I finde that M. the Cardinal understands more than ever they did and goes a straighter way to eternity travelling in a place where his travel can never perish and leaving the care of his name to a company that of necessity shall be immortal and shall speak of his magnificence as long as there shall be speaking of sin and grace of good and evil Angels of the pains and rewards of the life to come I believe I have not spoken any further of it and I think I could not have spoken less it is lawfull for us to set a price upon our own and if an ancient Writer said that more worthy men came forth of Isocrates School than out of the Trojan Horse why may not we say as much of Albertus Magnus and of Saint Thomas Me thinks I hear out Countrey men speak of nothing else but of the Lycaeum and of the Academy and it is now five and twenty years that I have beaten my brains about the Gymnosophists the Brachmanes and the Rabbins but when all is done we should remember that we are Christians and that we have Philosophers that are nearer to us and ought to be dearer to us than all they I am glad occasion hath been offered me to put my opinion hereof in writing and thereupon to let you know I make no mystery of my writings and especially with you to whom I have opened my very heart and whose I am wholly without reservation Sir Most humbly c. At Paris 4. July 1633. LETTERS of MOUNSIEUR de BALZAC LIB II. To my Lord the Earle of EXETER LETTER I. SIR IF you had wholly misliked my book I had wholly defaced it but seeing some parts of it seemed to you not unsound I have thought it sufficient to cut off the corrupt part
that you might be drawn to endure the rest I now therefore send you an Edition of it reformed done expresly for you and which I have taken care to cleanse from the stains that in the two former were distastefull to you It is not my purpose to stand disputing in an Argument where I am willing to be confuted nor to defend that which is condemned by you where the question is to give you satisfaction by my rigour I presently grow insensible of the tenderness of a Father and shall he uncompassionate to my dearest issues as often as your pleasure shall be that they should perish My writings are to me no better than Monsters when they offend your eyes and to seem vile to you is to be vile indeed and therefore in stead of asking their pardon I have been my self the hastner of their punishment There cannot a greater testimony be given of a mans integrity than when the Delinquent concurs in opinion with the judge and is the Executioner where he is the condemner All this have I already done and although in that unhappy passage which gave you distaste I had not so much a meaning to bite as to laugh yet I confess I took my mark amiss for laughing justly Oftentimes one countenance for another changeth the face of the most innocent action of the world and though I failed onely in ill explaining my self yet it was fault enough seeing thereby I gave you cause to doubt of my intention Truly my Lord it was never my meaning so much as to touch the resplendent glory of your Divine Princess I know well enough it was fitter to consider her by the magnanimity of her spirit whereof your whole posterity shall taste the fruits then by the light flower of bodily beauty which not onely falls away by death but runs away at the very first approaches of age I should come out of another World if I were ignorant of the Encomiums she hath in this kinde received by all peoples voices She hath I know been stiled the Star of the North the Goddess of the Sea the true Thetis I have read in a Letter which Henry the great writ unto her in the height of all his troubles and in the violence of the league these words I will Madam be your Captain General Even he that excommunicated her spake of her with honour and he was as you know an understanding Prince and admirable in the Art of ruling He took a pleasure to be discoursing of her with Embassadours resident at his Court and would sometimes say merily that if he had been her husband certainly greatness and authority would have been the issues of so renowned a marriage But though she had not ascended to this high degree of reputation and though he should be devested of all these glorious marks of honour yet there are two considerations less specious indeed in the eyes of the World but more sensible to my spirit that would binde me strongly to reverence her memory One Sir that she hath not scorned our Muses the other that she hath loved your house I was taught by Cambden the knowledge she had in all kindes of learning so far as that she had happily Translated out of Greek into Latine some of Sophocles Tragedies and some of Isocrates Orations Of the same Authour also I have learned the great part your Ancestours bare in her confidence and secrets and your name is so often used in the history of her life that where soever Elizabeth is mentioned there Cicile for the most part is never left out So that she being by good right your domestical Deity and the reverence you bear her your most ancient inclination it is far from me to violate that which you adore or to hate that which you so dearly love seeing I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 25. June 1634. To my Lord the Archbishop of Thoulouse LETTER II. SIR I Have never been sociable since your departure from hence no man can make me speak and I do not yet break my sullen silence but onely to tell you I am the saddest Hermite that ever was Those whom Saint Hierome reports to have been companions of Serpents and Scorpions were never of so untoward an humour as I for I have their vexation and I have not their consolation Nothing pleaseth me in the place where I am you have carried away with you all its worth and goodness and it is not the hardness of the season it is your absence that obscures the beauties of my solitude It was not well done Sir to accustom me to a pleasure which you meant so suddenly to take away from me or to say better to shew me onely my good fortune thereby to make me long after it and then go presently and make others happy with enjoyning it and yet I know well that such petty considerations owe obedience to a greater and that particular interests ought alwayes to give place to publick Mine therefore is not so dear unto me but that I willingly forget it upon such occasions and easily for go my own conceits to enter upon the purpose of Divine providence The peace we hope for shall perhaps by your voyage be advanced and you are now perhaps sent from Heaven to go whither you thought to have gone without commanding If peradventure there be found some particular men that are too much heated your Eusebius and your Theodoret will help to allay their heat and if they be too stifly bent upon severity you will make them abate their rigour by the examples you bring them of the moderation of their fathers I have too good an opinion of so many worthy Prelates as are in your assemblies to imagine they would ever agree to arm Princes either against a penitent or against an honest man offended and would not in the interests of their order content themselves with imploying the Thunderbolts of the Vatican without calling forth also those of the Arsenal Whatsoever may be said in defence of such proceeding it can never in my opinion have so general approbation but that some honest spirits will be scandalized by it This would be to bring excommunication into a poor account to make it serve onely for an Essay and for a preparative of punishment and to make it the first plaster of a light wound which ought to be the last remedy of the extreamest evils Such practise would be far from the custom of the ancient Christianity and of the age of Martyrs and I cannot conceive neither can it be that Christian Pastors should become Butchers of their Flock and that the Church which hitherto hath been in persecution should now it self begin to persecute This Church Sir as your self and the Gentlemen your brethren teach us is not a cruel Stepdame proud and maligning her spouses Children but it is a natural Mother compassioning her own and desirous to adopt even Proselites and strangers You tell us that she runs after the greatest sinners
of your book I have not yet discovered the bottom onely the bark I must tell you seems very precious and I am ravished with the sound and harmony of things I understand not this kinde of writing would have astonished Philosophers whom it could not have perswaded and if Saint Gregory Nazianzen had but shewed such a piece as this to Themistius he could not chuse but have been moved with it and must needs have admired the probability of Christianity though he had not known the secret These are not words that one reads and are painted upon Paper they are felt and received within the heart They live and move and I see in them the sinews of the first Christians and the stile of that Heroick age where one and the same virtue gave life both to discourse and actions gave influence both to the Soul and to the courage made both Doctours and also Martyrs Tell me true Did you not propose to your self a Pattern to follow Have you not been at the Oracle of have you not received some inspiration from our excellent friend Me thinks I meet with his very Character In certain passages I observe some marks and traces of his spirit and when I read them cannot sometimes forbear crying out Sic oculos sic ille manus c. You need not take offence at my suspition so noble a resemblance is an inferiority lifted up extreamly high You are not therein his Ape but his Son There is nothing base not mean in the imitation of so high and perfect an Idea and you know the example of Plato made Philo go cheek by jowl with him All I ask of you at Paris where you so liberally offer me all the good Offices you can do is but this that you will do me the favour to assure that great personage of the great reverence I bear to his merits and what glory I count it to be counted his friend but I require with all the continuation of your own love with which you can honour none that is more truely than I am Sir Your c. July 25. 1630. To Mounsieur Coeffeteau Bishop of Dardany LETTER VIII SIR SInce your departure from Mets there hath nothing hapned worthy of the History I promised you but onely that Caesar as I hear hath presented to the view of brave spirits certain new and very strange recreations by which he hath gained a great opinion of his knowledge As to make the images in a piece of Tapistry to walk and move to make all the faces in a room to seem to be double to make a River rise in a Hall and after streaming away without wetting of any make a company of Fayries appear and dance a round these are his ordinary sports and to use the phrase of our friend but the outside of his secret Philosophy Signiour Mercurio Cardano swears he hath seen all this and more enough to finde you discourse for many meetings and if you appoint him to set hand to his Pen he will be a Philostratus to this Appolonius He hath told me as he hath heard it from him that for certain the Heavens menace France with a notable revolution and that the fall of hath not been so much the end as the change of our miseries For my self who know that God never makes Mountibanks of his Councel and that the virtue of the King is able to correct the malignity of the Stars I laugh at the vanitie of such presages and look for nothing but happiness from the ascendent and fortune of so great a Prince But to change this discourse and this Mountibank for another I have seen the man Sir that is all armed with Thorns that pursues a Proposition to the uttermost bounds of Logick that in most peaceable conversations will put forth nothing nor admit of nothing that is not a Dilemma or a Syllogysme To tell you true what I think of him he would please me more if he had less reason this quarrelsom eloquence affrights me more than it perswades me They which commonly converse with him run in my opinion the same fortune which they do that live near the falls of Nilus there is no overflowing like that of his words a man cannot safely give him audience a Headach for three dayes after is the least hurt he can take that but hears him talk an after-noon The Gentleman that brings you this Letter hath charge given him from all in general to entreat you Sir not to forsake us in so important a matter but to come and free our companies from one of the greatest crosses that hath a long time afflicted civil society You are the onely man in whom this Sophister hath some belief and therefore none but you likely to reduce him to common right and to bring his spirit to submit it self to Custom and Usage You can if you please make it appear unto him that an honest man proposes alwayes his opinions no otherwise than as doubts and never raiseth the sound of his voice to get advantage of them that speak not so loud that nothing is so hatefull as a Chamber Preacher who delivers but his own word and determines without Warrant that it is fit to avoid gestures which are like to threatnings and terms which carry the stile of Edicts I mean that it is not fit to accompany his discourse with too much action nor to affirm any thing too peremptorily Lastly that conversation reflects more upon a popular estate than upon a Monarchy and that every man hath there a right of suffrage and the benefit of liberty You know Sir that for want of due observing these petty rules many have fallen into great inconveniences and you remember him who spilt Queen Margarets own dinner by striking an argument upon her Table with too great violence disturbed and drove Queen Margaret from her dinner Such men commonly spoil the best causes whilest they seek to get the better not because their cause is good but because themselves are the Advocates reason it self seems to be wrong when it is not of their side at least not in its right place nor in its ordinary form They disguise it in so strange a fashion that it cannot be known to any and they take away her authority and force by painting her in the colours and marks of folly These are the particular heads for which we desire you to take the pains of applying your Exorcismes particularly upon I dare say you will have a thousand Benedictons if you can drive out of his body this Devil of dispute and wrangling which hath begun already to torment us We expect you at the end of the week and I remain From Mets 15. August 1618. Sir Your c. To my Lord the Earle of Brassac LETTER IX SIR THat which I have written of you is but a simple relation of that I have seen of you and if there be any ornament in it It must needs be that either your self have put it
of others evils Although the place to which she hath raised you cannot be more eminent nor more sure yet my disgraces may be cause that her prospect is not so fair or pleasant and how setled soever the peace of your minde be yet the Object of a persecuted friend may perhaps offend your eyes Our Mounsieur de Berville I assure my self dislikes not this kinde of wisdom he likes to have that husbanded and dressed which Zeno would have to be rooted out he knows that magnanimity hath its residence between effeminateness and cruelty and that the sweet and humane virtues have place between the Fierce and the Heroick Poets sometimes make the Demy Gods to weep and if an old womans death were cause enough to make Aeneas shed tears the oppression of one innocent cannot be unworthy of your sighes Yet I require from you none of these sad offices your onely countenance is enough to give me comfort I do not live but in the hope I have to see it and to get you to swear once again in presence of the fair Agnes and the rest of your Chamber Divinities that you love me still After that if you will have us make a voyage in your Abby I shall easily condiscend Provided Sir that you promise me safety amongst your Monks and that they be none of those who profess exquisite words and onely talk of Analysis and Caco-zeal If you have any that be of this humour you are an unfortunate Abbot and you may make account to be never without suites First they will ask you a double allowance next they will question your Revenew and if you chance by ill hap to make a Book you are sure to be presently cited before the Inquisition or at least before the Sorbon God keep you Sir from such Friers and send you such as I am who eat but once a day and who will not open my mouth unless it be to praise your good words and to tell you sometimes out of the abundance of my heart that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 26. of Decemb. 1631. To LETTER XLVI SIR I Am able to live no longer if you be resolved to love me no longer and think not that the good you promise me can countervail the loss of that you take from me Keep your estimation and your bounty for those that have nothing in them but Vanity and Avarice I am endowed from Heaven with better and more noble passions I like better to continue in my poverty than in your disgrace and will none of this cold speculative estimation which is but a meer device of reason and a part of the Law of Nations if you give it me single and nothing else with it I must tell you I think my self worthy of something more and that the Letter I write to you was worthy of a sweeter answer than you sent me If therein I said any thing that gave you distaste I call that God to witness by whom you swear I then wandred far from my intention I meant to contain my complaints within so just bounds that you should not finde the least cause to take offence But I see I have been an ill interpreter of my self and my rudeness hath done wrong to my innocency yet any man but your self would I doubt not have born with a friend in passion and not so unkindely have returned choler for sorrow As for my pettish humour it is quickly over and there is not a shorter violence than that of my spirit whereas you have taken five whole weeks to digest your indignation and in the end come to tell me you would do me any good you can upon condition to love me no longer I vow unto you it is a glorious act to do good to all the World and to make even ungratefull men beholding But Sir if you think me one to whom you may give that name you do me exceedingly much more wrong than it is in your power to do me right Neque decorum sapienti unde amico infamiam parat inde sibi gloriam quaerere I am wounded at the very heart with this you have written but since you will not suffer me to complain I must be fain to suffer and say nothing onely I will content my self to make a Declaration contrary to yours and tell you I will never make you beholding to me because I am not happy enough to be able to do it but yet I will love you alwayes and will alwayes perfectly be Sir Your c. At Balzac 1. of March 1633. To Mounsieur Trovillier Physician of the Popes House LETTER XLVII SIR HAving alwayes made especial reckoning of your friendship it is a great satisfaction to me that I receive assurance of it by your Letter I doubt not of your compassionating my disgraces and that the persecution raised against me hath touched you at least with some sence of grief for even meer strangers to me did me these good Offices and though the justice of my cause had not in it self been worthy of respect yet the violence of my adversaries was enough to procure me favour and protectours There is no man of any generous spirit that found not fault with the wits of your Philarchus nor a man of any wisdom that thought him not a Sophister Yet I cannot blame you for loving him seeing I know well you do it not to prejudice me and that your affection corrupts not your judgement You are too intelligent to be deceived with petty subtilties and too strong to be broken with engins of Glass but in truth being as you are a necessary friend to a number of persons of different qualities it cannot be but you must needs have friends of all prices and of all me it and that the unjust as well as the innocent are beholding to you You shall hear by Mounsieur when he comes to Rome the little credit I have with the man you spake to me of to whom I present my service but onely once a year and that I do too least I should forget my name and mistake my person If in any other matter which is absolutely in my own power you will do me the honour to imploy me you shall see my course is not to use excuses and colours but that I truly am Sir Your c. At Paris 4. of April 1631. To Mounsieur Gerard Secretary to my Lord the Duke d'Espernon LETTER XLVIII SIR YOu cannot complain nor be in misery by your self alone I partake of all your good and evil and feel so lively a reflection of them that there needs but one blow to make two wounds And thus I am wounded by the news you write and though your grief he not altogether just yet it is sufficient to make me partake with you that it is yours We weep for one not onely whom we knew not but whom we know to be happy one that in six months staying in the World hath gained that which St. Anthony was afraid
to lose after three score years pennance in the wilderness I wish I could have had the like favour and have died at the time when I was innocent being my self neither valiant nor ambitious I account those wars the best that are the shortest and that though in Paradise there be divers degrees and divers mansions yet there is not any that is not excellent good Conserve onely your goodly maker of Saints and you shall finde some of all sorts I mean of the one and the other Sex Religious and Seculars Gascoignes and French You know well I have appointed you here a Chamber and that you are my debtor of a visite now a whole year if you be a man of your word but I fear me you are not and that as your custom is you will content your self with praising my quiet course of life yet I would have you to flatter at least my spirit though it be but with some light hope of so perfect a contentment promise me you will come and make me happy though you break your promise I shall enjoy at least so much of good and in doing so you shall amuse me though you do not satisfie me I send you all I have of that admirable Incognito of whom there is so much talk and who hath made himself famous now these three years under the name of Petrus Aurelius I cannot for my life finde who he is Mounsieur de Filsac told me lately at Paris that of him that brought the leaves to Printing he could not possibly learn any more than this that he was a man who desires to serve God invisibly And in truth if you knew in what sort he carries his secrecy and with what care and cunning he hides himself you would confess he takes more pains to shun reputation than ambitious men take in running after it For from being a Plagiary to rob others of their glory who refuseth that which is his own and suffers a Phantasme to receive those acclamations and praises which belong to himself This is no man of the common mould even in the judgement of his adversaries and his writings savour not the compositions of this age They are animated with the spirit and vigour of the former times and represent us a Church we never saw Yet it seems in some passages he hath less of Saint Austins sweetness than of Saint Hieroms choler and that he is willinger to do that which justice onely permits him than that which charity counsels him I could wish he had shewed a little more respect to the gray hairs and rare merit of Father Sirmond or rather that he would have dulled the edge of his Arms and dealt with him in a gentler war But there is no means to bridle a provoked valour nor to guide a great force though with a great moderation All Saints are not of one temper it is enough for Religion to cut off vices and to purifie the passions Our moral Divinity acknowledgeth some innocent cholers and it is the beauty of Christs flock that there be Lions amongst the sheep and that as well the sublimest and strongest spirits as the basest and sweetest submit and prostrate themselves to the greatness of Christianity If I had learned nothing in his book but onely to know what respect men owe to a Character reverenced of the Angels I had not lost my time in reading him If Bishops be Princes and if their Dignity be equal or Superiour to Kings shall we make any difficulty to call a Prelate My Lord and esteem him less than a Grand of Spain or than an Earle of England You will tell me more of this at your next meeting and I doubt not setting aside the interest of send it me back when you have read it and forget not the Chapters of honest Bernia I am more than I am able to express At Balzac 15. of October 1634. Sir Your c. To my Lord the Bishop of Nants LETTER XLIX SIR I Am now grown shameless and make no longer any conscience to be troublesom to you But you may thank your own goodness for it which hath from the very first been so ready to me and freely makes me offer of that for which it ought to make be a suitor I send you now four leaves for Ruel and if you please to let three of your own lines bear them company I doubt not but they will have a happy arrival and that the skiff will procure passage for the great vessel But because Fortune her self hath done one half of my discourse and that I have little commerce with any but Latines born I humbly entreat you my Lord to be so good when I am fallen to help me to rise and not suffer me to go astray in a Countrey where you are Prince I know you love your own elections with more than natural tenderness and that you respect me as none of the least of your Creatures This is a cause why to keep me in your favour and to ingage you in my interests I will not tell you to your face that you are the Chrysostome of our Church that you are privy to the most secret intentions of Saint Paul That there is neither Jew nor Gentile that hearing you speak of the greatness and Dignitie of Christianitie doth willinlgy submit himself to follow Christ I will onely say it hath been your will to be my Father and that I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 8. of Jan. 1630. Another to him LETTER L. SIR YOu have a right to all occasions of doing good I see not therefore how I can forbear to offer you one and to the end you may alwayes be meriting of thanks why I should not alwayes be craving new courtesies The bearer of this Letter is my near Kinsman yet our friendship is nearer than our alliance and the knot which Nature made virtue hath tied I humbly entreat your Lordship to let him see you slight not things whereof I make such reckoning and to do that for my sake which you would much willinger do for his own sake if he were known unto you He is a man of mettal and spirit and hath served the King in this Province having also had the honour to be in person before him in very famous actions At this time he is troubled against all right and reason and they that have drawn him from the exercise of his charge to make him walk to Paris have nothing to say but that they do it of purpose to vex him And therefore their manner of fight with him is by flights and retreats and they cast so many bones of difficulty between his Judges and him that it is impossible they should ever come to any issue They are not able to hinder his justification at last but they are able to delay and keep him off a long time You Sir may save him this long journey and may break this Project that Calumny sets on if you please but to
facilitate the overture he will propose unto you obtaining for him of onely one quarter of an hours audience I assure my self he will not be loath to hear him being able to inform him of the state of things in these parts and which he will do faithfully having thereof a special knowledge You shall therefore my Lord infinitely oblige him to take him into your protection and you may be pleased to remember that it is your dear Son that makes this request unto you one whom in the extasie of your Fatherly affection you have sometimes called your glory and the ornament of this age who yet accounts no quality he hath so glorious as that which he will never part with whilest he lives to be My Lord Your c. From Balzac 3. of April 1631. FINIS A SUPPLY TO THE SECOND PART OR THE THIRD PART of the Letters of Mounsieur De BALZAC Written by him in French and Translated into English By Sr. R. B. LONDON Printed by J. G. for Francis Eglesfield at the Marigold in St. Pauls Church-yard 1654. To my LORD the Cardinall De la Valet LETTER I. SIR being not able to bring you this untoward Present my selfe I humbly entreat you to execuse mee that I send it Wherein I bind you not to a second perusall and to read that againe which perhaps you have read already with distast It is true Sir that something is altered in the Copy and well neere one halfe added to the Originall but the spight is that base Wares get no value by store and the water that comes from the same Spring can never be much differing but if in any of the passages I have not altogether come off ill and that I have had some tolerable conceits I acknowledge Sir that I have had it all from the good education I had with you and that it is the fruit of those Instructions which you have done me the honour to impart unto me For no man ever had conceits more pure more pregnant than your selfe no man ever saw things more cleerly than you doe you can tell precisely in what degree of good and evill any thing stands and to find out the truth there needs no more but to follow your Opinion But to speake truly I feare this quality in you no lesse than I esteeme it you have too much knowledge in you for a Discourse that requires simplicity in the Reader Neither am I so unadvised to expose it to the severity of your judgement I submit it rather to the protection of your goodnesse and hope you will not lay open those faults which none but your selfe shall see Humbly entreating you to protect a spirit of your own making and not so much to consider my manner of expressing as the affection with which I am Sir Yours c. To the same as before LETTER II. SIR I am negligent for feare of being troublesome and lest I should be Importunately complementall I forebeare to shew my selfe officiously dutifull But my fault growing from discretion I hope you will not take it ill that I have a care not to trouble you and that you will pardon the intermission of my Letters which hath no other end but the solacing your Eyes I seeke no colours of Art to paint out the affection I owe to your service This were to corrupt the naturall purity Truth is simple and shamefast and when shee cannot shew her selfe by reall effects shee will scorne to do it by verball expressions It is not in my tongue to expresse her otherwise than in such termes as are the engagements of a lye and when I shall have made you most sincere protestations of inviolable fidelity there will come a couzening companion that will out-vy me and endeare himselfe beyond all my oathes I could wish there were some marke to distinguish protestations that are true from those that are feigned for if there were I should have great advantage over many Courtiers more officious and more hot in offering their service than I am and you should acknowledge that the eminency of your vertue not to speake of the eminency of your dignity is of no man more religiously reverenced than of my selfe who am and ever will be Sir Your c. To Monsieur Godea LETTER III. SIR Disguising will not serve your turne you are a remarkable man and whether it be that you call the dissembling of Art Negligence or that you cannot put off those ornaments which are naurall in you I let you know that the excellency of your stile extends even to your familiar speech and that you are able to sweeten it without sawcing it A man may see that come springing and flowing from you which in others is brought a far off and that with engines you gather that which others pull off and though you write nothing loosly yet you write nothing with streyning yet I must tell you they are not the periods of your sentences nor the pawses that winne me so much unto you I am too grosse for such slender and fine threads if you had nothing but rich conceits and choice words this were but the vertue of a Sophister and I should place you in the number of things that may please but not of things that one ought to love I make more reckoning of the honesty of a dumbe man than of the eloquence of a varlet I looke after the good of society and the comfort of life and not after the delight of Theaters and the amusement of company Let us make then a serious profession of our duties and let us give good examples to an evill age let us make the world see that the knowledge we have of vertue is not meerly speculative and let us justifie our Bookes and our Studies that now are charged with the vices and imperfections of their Teachers Philosophy is not made to be playd withall but to be made use of and we must count it an Armour and not a painted Coate They are men of the worst making that now a dayes make the worst doing sots take upon them to be subtle and we have no more any tame Beasts amongst us they are all savage and wilde For my selfe who have seene wickednesse in its Triumph and who have sometime lived in the Countrey of subtlety and craft I assure you I have brought nothing from thence but loathing and before ever I tasted it was cloyed I am exceeding glad to find you of the same diet and doubt not of the Doctrine I Preach seeing I read the same in your owne Letter Believe it Sir there is none more wholesome none more worthy of our Creation Which I am resolved to maintaine even to Death and will no more leave it than the resolution I have made to be without ceasing Sir Your c. To Monsieur Godeau againe LETTER IV. SIR I have known a good while that you are no longer a Druyde and that you lately made your entry into Paris I doubt not but
with magnificence enough and not without bestowing some publike largesse I never knew you go a forraging that you returned not home laden with booty and your Voyages have alwayes enriched your followers I pretend my selfe to have a feeling of this and though farre removed from the place where you act them yet I doe not meane that my absence should cause me to lose my share in the distribution of your good deeds Cease not Sir I entreat you to bind me unto you and to deserve well of our language Fill our Closets with the fruits of your brain and since you can do it make us to gather more sheaves of Corn than the best workmen hitherto have left us eares My devotion stands waiting continually for your Christian workes and I entreat you they may be done in such a volume that we may carry them handsomely with us to Church That which I have seen of them doth so exceedingly please me that I would be a Poet for nothing else but with some indifferent grace to praise them and to say Verses blesse him that makes such blessed Verses If I did not love you well I should envy you the conversation of Monsieur Chaplaine of which in a fortnight I received not one small spark by the ordinary Post Thus I do but taft of that whereof you make full meales yet remember I have as good right in him as your selfe and though I trust you with the keeping him yet I do not quit my part in him To him and you both I am most affectionately Your c. To Monsieur Conrat LETTER V. SIR had undertaken to have answered to every point of your eloquent Letter but when I had spent a whole moneth about it I could not satisfie my selfe with my undertaking That which I had written was not worthy me thought that I should Father it and I began to thinke I should doe you a great courtesie to save you the reading of an ill Oration But seeing of evills the least are the best you shall have cause to be pleased with this complement which will cost you no more but one looke to looke over and never put you to the labour of turning over the leafe I have this onely to say at this time that the report which was spread of my death hath not killed me and that in despight of rumour and mortall Presages I intend to be happy by your meanes and not to forgoe the good fortune presented to me in your person so I call your excellent friendship with which no burden is heavy no calamity dolorous For I know I shall finde in you that ancient generousnesse whereof Monsieur de la Nove and Monsieur de Ferres made profession I account when I discover secrets to you I hide them and shall have no jealousie of my honour when I have put it into your hands In such sort Sir that my soule should be a very hard temper if it did not feele a kind of tickling in so present and great adventages and if I should not most perfectly be as you oblige me to be Your c. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER VI. SIR I was upon the point of sending my footman to you when I saw your footman enter my Lodging who brought me news exceeding joyfull and now I depend no longer upon Fortune since another besides her self can make me happy and am so indeed as much as I would wish and should never know the value of your friendship if I made it not the bounds of my ambition To complaine of forturne and to be your favorite are things that imply a mortall contradiction it is an easie matter to comfort a pension ill paid when a man is in possession of store of treasure and having neither the gift of impudency nor of hypocrisie it is not for me to prosper in an age which esteeme them most that are owners of these qualities It is enough for me that M. the Cardinall doth me the honour to wish me well and condemnes not your judgement of me all other disgraces from whence soever they come I am prepared to beare and take for a favour the contempt that is linked to the profession of vertue But it is too much to say of me that which Seneca said to Cato Catonem saeculum suum parùm intellexit These are transcendencies of Mr. de Nantes and impostures of love He stretcheth all objects to infinity and all his comparisons are beyond proportion The Sunne and the Starres are common things with him and he can find noting in Nature godly enough to serve for a similitude of that he loves It is this deceitfull passion hath made you believe that I am of some great worth and that my barren soile is fruitfull in high conceits But Sir I count all this nothing if this love of yours peswade you not to come and stay a while in it and to be mindfull of your word I have put Monsieur in hope hereof and make my selfe sure since you have made me a solemne promise knowing that Truth is resident upon the mouth of Bishops Dixisti venies Grave immutabile sanctis Pondus adest verbis vocem fata sequuntur The Authour of these Verses shall be your fourth suppliant it is one that hath been of your old acquaintance and was accounted the Virgil of his time I make use of him upon this occasion because perhaps you will make more reckoning of him than of mee who yet am more than any man in the World Sir Your c. Another to my Lord Bishop of Nantes LETTER VII SIR I speake Latine but once a yeare and yet as seldome as it is it comes more upon hazard than out of knowledge and holds lesse of learning than of rapture vouchsafe therefore to take it in good part that in my setled braines I answer you in the vulgar Tongue and tell you that never Eares were more attentive nor more prepared to hearing than those of our family when I read your Letter before them they were not satisfied to have onely a litterall interpretation and to make me their Grammarian but I must declaime upon it and make a Paraphrase as large as a Commentary If you will know the successe I can truly say that all the company was well satisfied but I may tell you all that they were ever ravished with admiration of your bounty specially my Niece who in the greatest vanity that sex is capable of never durst imagine she should ever have the honour to be praysed in Latin and should serve for an Argument of commendation to the greatest Doctor of our age Shee saith this is a second obligation you bind her in to make her a Romane after you have made her your daughter and to give her so noble a Country after giving her so worthy a Father And yet to these two favours I can adde a third which she forgot methinkes Sir shee fattens and grows up with these prayses you give her shee
tyrant shee might perhaps be some amusment to him when he were cloyed with killing of men but withall shee might be sure to be the next object of his crueltie at the next fit of his wicked humour You know the Story of Mariamne our Theaters at this day sound forth nothing so much as the cryes of this poore Princesse he that puts her to death loved her above measure and after her death kneeled downe a thousand times before her image praying her to forgive him Poppea was first the Mistris afterwards the wife and alwayes the Governesse of Nero she had vanquished this Monster and made him tame yet at last he slipt from her and in an instant of his choler gave her a kicke upon the belly which was her death His unkle Caius dealt not so roughly with Caesonia yet in the greatest heat of his fire he made love to her in these termes This fayre bead shall be chopt off as soone as I but speak the word and told her sometimes that he had a great minde to put her on the racke to make her tell him why he loved her so much The meaning Madam of all this is that the tamest of all Tygers is a cruell Beast and that it is a most dangerous thing to be wooed with talons I have seene the Booke you writ to me of and find it not unpleasing particularly where speaking of the makers of Pasquius and of satyricall Poets he sayth that besides the golden age the age of silver of brasse and of iron so famous and so much talkt of in their Fables there is yet behinde to come an age of wood of which the ancient Poets never dreamt and in the miseries and calamities whereof they themselves shall have a greater part than any other If I goe abroad to morrow I hope to have the honour to see you In the meane time that I may observe good manners and not be wanting in formalities I will say I am Madam Your c. At Balzac 16. Aug. 1626. To LETTER XLV MY Lord besides the thankes I owe you for my self I have a speciall charge from Madam de to thanke you from her and to give you a testimonie of your Coachmans skill He is in truth a great man in his profession one might well trust him and sleepe from hence to Paris He glides by the brink of Praecipices and passeth broken bridges with an admirable dexteritie say what you can of his manners otherwise Pardon mee my Lord if I maintaine that they be no vices and that you doe him great wrong to reproach him with them in your Letter He doth that by designe which you thinke he doth by inclination and because he had heard that a man once overthrew the Commonwealth when he was sober he thinkes that to drinke well is no ill qualitie to well governing He takes otherwise no care for going astray seeing he hath a God for his guide and a God that was returned from the Indies before Alexander was come into the world After so long a voyage one may well trust Father Denys with a short walke and he that hath yoked Tygers may well be allowed to guyde horses Your Coach-man my Lord hath studied thus farre and if they who hold in their hands the reynes of the State to use the phrase of had beene as intelligent and dextrous as he they would have run their race with a better fortune and our age should not have seene the fall of the Duke of nor of the Earle of it is written to me from the Court that These are onely Newes I received by the last Post but I send you in their companie the Booke you desired which is as you know the Booke of the wickednesse of the world and the ancient originall of all the moderne subtilities The first Christians endeavoured to suppresse it and called it Mendaciorum Loquacissimum but men at this day make it their Oracle and their Gospell and seeke in it rather for Sejanus and Tigilinus to corrupt their innocency than for Corbulo or Thrasea to instruct them to vertue at our next meeting wee shall talke more hereof The great Personage I have praysed stands in doubt that his Encomium is at an end and presseth me to conclude that I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 4. June 1634. To LETTER XLVI SIR I am sorry to heare of the continuance of your maladie though I hope it be not so great as you make it These are fruits of this unseasonable time and I doubt not but your Fleame which overflowes with the rivers will also with the fall of the rivers returne againe to its naturall bounds I have had my part in this inundation and it would be no small commoditie to me that things should stay in the state they now are in for by this means my house being made an Island I should be lesse troubled than now I am by people of the firme Land But seeing upon the abating of the waters depends the abating of your Rheume I am contented with all my heart they shall abate as above all things desiring your health yet withall I must tell you there is care to be used you must absteine from all moyst meates forbeare the good cheare of Paris and follow the advise of an ancient sage who counselled a man troubled with your disease to change the rayne into drowth You see how bold I am to send you my praescriptions I entreat you to follow them but not to imitate me for in this matter of Medicines I confesse my selfe a Pharisee I commend a Julippe to others but I drinke my selfe the sweetest Wines But to speake of something else I cannot imagine why Monsieur de should keepe me languishing so long and haveing made me stand waiting three moneths after his time appointed should now require a further prorogation and a longer delay For my part I verily beleeve he spake not in earnest when he made you this untoward answer and that it was rather for a tryall of your patience than for an exercise He hath the reputation of so honest and just a man that I can make no doubt of that he hath promised to Monsieur de and I am perswaded he accounts himselfe more streightly tyed by his word than by his bond Monsieur de beleeves that I have fingred my money a yeare since and you know it is a summe provided to stoppe three or foure of my Persecutours mouthes who will never leave vexing you with their clamours day and night till they be satisfied It is therefore your part to use all meanes possible to content them at least if you love your libertie and take not a pleasure to be every morning saluted with extreame unpleasing good morrowes I expect hereupon to heare from you and am Sir Your c. At Balzac 17. Jan. 1630. To LETTER XLVII SIR you ate too just to desire such duties from a sicke friend as you would exact from one that were in
infinitely bound unto you for the honour you have done me to remember me and for the paines you have taken to write in my behalfe to Monsieur de It is true your paines hath not had so good successe as I verily hoped it would for though he had given out that for his satisfaction he required no more but some small signe that it was your desire yet having received that signe he continues still in the same termes and holds the same rigorous course he did It makes me thinke my Lord that he knowes well enough of what worth your commendation is certainly if it had beene imployed for any other but my selfe it had found all the yeilding and respect it meriteth but indeed I cast unfortunatenesse upon all matters I deale in my evill Fortune suffers me not to make benefit of your love you have no sooner a thought to doe me good but presently a thousand impediments arise to hinder it You give me presents and doe not receive them You command I should be paid my pension and your command is not obeyd Not yours my Lord of which one might say Est fatum quodcunque votes You have read my Booke with pleasure and spoken of it with commendation and yet I suffer persecution for making it as much as to say for being a true Frenchman and a lover of publique Liberty For as for the objections they make against me they certainly are but colours and pretences If may words be not learned or eloquent they are yet sound and full of truth There is not one to be found in all my worke which a meane Advocate were not able to defend before the severest Tribunall in the world The makers of Libells who condemne them are the men of all other that first corrupt them I begin my Lord to be weary of this long and obstinate injustice my Philosophy beginnes to faile me in this case and I should be clean and altogether out of heart if I had noâ— your goodnesse to rely upon For this at this day is the common refuge of all oppressed innocents and no man invocates it in vaine I therefore make my selfe believe that it will at last send me also some faire dayes after so many storms and tempests raised against me by mine enemies and that after you have saved Nations and set Princes in their Thrones it will be no hard matter to relieve a poore private man who adores you and whom calumny seeks to ruine I know some my Lord whom you have made happy and yet scarce knew their names when you did me the honour to speak well of me And some I have knowne advanced by you that lay hidden in the throng when your selfe drâ—w me out and placed me amongst the few yet what get I by it For in truth I could never make any use of this advantage because indeed I could never serve you with such care and subjection as the forwardnesse of your favours obliged me to doe My indisposition hath alwayes hindred my good designes I have alwayes combated with weaknesse of body and never durst venture to beginne a life which I was not assured I was able to hold out This hath forced me my Lord to court you in a new fashion and to seeke to doe you service by my absence and ease and not trouble you with unseasonable officiousnesse and with many low curâ—sies to no purpose I am able to say unworthy as I am that I was the first man that preached the wonders of your life unto the people exhorted all Frenchmen to do their duties have in mine owne person given good example in the Provinces and have healed many spirits that were sick and ill perswaded of the present government I am not so well knowne by my name as by my forwardnesse in your service And when the spitefull rumour ranabroad of late many persons of quality can tell how grievously I tooke it and how I resolved to follow you to the worlds end if so be the unfortunatenesse of France should remove you from the Court Yet I am not troubled that I make you these proofes of my Fidelity though they would be lesse difficult to me than to entertaine you as now I doe with my interests which to say true is a cruell torture I put my selfe to It is not my desire you should have misfortunes to the end I might make use of my consolations nor it is my wish there should be disorders in my Countrey and disgrace to my Master to the end I might the better shew my selfe a good Frenchman and a loyall servant But yet my Lord why may I not be of some use in a calme and have a place as well in the joy as in the sorrow You alone are the Author of your victory but you alone cannot furnish your triumph but must have many Artificers to worke about it I have materials enough to make many large Fabricks but to undertake the worke I must entreat your Lordship I may have a little contentment or at least a little quiet The splendour of your person is so great that it sends forth beames of light to your remotest servants and the power which heaven hath given you is so redoubtable to all sorts of Tyrants that to give a period to my persecution there needs no more but that you give some signe you meane to protect me which favour I perswade my self you will not deny me for besides the common cause of being oppressed you have knowne a long time that I make a speciall profession to be My Lord Your c. At Balzac 5. Jan. 1632. To Monsieur Cytois Physitian to M. the Cardinall LETTER V. SIR my curiosity were undiscreet if I should aske you newes of occurrents in the Army but you cannot take it ill that I aske you news of my Lord the Cardinals health I learne the progresse of his glorious actions by the mouth of Fame but I must learne from you how he fares in his continuall agitation and whether the temper of his body feele no alteration by the violent motions of his spirit I conceive that God doubles his force when there is need and that he hath regard to the necessity of so many people that cannot misse him but I know also that he makes use of the second causes and that your cares and industry concur with this providence The services you doe to one particular man are obligations to all the world Never had any Science a more worthy or profitable imployment than yours hath And if the Romanes erected a statue to Antonius Musa for healing of him who oppressed their liberty why may not you justly expect a publick acknowledgement for preserving of him who makes us all both free and happy I send him the discourses which I humbly entreate you to take care they may come to no other hands but his and therefore that you will keepe them in your custodie that they may be safe untill I come my selfe to Paris I
doe you Homage by laying my Compositions at your feete than to make a Challenge as opposing them to yours rather to acknowledge the superioritie of your Eloquence and to goe in your Lyverie than to make my selfe youâ— Competitor and seeke to brave you with so rash a Comparison If you finde any rellish in Discourses so farre short of the force and merit of yours and if you thinke they may give my Masters of the Universitie any the least contentment I earnestly entreate you to present them a Copy and withall my humble submission to their judgement I know this Societie is at this day the supreme Tribunall that Censures all workes of the Braine and gives Rules to all other Tribunalls of France I neither doubt of the sufficiencie nor suspect the integritie of the Judges that praeside there Moreover I confesse Sir it could never have a more happie Conception seeing your selfe was the first that spake it nor a more illustrious birth seeing M. the Cardinall was a Patron to it and therefore borne in Purple as were those Princes in Constantinople whom I would call Porphyrogencies if the Academie had Naturalised this Forreigne word The honour it hath done me to make me a member of their body without binding me to part from hence and the place it hath given me without taking away my liberty are two singular favours I received from it both at one time And to say the truth it is no small benefit to a man of the wildernesse that turnts his face sometimes towards the world and is not altogether devested of humane affections that he may injoy together both the repose of solitude and yet flatter his imagination with the glory of so pleasing a Societie This I cannot doe without thanking you for so great a favour and if they understand not of my Resentment by your mouth they may have just cause to condemne me for one of little Gratefulnesse Lend me therefore I beseech you Sir some five or six words I would ask you more but I know they are of that worth and so high in their account that these few will be enough not onely to satisfie for the complement I owe but for the Oration also it is expected I should make them You will not I hope deny me the testimony of your love and I require it of you by the memory of the other Obligations I owe you Atque per inceptos promissum munus Iambos you know my meaning and that I have a long time beene and am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 15. Iul. 1635. To Monsieur de Bois Robert LETTER VI. SIR I heare you have beene seene at Paris from whence I conclude you are not at the warre in Flanders but are content to goe and give it your malediction upon the Frontiers If you would acquaint us with the passages of that Countrey you should infinitely obâ—ige your old friend who feeds upon no other nourishment but Newes and takes no Newes to heart but those which concerne the King He is so carefull of the Reputation of his Armes that he cannot abide his victory should be spoken of with doubting To make him confesse we have lost one man it is necessary there should be foure Regiments defeated and when he is spoken to of the Emperouâ—s ayde his answer is that this is a Remedie to be lookt for when the contrary part is dead To make this man a Present the Poet you wot of made lately some Verses upon the estate of affaires in Lorrayne and answers another Poet who had written that the King would never be able to hold it and that the rellicke of affection which the Countrey beares to its ancient Duke would never suffer any familiaritie or friendship to reflect upon us The that are the Latins of this Countrey would make him believe that he hath found a meane betweene the Character of Catullus and that of Martiall and that he hath avoided the drinesse and harshnesse of the former times without engaging himselfe in the luxurie and intemperance of the latter times With these new Verses I send you the old Prose you desired and which hath lyen so long asleepe in my Closet Though they be writings of an old dare yet you know they are alwayes in season and seeing they entreate of the soveraigne vertue that is of M. the Cardinall they intreate of a matter that is immortall and can never lose the grace of being new Thermopylae and Platea are to this day the common places of the Graecians that are in the world and our remotest posteritie which shall more quietly enjoy the labours of this rare man than we doe shall speake more often and more honouâ—ably of them than we doe I believe the Letter to Mounsieur Chastelet will not dislike you and that you will finde something in it worth your reading I had word sent me from Paris that his style was too much painted and too full of Figures for a military style but you shall see how in praysing him for the rest I justifie him in this and with what byasse I defend the cause of worthy things I entreate you to aske him for me the last Libells of and to deliver them to to bring them to me You have heard by the cause I have to complaine of Mounsieur de Delayes in such cases are very dangerous and if you have not already made an end of the matter I feare me the Stocke that was appointed for paying of me will goe some other way Doe herein what you shall thinke fittest and I shall remaine Sir Your c. At Balzac 15. Jul. 1635. Austrasia infaelix ne somnia blanda tuorum Neu mâ—mores Aquilas Imperiumque vetus Quamvis Titulos Nomen inutile jactes Multusque in vano Carolus ore sonet Carolus ecce iterum Nostri virtute Capeti Concidit lapsas luget Eugenus opes Vel solo dixisse sat est capta Oppidae nutu Atque ulrto exutum terga dedisse Ducem Austrasia huic vilis nimiùm neglecta fuisti Nec te ita qui tenuit credidit esse suam Credidit hostiles fugitivus linquere terras Sed te qui propriam jam tueatur adest Ille Triumphata rediit qui victor ab Alpe Et pâ—r quem placidis Mincius errat agris Ille suo natus Juvenis succurrere saeclo Non tantùm Patri sistere Fata suae Cur sequeris Fumo VacuaÌ„ cur diligis umbram Evereque colis diruta saxa domus Desere Fessa tuos supremasae clade jacentes Te validam stantem Deserutre tui Prima mali patiens atque inter Gallica pridem Fulmina Arctoas non benè tuta minas Tandem pone animos ac Nostra assuesce vocari Ni facias Cecinit quae mihi Phaebus habe Alternis vertet te Celta Teuto ruinis Et nisi Pars uniâ—es Praeda duobus eris To Monsieur Favereau Councellour of the King in his Court of Aydes LETTER VII SIR He whose
from thence I will acquaint you with it and intreate this savour from you that you will believe I passionatelie am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 June 1635. To Mounsieur Girard Secretary to M. the Duke D' Espernon LETTER IX SIR your last Letters have exceedingly comforted me and you have such things for me that they make me forgetfull of all my miseries With such a friendship I can mocke at ill fortune and it makes me taste contentments which good fortune knowes not of It is true that your absence is a perpetuall cooling Card to my joy and possessing you but in spirit it requires a very strong imagination to desire nothing else Shall we never come to be Citizens of one City Never to be Hermits in the same Desart Shall my Counsayle be alwayes twenty myles from me and must I be alwayes forced to passe two Seas to fetch it when I need it I hope your justice will doe me reason and that Heaven will at last heare the most ardent of all my prayers but in the meane time whilst I stay waiting for so perfect a contentment I would be glad to have of it now and then some little taste if it be not in your power to give your selfe at least lend your selfe for some few dayes and come and sit as supreame President over both my French and Latin I promise you I will never appeale from you to any other onely for this once give me leave to tell you that the word Ludovix which you blame as too new seemes to me a more Poeticall and pleasing word than either the Aloysius of the Italians or our Ludovicus and besides It favours of the Antiquity of our Nation and of the first language of the Gaules witnesse these words Ambiorix Eporedorix Orgetorite Vercingetorix c. In which you see the Analogie to be plaine yet more than this I have an Authority which I am sure you will make no difficultie to allow you know Monsieur Guyet is a great Master in this Art but perhaps you know not that he hath used this very word Ludovix before I used it for I tooke it from these excellent Verses of his Non tulit hoc Ludovix justa puer acer ab ira Et patriae casum sic videamus ait For other matters Sir you may adde to that which was last alledged in the cause of Madam Gourney this passage out of the divine Jerusalem where Aladin calls Clorinda the Intercessour of Sophronia and of her lover Habbian vita Rispose libertade E Nulla a tanto Intercessor se neghi I kisse the hands of that faire creature you love and am withall my soule Sir Your c. At Balzac 20. Septemb. 1635. To my Lord the Earl of Port. LETTER X. SIR I have received a letter from you since your being in England but not being able to read the Gentlemans hand that sent it to me for want of a decipherer I have been forced to be uncivill till now and have therefore not answered you because indeed I knew not whom to answer but now that this Gentleman whose name is a mysterie in his letters is by good fortune come againe into this countrey I can by no meanes suffer him to part without some testimony of the account I make of your favour and the desire I have to preserve it by all the possible meanes I can I will make you Sir no studied Protestations nor send complements to a man that is borne in the Countrey of good words I will onely say there are many respects that make your person dear unto me and that besides the consideration of your vertue which gives me just cause to honour you that also of the name you beare and of the ranke you hold are things that exceed the value of indifferencie I love all them that love France and wish well to our great Prince of whom in truth I have heard you speake so worthily that as often as I remember it it stirres me up to doing my duty and to profit by so good an example If it had been seconded in Italy we should have seene all we could have hoped But God himselfe saves none but such as contribute themselves to their salvation Saguntum was taken while the Senatours were deliberating and a wisedome that is too scrupulous commonly doth nothing for feare of doing ill The most part of Italians are themselves the workmen to make their owne setters they lend the Spaniard their blood and their hands to make a slave of their countrey and are the parricides of their mother of whom they might have been the redeemers But of all this we shall talke more at Paris if you come thither this Winter as I am put in hope you will In the meane time doe me the honour to let me have your love and to believe me there is none in the world more truly than I Sir Your c. At Balzac 10 Sept. 1630. To my Lord the Bishop of Nantes LETTER XI MY Lord the joy I take in the recoverie of your health is not yet so pure but that it alwayes represents unto me a terrible Image of your last sicknesse The imagination of a danger though past and gone yet makes my memorie afraid and I looke upon it rather in safety than with assurance We missed the losing you but very narrowly and you were upon the poynt to leave us Orphans I speake it seriously and without any flattery at all all the victories we have gotten or shall get would never be able to make us amends for such a losse you wouldd have made our conquest turne to mourning M. the Cardinall would have found something to complaine of in his great felicitie and would have watred his triumph with his tears Let it not be Gods will to lay this crosse upon our time and if it be a crosse inevitable yet let it be deferred to our posteritie It is necessary the Phoenix should live out her age and that the world should be allowed time for enjoying the possession of so profitable and sweet a life as yours It is true the world is not worthy of you but my Lord the world hath need of you your vertue indeed should long since have been crowned but that your example is still necessary and the more happie ones there be in heaven the fewer honest ones will be left upon earth Love therefore your selfe a little for our sakes begin now at last to studie your health which hitherto you have neglected and make a difference hereafter betweene cold and heate betweene good and bad aire betweene meates that are sweet and those that are bitter Though you take no care of your health for your own sake yet you must take care of it for the common good For I beseech you my Lord tell me what should become of the cause of the poore what of the desolation of widdowes what of the innocencie of men oppressed I speake not of the hope of such as hope for
preferment by you for though I write you my Father and call you Monsieur yet I am none of that number I desire nothing from you at this time but that which you may give me without asking it of another your love and good will is the onely object of my present passion I renounce with all my heart all other things in the world so I may keepe but this and shall never complaine of my shipwracke if it leave me so solid a planke as this to rest upon Be pleased to doe me the honour to believe it and that I am with all my soule My Lord Your c At Balzac 15 June 1635. To Monsieur Senne Theologall of the Church of Saints LETTER XII SIR I have been in extasie to heare of your health and that you keepe your body in that reasonable fulnesse of flesh which contributes something to your gravity and addes nothing to your weight I would not wish you to seeke to abate it nor long to be like the dry and tawnie skinnes of the first Christians For all Tertullians saying all Saints have not beene leane and melancholick The last that we have seene were of your colour and statute and you doe an honour to Divinity to preach it with a bright visage representing in some sort the stateof future glory you speake of to the people Monsieur de made me so rich a description of your health that I could not choose but begin my letter with this complement I have seen since Monsieur de who delivered me one from you and with it our friends booke for which I thank you with all my heart I have yet perused onely some Tracts which in truth seem very learned and are as intelligible as the obscurity of the matter would well beare It is true the Title deceived me and seeing you will have me speake freely what I thinke I must tell you I thinke they are nothing else than Orations and that they are fitter to be read upon a Joyn-stoole than pronounced at a Tribunall I had thought to have found in them the perswasive motives of Oratours in the highest straine of their stile and I finde nothing but the drye doctrine of Philosophers and of them neither nothing but the ordinary language of their precepts that it makes me think of these new Companies of Souldiers which are levied under the name of Horse but are put to serve on foot when they come to the Armie I say not it is necessary to handle Schoole questions with all the pompe and force of eloquence I onely say that such discourses ought not to be called Panaegiricks or Oâ—ations and that there is either craft or rashnesse in this proud inscription which promiseth more than a Philosopher can performe Cicero condemnes it of impropriety as you shall see at the end of this Letter and you cannot but confesse unto me that our friend hath mistaken himselfe two wayes First to believe he ought to play the Oratour in Divinity And secondly to imagine that to make Orations with successe he neede but draw forth some Exordiums out of Plutarch's lives and to alledge the so famous Bucephalus that was broken by Alexander the great These are Ornaments so vulgar and so stale that to use them at this day is rather a mark of Clownishnesse than of neatnesse When fashions are left off in the City they are then taken up in the Country and there are none now but poore Gentlemen that will offer to weare the massiest silver lace when it is once fitterd or the richest Plush when it is once growne thred-bare Both the one and the other have been in fashion but they are not so now They were heretofore novelties but are now but Rellicks The first comparison that was made of the burning of Dianaes Temple was excellent all other since have beene but idle And it is not enough that the spring from whence water is drawne be it selfe cleare but to draw that which is cleare it is necessarie also that Lawndresses and Passengers have not troubled it I make no doubt Sir but that which you will shew me shall be very choyce and perfect You are I know of too dainty a taste to be contented with every sawce I am very impatient till I see those rare productions and I should ere this have seene them but that your promises are as deceitfull as the Titles of your Booke which notwithstanding is otherwise full of excellent discourse and profound knowledge It is now foure moneths that I have waited for you and you have still continued to wrong me in continuing to breake your word yet as much wronged as I am I leave not to be Sir Your c. At Balzac 1. Octob. 1635. The Opinion of Cicero concerning the stile which Philosophers use in their Writings LOquuntur Philosophi cum doctis quorum sedare animos malunt quam incitare Siquidem de rebus pacatis ac minime turbulentis docendi causa non capiendi loquuntur ut in eo ipso quod delectationem aliquam dicendo aucupentur plus nonnullis quam necesse sit facere videantur Mollis ergo est eorum oratio umbâ—atilis neque nerves aculeos oratorios habet Nec sententijs est nec verbis instructa popularibus nec juncta numeris sed soluta liberius Nihil iratum habet nihil atrox nihil mirabile nihil astutum Casta verecunda incorrupta quodammodo virgo Itaque sermo potius quam oratio dicitur Quamquam en m omnis locutio oratio est tamen unius orationis locutio hoc proprio signata nomine est To Mounsier Granier LETTER XIII SIR my persecution should be sweete unto me if in suffering it I might have the happinesse to see you but your absence makes it insupportable and it were as good for me to goe and be killed in the place where you are as to come hither and die with languishing Being here against my minde I finde nothing that pleaseth me and the objects which I beheld before as the riches of Nature I cannot now looke upon but with horrour and count them but as the moveables of a Prison I sigh continually after your Cabinet which hath so often served for a haven to my tossed spirit and from whence I have so often fetcht Armes and courage to defend me against Fortune I am not out of hope to see it once againe and to sit me downe in that greene chaire where you know I have used to be inspired and foretell things to come as Sibil did from her Tryvet In the meane time I must let the unhappy constellation passe away and must give place to the choler of heaven So long Sir as you vouchsafe to remember me and to hold me in the favour of Messieurs du Puy I shall not want a good portion of consolation These are persons that without wearing purple or bearing office are yet illustrious and in Authority at least in the reasonable world and amongst men that can
juyce only of your Preface I will not take upon me any more though you sollicite me to doe it and instead of giving my advice would have me I should pronounce a Decree Take heed my good Father what you say and consider what a goodly thing it would be to raise my Village into a Parliament and make appeals from Paris to Balzac Though you had humility enough to submit to an unlawfull Magistrate yet I have not presumption enough to intrude upon an unlawfull charge Remember your selfe besides that your book is dated from Mount Carmell which is to say out of our jurisdiction and that Decrees are of no force where time out of minde there have beene Oâ—acles You know what Sâ—â—etonius saith of it in the life of Vespatian he makes no bones to make a God of a Mountaine I like not the boldnesse of such Metamorphoses yet I am not ignorant how far the force of piety may reach and knowing it hath right to remove Mountains I doubt not but Carmell at this day may be in France and that upon a place so holy and so high there may descend more grace and light from heaven than there ascends ignorance and vapours from the earth Accept from me this true confessiâ—n I make unto you and dispence with me for that soveraigne judgement you require of me Though I am not willing to be your President yet I am not the lesse My most reverend Father Your c. At Balzac 25. April 1635. To Mounsieur Chaplain LETTER XX. SIR I have now these three weekes taken mine ease in spight of my selfe and one of my feete which I have not very free keepes me in my bed with more inconvenience than paine Heretofore it hath put me to torture and therefore I count it now a favour that it onely keepes me in prison which I sweeten as well as I can with my Bookes and my friends You thinke you contribute nothing to the comfort I receive but I assure you the best part of it comes from you and nothing comforts me so much for the faire dayes I lose as that excellent Ode you sent me I am even ravished with every part of it the choice and marshalling of the words the structure and harmony of the composition the modest greatnesse of the conceits the force which savours not of any violence all these are worthy to be ranked with the best Antiquity In some places you do not onely touch me but touch me to the quick the agitation of the Poet is transferred upon the reader and no Trumpet makes so loude and silver a sound as your Harpe doth Quand la Revolte dans son fort Par une affrense longue mort Paya si cherement l' usure de ses crimes Et que ses boulevars en fin assujettis Contre les appareils des armes legitimes Implorerent en vain le secours de Thetis Ils décriuent l' horrible pas Où per cent visibles tâ—épas On crût de nostre Camp retarder la vaillance Et figurent encore au milâ—eu de nos rangs Themis qui te préta son fer sa ballance Affin de décider ces fameux differens Ils chantent l' effroyable foudre Qui d' un umouement si soudain Partit de ta puissante main Pour mettre Pegneol en poudre Ils disent que tes bataillons Comme autant depais tourbillons Ebranlerent ce Roc jusques dans ses racines Que mesme le vaincut ' eut pour liberateur Et que tu luy bâtis sur ses propres ruines Vn rampart èternel contre l'usurpateur Either I have no skill in Verses or certainly these Verses will live to the remotest posterity they will be alledged for proofe and testimony in the counsels of the last Kings that shall reigne upon earth and perhaps too they shall serve for a Law and for a Decree as well as Homers Verses did by the authority whereof a great war that was kindled between the Seigneury of Megara and Athens was reconciled I know for my self I shall never stay till your death for putting you in the number of my Authors and as often as in my presence there shall be speaking of the siege of Rochell of the forcing of Suza of the taking and keeping of Pigneroll so often shall I alledge the divine Verses you have written of them and these also which I lay not lesse carefully up in my memory Ils disent que les Immortels De leur culte de leurs Autels Ne doiuent qu'à tes soins la pompe rendissante Et que ta préuoyance ton Authorité Sont les de ux fo rs Appuis dont l'Europe tremblante Soûtient raffermit sa foible liverté Dans un paisible mouuement Tu t' éleues au Firmament Et laisses contre toy murmuurer sur la terre Ainsi le haut Olympe à son pied sablonneux Laisse fumer la foudre gronder le Tonnerre Et garde son sommet tranquille lumineux And these other which to him to whom you addresse them are as much worth as a triumphant Arch Ton courage aux Monstres fatal Est tousiours plus fort que le mal Sur le solide honneur sa base est estabile Le droit la raison laccompaguent tousiours Et sans que sa vigueur soit jamais affoiblie Qu'ou cede ou qu'ou resiste il vadiun mesme cours And these other that are so sage and morall L'or pour luy cesse d'estre un metal pretieux La beauté perissable est un bien qu'il mospuso Pour l'un il est sans mains pour l'autre sans yeux And these other that are so noble and so poeticall Cepandant que la Lune accomptissant son cours Dessus un char d'argent enuironné d' estoiles Dans le sombre univers represente le cours And now after all this tell me if I have not profited by the reading and have not made good use of your presents I should quickly grow rich if you would send me such presents often but this is too inordinate a desire I must be convent with one croppe in a yeare and I may very well entertaine my selfe a long time with that you have already sent me for which I thank you with all my heart and am Sir Your c. At Balzac 12 July 1633. To Monsieur Bonnaud Councellor in Ordinary to my Lord the Prince LETTER XXI SIR I acknowledge in your Verses due to me but onely my name all the rest belongs to somebody else and is unfitter for me than a Crowne for a private Man I cannot therefore value my selfe the more for having a thing I cannot use nor is it fit I should put on Ornaments which being as unfit for me as in themselves they are rich would disguise me rather than adorne me A Courtier would complaine that you mock him Et que vous en faites une piece A Doctour would say you
beene for the indisposition of my body I had not staid so many days from thanking you for your many courtesies but for these two moneths I have not stirred from my bed so cruelly handled with the Sciatica that it hath taken from me all the functions of my spirit and made me utterly uncapable of any conversation otherwise you may be sure I should not voluntarily have deprived my selfe of the greatest contentment I can have when I have not your company and that I should not have received three Letters from you without making you three Answers Now that I have gotten some quiet moments from the violence of my torture and that my paine is turned into lamenesse I cannot chuse but take you by the hand and tell you in the first place that you are an ungratefull man to leave our Muses and follow some of their sisters that are neither so faire nor so worthy of your affection I intreat you to believe it is a temptation your evill Angel hath cast upon you and that you ought to reject it as the counsell of an enemy Things are not now to begin it is no time now to deliberate you are gone too farre in the good way to looke back and to be unwilling to finish that little which remains To leave eloquence for the Mathematickes is to refuse a Mistris of eighteen yeares old and to fall in love with an old woman God keep you from this unhappinesse and inspire you with better thoughts than those that have carried you to this desire of change It would be a disloyaltie I should never pardon you but should blame you for it as long as I live For making that reckoning of you as I doe and expecting gâ—eat matters from you it were an infinite wrong you should doe to make me lose the most pleasing of all my hopes I therefore by all meanes intreat you to persevere in your first designe and to resolve upon a voyage of three moneths to come and be reconciled to her whom you have offended and to make her a publique satisfaction by the edition of your writings by which it will plainely enough be seene the great favours she hath done you And for my part I promise you a chamber where you shall have the prospect of a Garden twelve miles long and so you shall be at once both in the City and in the Country Besides â— binde my selfe to set before your Book an Advertisement to the Reader to the end that no man may be ignorant of the part I beare in that which concernes you Consider whether you like of these conditions and whether you have courage enough to come and lodge Au Pre aux Glerks where I will wait for you without any designe of challenge or processe You shall be sure Sir to have there admirable visions and shall meditate nothing but with successe And in truth seeing the least motion of your spirit puts me to extasie what will it be when you shall employ your whole forces And if your conceits be so just and so well governed in the midst of confusion and unseasonable disturbances what a man will you be when you shall be at leisure and have the liberty which now you want Take my word for it you need not feare the censure of the world I 'l undertake you shall have the approbation of all honest people provided that you make a truce with your Mathematicks and never intricate your braines with that melancholick and doting Science which cost Archimedes his life at least before you cast your selfe upon such high and sublime specuculations it is fit you should get you credit by exercises that are more sweet and popular And now Sir this is all you are like to have at this time from my Sciatica that I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 23. March 1628. Another to him LETTER XXV SIR I doe but now receive your Letter of the twelfth of this Moneth which confirms me in the opinion I have alwayes had that my interests are as deare unto you as your own to complement with you for this would be to thank you for being good as much as to say for being your self It is much better to returne you friendship for friendship than to pay you with unprofitable words In a word Sir I make profession to be an honest man and therefore all the thankfulness that can be desired from a person obliged you may expect from me As concerning I assure you I wish him no ill because I conceive he hath done me none it is sufficient for me that my friends have no good opinion of his opinions and that his owne friends begin to take notice of his false dealing In all this there is nothing either new or strange I am not the first innocent that have beene persecuted in the world and if I could not beare detraction and slander I should be more dainty than Princes and their principall officers are who forbear not to do well though for their well doing they be evill spoken of the best and foundest part is of my side I want no protector either Males or Females and if I would make use of all my advantages I could oppose Doctor to Doctor and Gown to Gown Fratribus fratres claustra minantia claustris But it is fit sometimes to make spare of ones forces and to restraine resentment within lesse bounds than justice allowes The Prince you desire to heare of is yet in the Idea of the King his Father farre from coming as yet to Paris or Thouleuze for my selfe I am alwayes block'd up by my Sciatica and I think all the stormes of the middle region of the aire fall downe upon my unhappy leggs but it is you that will bring me health and faire weather and your presence will worke that miracle which I expected from Monsieur de L'orme come therefore I inireat you speedily and suffer not a man to die for want of succour who passionately is Sir Yours c. At Park 30. March 1628. To my Lord the Duke Valette LETTER XXVI SIR it grieves me much that the first Letter you see of mine should not be pure and free from all my interests and that instead of entertaining you with matters of weight and proportionable to your spirit I should bring it downe to the petty affaires of a private man yet I cannot believe that you being all gracious and all generous as you are will think any occasion of doing good unworthy of you but that your vertue in this doth imitate the supreme which is never to busie in governing of Heaven and the other nobler parts of the world but that he takes care as well for governing the meanest of all his creatures I humbly beseech your Lordship to consider me in this last quality and if it be no incivility to make such a request that you will undertake the businesse I present unto you but as a disburdening you of some more weighty if it be
not that my unfortnatenesse makes the easiest that are to become unpossible I see no reason you neede to imploy your whole forces about this matter there needes no more but onely the motion of your will and a light impression of your credit with to give it all the solidity and lustre I desire I should not seeme to understand the tearmes of the last Letter he did me the honour to write unto me if I had not yet some little hope left and a kinde of satisfaction in my owne Conscience Yet I alledge to him no merit of my part but much generousnesse of his nor speake of any services of mine to recompense him but of his goodnesse that prevents them and subjects not it selfe to the rigours of ordinary justice This my Lord is all the right I alledge for my selfe and all the title upon which I ground my pretensions but now I leave following it my selfe and put it wholly into your hands a place perhaps to which my ill fortune her selfe will beare a respect but if she shall be opposite to your desire and prevaile above your favour yet at least I shall thereby know the force of destinie to which all other forces give place and which cannot be mastered by any force nor corrected by any industry but yet it shall not hinder me from resting well satisfied seeing I shall in this receive much more from you than I am denyed by him it I hold any part in your grace favour which is already my comfort against whatsoever ill successe shall happen It sufficeth me to be happy with this kinde of happinesse which is more deare to me than all the happinesse the Court can give me being a man no more ambitious than I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 25. Decemb. 1634. To my Lord the Bishop of Poitiers LETTER XXVII MY Lord although Monsieur de hath promised me to give you assurance of the continuation of my service yet I cannot forbeare to adde these few lines to his testimony and to tell you that which I tell to all the world that your vertue is a transcendent far above the abilities and carriage of our age It is a match for Antiquity in its greatest purenesse and severity When the Camilli and the Scipio's were not in employment they reposed themselves and took their ease as you doe and when I consider sometimes the sweet life you lead at Dissay I conclude that all the imployments of the Palace and all the intricacies of the Court are not worth one moment of a wise mans idlenesse It is well knowne that from your childhood you have despised Vanity even in her kingdome and that in an ayre where she had attractives able to draw the oldest and most reluctant spirits All the pomp of Rome hath not so much as given you one temptation and you are so confirmed in a generous contempt that if good Fortune her selfe should come to looke you out you would scarce goe out of your Closet to meet her in your Chamber This is that I make such reckoning of in your Lordship and which I preferre before all your other qualities for those how great soever they be are yet but such as are common with many base and mercenary Doctors whereas this force and courage are things that cannot be acquired in the noyse and dust of Schooles You found not these excellent qualities in the Vatican Library nor yet got them by reading of old Manuscripts you owe them indeed to Monsieur your deceased Farther that true Knight without spot or wrinkle equally skilfull in the art of warre and in affaires of peace and that was the Heros of Muret of Scaliger and of Saint Mart. I propose not a lesse object for my worship than they did neither indeed is it lesse or lesse aeligious than theirs was and though you did not love me as you doe and though you should denounce warre against me and become head of a faction to seek my ruine yet I should not for all that forbeare to revere so rare a vertue as yours is but should still remaine My Lord Your c At Balzac 4 May. 1630. To Monsieur Guyet LETTER XXVIII SIR I feare not much to lose a thing I esteem but little but holding your friendship in that account I do if I should have lost it I should never see day of comfor more you must not therefore think it strange that I was moved with the Alarum that was given me for though I know my selfe to be innocent yet I conceived my unfortunateness to be such that I may give credit to any bad news Now that Monsieur de hath quieted the agitation of my mind and hath assur'd me of your love I cannot forbear to signifie unto you the joy I take telling you withall that so I may preserve a friend of your merit and worth I do not greatly care for loving him â—hat will leave me There is little to be seen amongst men but malice and weakness and even of good men the greatest part is scarce sound this is a cause why a firm constant spirit as yours is is of wonderfull use in society it is no small benefit to them that are wearied and overtoyled as I am to have a person to rest upon that cannot fall There is need of courage to maintain a friendship indeed of prudence to performe the meanest duty of life t is nothing worth to have a sound will if the understanding be defective it is to no purpose that one makes vows and sacrifices Nil vota furentâ—m Nil delubra juvant he complains without cause of his spleen and his other inferiour parts this is to accuse innocents the evil no doubt comes from a higher place it is the brain that is cause of all the disorder The knowledge I have hereof makes me have compassion of him and excuse in a Dr. of threescore years old those base shifting tricks that are not pardonable in a Schollar of eighteen Any man but my self would call his action a cowardice a treason but I love to sweeten my grief as much as I can cannot become an enemy at an instant pass from one extremity to another without making a little stay by the way I honour still the memory of our former friendship and cannot wish ill to a man to whom I have once wisht well but this is too much of complaining quarrelling Do me this favour I beseech you to make choise of something in your study for a consolation of my solitude I have already the Encomium of Monsieur the Admirall de la Vâ—let but I would fain have the Epitaph of my Lady the Dutchess of Espâ—â—non and those admirable Elegies you shewed me once In quibus tamâ—e Tibullo similis quam Tibullus sibi I intreat you to deliver them to Monsieur who will see them safely delivered to me if you please we will use him hereafter as our common correspondent who knowing me to
the very bottom of my heart will I doubt not most willingly adde his testimony to my protestations that I truly am Sir Your c. At Balzac 25. Sept. 1630. To Monsieur de L'orme Physitian in ordinary to the King and Treasurer of France at Burdeaux LETTER XXIX SIR it is not now onely that I make a benefit of your friendship I have had profit by it a long time and you have often been my advocate with so great force and so good successe that they who had before condemned me were glad to revoke their sentence as soon as they heard you speake yet all this while you did but onely speake well of me now you begin to doe well for me it is you whom this year I may thank for my pension Without you Sir my warrant would never have perswaded my partner it would presently have been rejected and he still have continued inexorable But it must be confessed there is no wiâ—de beast but you can tame no matter so bad but you can make good as you heal maladies that are incurable so you prevaile in causes that are desperate and if you finde never so little life and common sense in a man you are able to restore him to perfect health and make him become a reasonable man I desire not to have the matter in any better terms than you have set it I am glad I shall not need to invocate M. the Cardinall for my dispatch and that Monsieur hath promised not to faile to pay me in September If he should pay it sooner I should be faine to desire you this favour to keep it for me till that time Now I onely intreat you to draw from him a valuable at assurance of it and for so many favours and courtesies done me I shall present you with something not altogether so bad as those I have already shewed you and seeing one cannot be called valiant for having the better of a coward neither can I be accused of vanity for saying I have exceeded my selfe I am therefore bold to let my Letter tell you thus much that if my false Pearles and counterfeit Diamonds have heretofore deceived you I doe not think that the shew I shall make you of my new wares will use you any better Yet my meaning is not to praeoccupate your judgement who neither of my selfe nor of my writings will have any other opinion than what you shall please to allow me Since the time I have wanted the honour of seeing you I have made a great progresse in the vertue of humility for I am now proud of nothing but of my friends affections Let me therefore never want yours I intreat you as you may believed I will all my life most passionately be Sir Your c. At Balzac 8. Decemb. 1629. To my Lord LETTER XXX MY Lord I hope you will not take it ill that I put you in minde of a man to whom you have heretofore made demonstration of your love and that after a long intermission of these petty duties which are then troublesome when they are frequent you will give me leave to tell you that I have indeed omitted them but more by discretion than by negligence I know Sir you have no time to lose and to put you to the reading of unprofitable words what were it but to shew an ignorance how much the King imployes you and how the present affaires goe It is therefore the respect I bear to your continuall imployments that hath caused my silence and I should be very absurd if in the assiduity of your cares I should present you with little pleasing amusements and should look for an answer to some poore complement when you have so many commandements of importance and so many orders of necessity to deliver forth It is enough for me that you do me the honour to cast your eyes upon the protestation I make you that in all the extent of your command there is not a soule more submisse nor more desirous to beare your yoak than mine is and that as much as any in the world I am My Lord Your c. At Balzac 10 Aug. 1630. To Monsieur Senne Theologall of the Church of Saints LETTER XXXI SIR you need not wonder to see your name in the Book I send you Lovers you know leave marks of their passion every where and if they were able would fill the whole earth with their cyphers and devices It is a custome as ancient as the world for with that began writing also and at first for want of paper men graved the names of those they loved upon the barks of trees If any man wonder I should be in love with a Preacher why wonders he not at that Romane of whom a Greciaâ— said that he was not onely in love with Cato but was enchanted with him You have done as much to many others in this country and I have here as many Rivals as you have Auditors Yet there is not the same object of all our affections they run after your words and hang at your mouth but I go farther and discover in your heart that which is better than your eloquence I could easily resist your Figures and your Arguments but your goodness and your freeness take me captive presently I therefore give you the title of a perfect friend in your Encomium because I account this a more worthy quality than to be a perfect Oratour and because I make most reckoning of that vertue in a man which humane society hath most need of For other matters remember your self in what terms I did speak to you of the business you write of and that onely to obey you I have been contented to alter my opinion I was well assured the enterprise would never take effect but I thought it better to faile by consenting than by obstinacy and rather to take a repulse than not to take your counsell I have known a long time that fortune means me no good and the experience I have of her hath cured me of the malady of hope and ambition Make me not fall into a relapse of these troublesome diseases I beseech you but come and confirm my health you Sir that are a soveraign Physitian of souls and who are able to see in mine that I perfectly am Sir Your c. At Balzac 10. Feb. 1635. To Monsieur de Piles Cleremont LETTER XXXII SIR having heard of the favourable words you used of me at the Court I cannot any longer forbeare to give you thanks nor stay till our next meeting from telling you how highly I esteem this favour I cannot but confess I did not look to finde so great a graciousness in the country of maliciousness and seeing that the greatest part even of honest men have so much love for themselves that they have but little or none left for strangers I thought with my selfe that the infection of the world might have lightly touched you and that either you had no passions in you at
all on at least but very coole and moderate but I see now that you have more generousness in you than is sit to have amongst men that are interessed and that you put in practise the Maximes of our Ancestors and the Rules of your Epictetus It is I that am for this exceedingly bound unto you seeing it is I that receive the benefit of it that am the Object of your vertue You may then believe I have not so unworthy a heart as not to feel a resentment answerable to so great an Obligation at least Sir I hope to shew you that the Picture mine enemies have made of me is not drawn after the life and that their colours disfigure me rather than represent me I have nothing in me heroicall great I confess but I have something that is humane and indifferent If I be not of the number of the vertuous I am at least of their side I applaud them whom I cannot follow and admire that I cannot imitate I am glad if I can be praised not onely of the judicious and wise such as you and our Monsieur de Boissat are but even of the simpler sort that are honestly minded such as I know Sir how to love in perfection and when you shall know me better you shall confess there is none that can be more than I At Paris 2 April 1635. Your c. To Monsieur de Voyture LETTER XXXIII SIR if I did not rely upon your goodness I should take more care than I do in preserving your favour and I should not let a messenger go from hence by whom I should not persecute you with my Letters But knowing you are no rigorous exactor of that which is your due much less expect I should give you more I have conceived I might be negligent without offence and that having an absolute power over me as you have you would use it upon me with the moderation of good Soveraignes And I should still continue to follow mine owne inclination which finds a sweetness in idleness if I did not think it necessary to advertise you that I am in the world lest you should think all your courtesies lost that you have done me I would have been glad I could have loved you all my life long without any kind of interest or temporal consideration yet it troubles me not to give honour to my friend by giving him matter of his vertue to work upon I am content you shall hold the higher part in our friendship which is to do good but then I look to hold the lower less noble part which is to acknowledge and this is so setled in my heart that a greater cannot be desired from a man exceeding sensible and exceedingly obliged But though it were so that you had no tie upon me and that without ungratefulness I might forbeare to love you yet I intreat you to believe that the knowledge I have of your worth merit would never give me leave to doe it but that the naturall respect we owe to things that are perfect would alwayes bind me infinitely to honour you and to be with all my soul as I am Sir Your c. At Balzac 15. July 1630. Another to him LETTER XXXIV SIR you are welcome from Flanders from England and from Spaine I am not onely glad for your returne but I refresh my self after your voyages For if you know it not I must tell you that my spirit hath gone these voyages with you and you never passed the Sea that I was not near a shipwreck They that know what it is to love will not mislike the novitie of this complement I have born my part in all the fits of your Feavor I have drunk part of all your potions I have accompanied you in all your strange adventures It is therefore great reason I should give you thanks for giving my friendship rest and that by finishing your travel you have finished my unquietnesse It is better Sir to be a private man at home where there is courtesie and freenesse than to be a Lord Ambassadour among publique enemies and if the Jewes said well that the Graves of Judea were more beautifull than the Palaces of Babylon why may not we be bold to say that the Dirt of Paris is better than the Marble of Madrid It is a juster thing to adore M. the Cardinall than to put off ones hat to the President Rose or to the Marquess of Aitâ—na and it would have been a newes no lesse shameful than lamentable if we had come to read in the Gazets these pittifull words spain's rising up Atque ibi magnuâ— Mirandusque Glâ—ens sedâ—t id Praetoria regis Donec Hâ—sperio libeat vigilare Tyranno Thanks be to God the face of things is hanged and a great Prince liberty hath cost but the life of good a Horse At our next meeting you shall tell me all the fortunes you have passed and in requitall thereof I will tell you newes out of the wildernesse and it shall be at Monsieur de Chaudebous Chamber that our conference shall be at least if you care any thing for it and that I be in his favour still Howsoever this I am sure he can never love any man that honours him more perfectly than I doe or that hath a greater opinion of the beauty and noblenesse of his mind He is alwayes one of the dear objects of my thoughts and I still take him for one of those true Knights which are no where to be found now but in the History of France I want such an example before my eyes to stir up the faintness I feel in my duty and to thrust me forward in the love of Vertue The least of his words make my spirit both higher greater the only sound of his voyce give me both life strength I doubt not but I should be twice as good as I am if I could but see him once a moneth and make a third in your excellent conferences But this is a happinesse which is at home with you but far off from me though I have a designe to come nearer to it you injoy it to the full and leave to others onely a desire of it and a jealousie and jealous indeed I should be if I did not love you more than I love my selfe and if being bound to you for a thousand favours I did not acknowledge my selfe more bound to take a contentment in your good fortune Enjoy then your happinesse Siâ— and never feare I will oppose it seeing I shall alwayes prefer your contentments before my own and shall be all my life Sir Your c. At Balzac 5 Novemb. 1634. To Monsieur Mestivier Physitian to my Lord the Duke D'Espernon LETTER XXXV SIR I am a thirst for the waters of Vic ever since I heard you thinke them to be wholsome the reputation you give them hath made me to send for them to try whether this Drug will do me any more good
in this case I think I have reason rather to ask justice at your hands and tell you that if you take the paines to consider my words as I meant them and not have my enemies correct them you will easily grant they contain nothing contrary to the orthodox Doctrine or that is not maintainable in all the Schools of Christendom This being so my dear Cousin I doubt not but you will strongly defend my cause at least my person and will be pleased to assure the Gentlemen of your fraternity that having always accounted their Colledge as the Oracle of true Doctrine and as the interpreter of the Church in this Kingdome I could not wish a more sweet or glorious fruit of my travails than to see them entertained by so learned holy Personages that my greatest ambition is but to merit their good acceptance to deserve their favourable censure and if for obtaining this I have not either happinesse enough or not enough sufficiency I have at least dociblenesse enough to learne of them that which I know not and to confesse that in their learned conferences they possesse the secret and certainty of all holy points whereof we in our private meditatoins have but suspitions and conjectures that if I were assaulted by strangers I could perhaps make a shift to resist and that with successe but that I prefer obedience which I owe before a victory which I might get that I desire not to contest with my fathers nor pretend to have reason against their authority to which I submit my self in such sort that I am resolved to assure my self of nothing but upon their word and credit and from henceforth to acknowledge no truth but that which they shall please to teach me I leave it to you to augment to reforme or embellish this complement as you shall think fit I make you Master of the whole businesse and never meane to disavow any thing you shall doe being absolutely Sir my dear Cousin Your c. At Balzac 18 Jan. 1632. To Monsieur de Vougelas Gentleman in Ordinary to my Lord the Kings onely Brother LETTER XXXVIII SIR I humbly intreat you to take for your selfe all the excuses you make to me and to believe that I have alwayes a love answerable to your vertue though I say it not so often as by the lawes of civility I am bound to do Since the coming hither to Monsieur de you have been the most ordinary and most pleasing subject of all our conference and I am much more curious to heare of your studies than to heare all the newes of the great World Yet I intend not hereby to ask it of you with importunity and to engage you againe in a commerce of unprofitable words which would but wrong your necessary imployments I am well enough satisfied with the assurance I have of your love and am well contented you should keep your complements for those you love not so well when I shall finde my selfe to stand in need of you I am not grown so bashfull but that I can use the liberty I have long used and trouble you againe by my freenesse Hitherto it hath afforded you nothing but trouble and it was your evil Angel that inspired you with a desire at first to be acquainted with me But one day perhaps I shall be more happy and for so many and great favours you have done me it may be you may draw from me some small argument of acknowledgement In the mean time Sir I desire you not to cast upon me a reputation which I am not able to maintaine make no more mocks at my pratling and hide the shame of your friend which your other friend hath published He onely is guilty of the fault that was done and you may well think I was not so impudent to send false Latin to the University of Paris as much as to deliver false Money to the Mint and think to make Mint-men take it for currant It shall suffice me that you approve of the French I mean to bring you or at least that you make it worthy of your approving by making it new with your corrections If Monsieur Faret be returned from Brescia you shall make me beholding to you to assure him from me of the continuation of my service I make infinite account of him and am with all my soule Sir Your c. At Balzac 15. May. 1629. To Monsieur Gerard Officiall of the Church of Angaulesmr LETTER XXXIX SIR my last Letters are great Books and I have nothing to adde but only that I intreat you to take the pains to read them over again and to draw them into heads for the help of your memory which though I know to be very excellent yet I know also it is extreamly full of businesse and that I am but the five and twentieth of your Clients I set downe nothing so precisely but that I leave you liberty to change my orders if you finde them not fit and to saile with the winde Nothing but good success can be expected from your sterning you will so manage I assure my self my resentments with Monsieur de and make him see so much respect and modesty in my grief that he will perhaps be sorry be ever disobliged me I assure my selfe also that when you fall upon my Chapter where I treat with Monsieur de that you will not carry your self as onely my instrument and as one that hath charge of me but that you will doe as an honest man should that is perswaded to it by the truth and interessed in the cause of oppressed innocency Concerning the perfumes I desired of you I could wish you would bring me a shop-full but you must use some body else to chuse them for you for you know them not your selfe but onely by name and you may perhaps have the oyle of Nuts given you for the oyle of Jasmin and Gingerbread for Sweet-balls So it is that pretty things are unknowne of great personages you would think you should doe your selfe wrong to descend to such pedling wares and of an Ambassadour and a Philosopher become a Merchant and an Apothecary yet Aristippus would be dealing in things that you think scorn of and said that he and the King of Persia were the two unfortunate Ones whom Diogenes pittied You send me word that Monsieur de hath great Designs in the Common-wealth of Letters and that he is resolved be an Authour and a Preacher both at once If you remove him not from so dangerous a resolution your shall seee Books that will be the Funerals of common sense and let but the name be changed and it will be said of his Sermons as an excellent man of our time said of the Sermons of Fryer Lazarus Feâ— de zele moins de Science Faisoit que Lazare bossu Preschant des Cas de conscience N'stoit quasi pas apperceu As much as to say that though the Clock did ring out a great while
was touched to the very quick for the death of yet seeing he is happier than they that mourn for him and that he hath left the world in an age when he yet knew it not I think it no wisdome to be obstinate in an ill grounded sorrow or to account that an evill to another which is the greatest good could have happened to my selfe Christianity will not let me say Optimum non nasci Bonum vero quam citissime interire but it hinders me not to believe that one day of my life with Bâ—ptisme is better than a whole age of iniquity I write this Letter to you from whither I am come to lodge after I had entertainâ—d my Lord untill night I conceived there was some necessity to deliver him your Letter with all speed and therefore I exposed my person to all the injuries of an incensed skie and ventured to make a voyage that would have frighted a stouter man than my selfe By this you may know that I count nothing difficult which reflects upon any interest of yours or which cencernes your contentment and I love you so much that I should not say so much if I had more craft in me than I have But my good Nature exceeds all other considerations of vulgar Prudence and I would not keep you from knowing what great power you have over me though I knew before-hand you would abuse this power For other things I am very glad to heare you begin to grow sensible of the charms of musique and that you go to the Consorts which are in reputation Yet I have seen the time when your eares were no learneder than mine and when you made no great difference between the sound of Lutes and the noyse of Bells See what it is to frequent good company and to live in a Country of neatnesse I that stirre not from the Village know no other musique but that of Birds and if sometimes I heare a more silver sound it comes from those noble Animalls which Monsier Heinsius praiseth so much and which by Lucians saying serve for Trumpets in the Kingdome of the Moone I give you a thousand thanks for your newes but especially for the last it is certaine that the choice of Monsieur de Belieure to the Ambassadour of Italy is a thing will be generally well liked men talk wonders already of his beginnings of the readinesse and Vivacity of his Spirit of the force and stayednesse of his Judgement besides some other excellent qualities of his Age from which we may hope for much And for my selfe who am one that love my Country exceedingly I cannot but exceedingly rejoice in this new fruitfulnesse which comes upon him at the latter end of his old age It doth me good to see famous deceased men to live againe in their excellent posterity and I doubt not of the good successe of a Negotiation where a Belieure a Thou or a Sillery is imployed These were our Heroes of the long Robe and the Princes of our Senate and now their children that I may continue to speak Latin in French are the Princes of our youth at least they are names more happy and that portend more good to France than the name of and no doubt she will have cause to thank M. the Cardinall for respecting races that are so deare unto her and for stirring up in the Kings minde the old inclinations of the deceased King his Father I fall asleep at this very time I am talking with you and am rather in case to make ill Dreames than good Discourses and so I take my leave of you my deare and perfect friend as I also am to you as much as possibly can be Sir Your c. At Balzac 4 Octob. 1634. To Monsieur Talon Secretary to my Lord the Cardinall De la Valette LETTER XLII SIR I took infinite pleasure to see my self in one of your Letters and Monsieur who imparted it to me can witnesse for me with what greedinesse I read that passage which concerned me I cannot say that he is here though it be true that he is not in Gascoigne for we enjoy nothing of him here but his Image he is so married that he would think it a disloyalty to his wife if he should dare to laugh when she is not by All his sociable humour he hath left with her and hath brought nothing to us but his Melancholy When I would make him merry he tels me I goe about to corrupt him All visites he makes in her absence though it be to Covents and Hospitals yet he calls them deboystnesse So as Sir you never saw man better satisfied with his present estate not a greater enemy to single life He is not contented to pitty you and me and to lament our solitude but he reproacheth us outragiously and calls us unprofitable members of the Common-wealth and such as are fit to be cut off As for me I make no defence for my selfe but your example I tell him let him perswade you to it first and he shall soone finde me ready to follow his counsell I hope we shall meete together ere long and then we shall not neede to feare his being too strong for us in our conferences when we two shall be against him alone Provide therefore Solutions for his Arguments but withall deny me not your assistance in other encounters where it may stand me instead You can never doe courtesies to a man more capable of acknowledgement nor that is more truely then I Sir Your c. At Balzac 12 Febr. 1633. Another to him LETTER XLIII SIR I am exceedingly well satisfied with the newes you send me and with the assurance you give me by your Letter of the continuation of your friendship Not that I was afraid I should lose it but because it is a pleasure to heare ones selfe called happy and that one cannot have too many titles for a possession which can never be too much valued I take not upon me to contend with you in Complements or to dispute of civility with you who live in the light of the world and have whole Magasins of good words For besides that I never had any skill of the Court it is now so long I have been a countryman that it were a miracle if I had not cleane forgot it all Pardon therefore a rudenesse which I cannot avoid and seeing I am not able to answer you give me leave to assaile you and require you to give a reason of the present state of things What can you say Sir of these wretched Flemmins who shut their gates against good Fortune when she would come into them and are in love with their Fetters and their Keepers I do not think there be truer slaves in all Asia and I do not wonder our arms can do no good in their Country seeing it is a hard matter to take a yoak from mens heads who prefer it before a Crown Soveraignty when it is offered Sick men are
live My Lord Your most humble most obliged and most thankful servant BALZAC From Balzac the 1 of July 1637. A COLLECTION OF SOME MODERN EPISTLES OF MONSIEUR DE BALZAC To Monsieur CONRART LETTER I. SIR BEing arriv'd home but this morning I could not before the evening frame an answer to your Letter which you honored me with and was delivered me at my arival it is so full of baits to feed both the eyes and the understanding that it were impossible I could refrain fâ—om reading it more than once It is so judicious and withal so passionate that I cannot think of it without congratulating with my Countrey that we have seen Philosophers even in our own language and those Philosophers such Professe goodnesse as well as wisdome the time you see is now past for to satisfie your desire but though the King by the activity of his courage could not render those remedies unuseful which you expect from my idle meditations yet I mean not to act the bold Empyrick or Mountebank in your presence It would argue too much impudence to send any drugs and receipts from a country village to Paris and to undertake the cure of afflicted mindes in a countrey of good Books and great Doctors Nay I have seen Sir in your own house a Megazin of rare instructions and examples both printed and in hand-writing And Justus Lipsius had he been your Neighbour might have made a purchase of a Constantia of a stronger and better temper then her that he hath bestowed among us Since then the whole masse and mine is in your own power I cannot perswade my self that you could have desir'd those few Grains that I could furnish you with and that being so rich your self you were resolv'd to exhaust my poor stock too Taking view from hence at so farre distance of the estate and affairs of our Frontiers I cannot distinctly and cleerly bestowe my judgement on them I am content to carry about me the thoughts of an honest man and to remove from my minde the disgusts of ill successe with good hopes I know Sir that the fairest kingdomes have suffered the vicissitudes of good and evil and that the brightest fortune hath some spots and shadows and knowing this I cannot think strange of any disasters that may happen or be surprized with the news of a revolt or be any thing amazed with losses more then with gains Flanders I confesse is advanced pretty farre into Piccardy and would have given the like alarm to France as France had given it the yeer before But it may be they that plunder it freely to day in the field will be to morrow blockt up in a siege your good Brothers I know will revenge the quarrel and they that pillage the Cities of others will be glad to get them home to save their own habitations against their Ancient subject We must then confesse that Antiquity hath wisely term'd God of Warre Communem Martem that Homer never gave it a fitter Epithet then that It it certain that it never favours the same cause long This is a Fugitive in all Armies and a starter from all parties sometimes a Guelpht and sometimes a Gibellin sometimes wearing the white scarf and sometimes the red This is too much Sir concerning Publique Affairs Doe me the favour as to send to M. du Moulin the answer that I have made him the latter words thereof will call to your minde those three verses of our Hierusalem Torq Tasso la Gierusal Liberata Amando in te ciò .c. By loving that in thee which others fear doth move And envious hate be seems thy virtues to approve And willingly with thee could make a league of love I beg of you the good favours of that grand adversary of the Romanists but yours above all sine I am with all my soul Sir Your c. Balzac 30. Octob. 1636. To Monsieur du MOULIN LET. II. SIR Courtesie never denies respect to any man and thinks no mans Presents mean but her own This was it no doubt that made You speak of me in such an high strain and set so great a price upon my Book which indeed is but the worst part of your Librarie I see you will not alter your course or forget your ancient civility for the which I am infinitely obliged unto you And if some men would needs perswade me that at other times you handle mee something rudely yet I cannot believe you do it with an hostile hand on the contrary I suppose that in your familiar Letters you give a a true copie and character of your self but in actions of ceremonie men require another countenance and more studied gravity otherwise Sir my nature can bear with my friends and I am not of so delicate a sense as to complain of pettie wrongs which I suffer-Besides that I doe not at all meddle with that Science of division which â—eaches to rent our Saviours Coat into a thousand pieces and to implead and cavil against every word of his Testament This commonly doth rather exasperate mens spirits then compose affairs and multiply doubts in stead of increasing charity If I were put to my choice I would take a little lesse of that which puffeth up and a little more of that which edifieth Truth is not the purchase of hot blood or of incensed choler or a disturbed imagination The Labyrinthes of Logick are not the easiest way to heaven and oft times God hides himself from them that search him with over much curiosity You will avouch I am sure all that I say and this too Sir that the best quarrels prove nought and of bad consequence and that the contentions of Doctors prove the murthers of their Brethrens souls if they tend not to the peace of the Church for my part I can with other vulgar Christians but wish for it but you can with the Worthies of Christian Religion contribute much towards it and whensoever you shall preach and teach this I shall ascribe unto you one of the principal parts of that holy work But while we expect that this peace be advanced through the grace of God and that we draw neerer every day one to another nothing hinders but that we may maintain innocent commerce and traffick in things lawful There is no law rightly interpreted that is repugnant to that of Humanity doth not accord with the law of Nations If our opinions differ it is not necessary that our affections should disagree the head and the heart have their several motions and actions distinct and moral vertue can reconcile and unite what the intellectual might separate Love me therefore still if you please since you may do it lawfully and I believe also that I may be without scruple while I live Sir Your c. Balzac March 30. 1636. To Monsieur L' Huillier Councellor to the King and Ordinary Mr. of his Accounts LET. III. SIR YOu can make men happy and procure them Sun shine dayes where and when you
than that you cured her of But I have taught her that there are a sort of Enchanters that bewitch by commending and that the wanton Courtship of Sirens hath allured many to their ruines and fill'd the Seas with frequent shipwracks She believes her Glasse and me too who are more true to her then you and who without much difficulty can rectifie her opinion of her self which you would have strained too high For my own particular I cease not to be your debtor for the quaint extravagances and hyperboles wherein you expresse your affection towards me and for her part separating your commendations from her name and considering them asunder by themselves she esteems them as the wealth of a Jewellers shop which indeed may delight her eyes but she findes nothing there that belongs to her Receive this complement as from her if you please I am meerly but her Secretary in this point and J shall remain Sir Your c. Balzac 12. Octob. 1636. To Monsieur de Bonair LET. VIII SIR the honourable mention that you were pleased to make of me in your Book is a most singular favour and I cannot behold my self in so fair a seat without some temptation of vain glory I know not as yet whether my testimonie be to be admitted or rejected and whether I be an Apocryphall or Canonicall Author but since you have cited me it is not lawful for me to doubt any more of the good successe of my writings and after this I dare claim a place in the noblest Libraries It is true J dare not own that Title you bestow on me of the Genius of Eloquence Besides that this would be a wrong to Mercury and Pythe who have for many ages possest the Chair and swayed the Art of Elocution it were necessary also that J had the suffrages of all the Preachers and Advocates of the Realm and you know Sir that there is none of them so mean that doth not perswade himself that he is the God of Perswasion and would very hardly confesse a superior J must not therefore entertain an Elogie which would be challenged from me by two so great Nations equally terrible and potent and J am content to be lesse prized by you since J am sure of the same affection you shall preserve that for me if you please since J am willing to give it its true estimation and to be really Sir Your c. Balzac 20. Dec. 1635. To Monsieur Huggens Councellor and Secretary of the Commands of my Lord the Prince of Orange LET. XIX SIR I have received with your Letter the Dissertation of Monsieur in Print but to write my opinion thereof would be too dangerous an enterprise I never mean to doubt of the certainty of his Doctrine and too bad construction was made of me at the beginning of our commerce for to adventure farther in that way It sufficeth me to confesse that I was lost in all probability had it not been for your protection since even under that I could hardly be secure This is a Buckler that hath been pierced in a thousand places and to speak freely hath served me rather for a shew then defence My great Adversary as you call him would rain have made an example of your poor Suppliant and shewed that he did not either believe that you did love me so dearlie or that he did not much reward the persons whom you so loved Nevertheless Sir if I had been of a quarrelsom humor that matter perhaps would not have been so appeased and men would perswade me that my person only was injur'd my Assertions being as firm and as found as they were before the batterie But let the field be his seeing he cannot endure an encounter that I say not a resistance and I do willinglie yield him all the advantages of this action He chose rather to take me then receive my submission and preferr'd a trophey before an homage Neverthelesse I am resolv'd not to alter my condition or forget my wonted civility Yet I do make a stand at the very same bounds that he hath leapt over and give respect to that Character which he hath violated I speak of your love and good opinion which are more precious to me then my writings or my reputation and which I cannot disesteem wheresoever I met them Sir there will be alwaies in the world Oppressors and man oppressed and I must be one of the Innocents that must suffer the persecutions of a Herod But there is nothing so hard that love cannot digest I pardon for your sake all my injuries and sufferings with all my heart and am contented to be ill intreated as long as I give evidence that I am Sir Your c. Balzac 10. Septemb. 1636. To Monsieur de Racan LET. X. SIR I render you thanks for your Shephtardesse with whom I enjoyed such ravishing pleasures that the voluptuous never enjoy the like and yet so chast and honest that I think not my self bound to make confession she hath reviv'd my spirits that were rebated with eager studie and retired with distinctions and Syllogismes I cannot dissemble I have not this long time Sir spent a day more happilie then when I entertained Her And if I have thought Her so beautiful in her own simple weeds and natural habiliments without the addition of those helps which serve to embellish and adorn what will it be when she will appear in the pomp and luster of the Theater and when those things that are of themselves so powerful will be mended with the help of the voice and the graces of pronunciation if I thought She were to come forth suddainlie in that Equipage I would straight begin my journie for to be present at that joyful spectacle and to give you the applause which you do justlie deserve But since you have sent Her me being yet warm from the birth and that She must grow up a while and gather strength in your hands I hope I shall be time enough at Roche to behold her in her glorie I understand Sir in the mean while that there is a great contention between the Ladies about the names of Orante and Ortana and that they are more ambitious of the scrip and sheapheards hook then any thing It lieth in you to do them justice satisfie their ambition yet notwithstanding if youl 'e believe be you must casheere this rural Equipage adapt yourselfe to Crowns Scepters That active and strong spirit which doth swey you hath too much vigor for to dwell on weaker Themes it would break all the furniture of Horn-pipes and Hau-bois that you should fill it with moreover the Countrie and Cabbin is not the proper spheare of magnificence and Shepheardesses must not dance to the sound of a Trumpet I have therefore chosen for you an heroick subject indeed and worthy the courage and majestie of your style which style carrieth all the exactnesse of rules and hath been alreadie used with good approbation by the
should be but one Monarch upon earth and that the Pope himself for his better accomodation doth mean to resign Rome to him and exchange it for the Arch-Bishoprick of Toledo That the Battle where the King of Sueden was slain was the last sigh of dying libertie that this Prince was no such thing as we took him to be and for those atchievements of his which we entertain'd with such wonder nothing was performed without the help of Magick by vertue onelie of some charms and characters and the assistance of the Powers of Hell which at last was found too weak against the House of Austria That to the end that the second causes and humane means might concur with the design of providence forrain affaires do seem to complie of themselves to this great change That the King of England is not so brave but that he would be contented to be a Feudatary of the King of Spain and if it goes to the worst that there will not be wanting some Gunpowder-men to make him caper in the aire with his whole Realme That the cinders of the Holy League and the remainder of the Huguenot Partie begin to flame a new in Frence by the bellowes and Libells of St. Germaine that they have bargain'd with some secret Engineers who have undertaken to fortifie Roâ—bâ—l in one night That Duke Charles must be revenged upon Nancy and that he doth hold Paris alreadie in extremitie that if there be not a Spanish Garrison alreadie in Turin and Câ—sall there will be one when it shall seem good to his Catholick Mâ—jesty and when the Dukes of Savoy and Mantua shall be received into his favour That he will have none of Venice or Amsterdam because that an Illuminatee of Madrid and a Sybille of Naples have assured him that the Sea will one day swallow up these two great Cities and the losse of his Spaniards that should be their Commanders would be a cause of great grief unto him That he had long since chastis'd the Rebels of Holland if some considerations of state had not hindered him from it But let him preserve that Land of contradiction for a Fencing-schoole for his own Subjects to keep them from idlenesse and to breath them by continual exercise That for the rest if the world will not be so easilie conquered he hath in his coffers wherewith to buy it And hereabouts this Daughter of Fame and Enceladus her Brother must raise her tone higher and out-bid her first figure or number she must with one dash of the pen make more gold then the Sun can make in a thousand years she must make the windes labor and force the Ocean to groan under the new Fleet which according to her computation must arrive everie moneth punctuallie at Lisbon and Sivil she must make a discoverie if needs be of the third Indies and finde out all the hidden mines there not those within the Demaines of Antichrist excepted and cause them to be guarded by those evil Spirits which S Augustine calls for this reason Incubones Thesauroruâ—â— c. Behold Sir a rude draught of a work which expects from you its consummation and perfection which you might soon finish if your poetical fancie should once seize you Here is matter you see for an excellent Irony and wherewith to continue it to a hundred verses and more though the Comedy did affect you neere so little especiallie when you shall adde from and fashion to the stuffe which I present you with who am Sir Your c. Balzac 27. Nov. 1637. To Monsieur de Couurelles LET. XXVIII SIR J cannot write unto you but tumultuarilie my hands and head are so ful of businesse that being to take a journie to Paris I am bound to bid farewell to the Clergie the Nâ—bilitie and the Commons It is now four years that I have deliberated upon this voyage and being at last resolved I am like by your favor to be accompanied then I did expect Comes facundus in via c. I think I may give this attribute to your Book after the Elogy which you vouchsafe me therein and if I had not alreadie taken part and declared my selfe for the Author of the Flandrian History who is one of my good Lords and friends I should have entered blindlie into a new faction which as it seems you do abet and patronize but Sir you will not take it amisse that I professe constancie and that this second Author hath not won my first affection This evening I shall begin to entertain him and to taste of those delicacies whereof you were pleased to make an Essay These will not be painted Cares I am sure not Pageants of good no nimble juglings and impostures practised upon the eye and imagination as most part of those things are that come from that Countrie There is no imposture so finelie contrived as to be able to cheat so cautious a judgement as yours And I will folllow you wheresoever you will please to lead me I mean still to except matters of faith and I believe you will not be offended with such an exception since the Lawes of friendship will allow it me and since I never cease to be most affectionatelie Sir Your c. Angoulesme March 8. 1636. To LET. XXIX SIR My willingnesse to relieve afflicted men deserves not the thanks which I have reapt thereby This is a passion which on my part doth but produce fruitlesse desires and which cannot by you be â—â—d in any estimation but out of a superlative noblenesse in you In that I have given harbor to a man that was persecuted I did but that which the Law of Nations required of me and what I would not have denied to the misfortunes of an or a Spaniard If you take this to mind and become my debtor you do assume the interest of all mankind and acquit the honor of the whole world for my part I am twice rewarded for an act which J thought was sufficientlie rewarded in the doing and for which J expected neither honor nor acknowledgement You see Sir that I am not privie to your secrets and if you were obliged hereby it was by an innocent and blindly ignorant man For the Cavalier touching whom you aske some news J believe that he hath prevented me as being unwilling that any other then himself should be the Historian of his adventures He will no question write unto you what hath hapned unto him in the Resectory of the Fathers and the notable advantages he hath gotten over a Gladiator of the long Gown J am not troubled a whit that he hath got him some credit in so good a place and gained the reputation of a man of valor Yet I must tell you that his credit is dearer unto me then my own interest and that if he have not the mind to dispute it is not my desire he should turn for my sake He may be my friend at a cheaper rate and I can content my self with the
calmness and tranquillitie of his passion not needing that it should break forth and appear through noise and jangling Many men you know never do a good turn but that they may have occasion of upbraiding Poverty is more tolerable then such Creditors and there are some Patrons of such harsh dispositions that I would chuse persecution before their succors Upon our first meeting I will declare my self more particularly to you and in the mean while rest Sir Your c. Paris May 3. 1631. To my Lord the Bishop of Angoulesme chief Almener to the Illustrious Queen of great Brittain LET. XXX MY LORD I have seen in a Letter that you have written to Monsieur that my name is not unknown unto you and that I have some share in your good Graces this is a favor which I owe to your courtesie onely and I dare not believe that my more then small deserts could have acquir'd me such an inestimable good as that I cannot justlie enjoy it if you would not admit of that perfect devotion and reverence which I offer you and which I were bound to pay to your virtue though I should never reflect upon your Dignity You have at first boaâ—ding ingaged my observance It will be my Lord an incredible contentment unto me to enjoy that happy entertainment and discourse which you have done me the honor to promise me And I am confident that I shall still depart thence a better man and more learned though my inclination be never so untoward and unapt for good purposes and my memorie never so slipperie to retain the impression of fair Ideas But I begin to fear that your Flock should in the mean while languish for you and that the interests of France will crosse and oppose themselves against the wishes of our Province The fear of that was it that caused me to send England a Book which J did heartilie desire J could have presented to you there together with the Author He is one of the great Votaries of that great Cardinal Perron your Uncle He doth celebrate his memorie without intermission and adores his learned Reliques He doth glorie in being his ghostlie Son and you will not I am sure make any difficultie to avow this spiritual alliance that is between you and him being joyned with the condition that he desires to live in all his lifetime which is to be My Lord Your c. Balzac 20. Dec. 1636. To Monsieur De LET. XXXI Sir I write unto you with a heart wounded with sorrow and make my moan to you for the sinister opinion that you have conceived of me upon the first evill report that was suggested to you concerning me I thought J had given you a sufficient assurance of the smoothnâ—sse and plamnesse of my soul that you should not have so easily doubted of it and entertain a belief so injurious to amity before you had communicated your jealousies to your friends and made them cleare enough You know Sir more then any other that my passions are not close and reserved but J carrie my soul still in my prehead When J was not as yet so far your Servant as now J am J did not use much Artifice and dissimulation to perswade the contrarie and thence you might have deduc'd an infallible conclusion that if I had chang'd my inclination I would not have deceived you with new protestations of fidelitie I do therefore religiously protest unto you that honoring you with that zeal as I do you could not inflict a greater punishment upon me then the forfeiture of your favors But moreover I do swear to you by all that is sacred in the world that I have committed nothing that might deserve such a cruel punishment After this me thinks you might be confirm'd in the truth but pardon me if I tell you you should have been so before and that I do extreamlie wonder that a weak and grosse calumnie should quite ruine and deface in your thoughts the good impressions which I thought I had left there I cannot hinder mens mis-constructions of me or binde Interpreters from doing violence and putting my words upon the rack to make them depose things which were far from my intentions Sophisters make use of a true proposition to infer an erroneous conclusion and Pettisoggers still cite the Law to authorise their injustice and yet none will tax truth to be the cause of error or Law the mother of injustice I cannot warrant but my own thoughts which are sound and innocent not those of my adversaries which are full of malice and rancor I am responsible for the things that I have written and readie withall to maintain them But all the visions and fancies of men are not in my power Everie man can make a nimble and subtle decipherer of another mans intentions The same picture according to several lights and postures may have several representations and often times there is a great difference between a Text and the Commentaries the meaning of the Author and the Criticismes of Grammarians I said that I knew some strange insufferable humors and no way fit to possesse and sway free-born men Therefore I said that a man whom I do infinitelie esteem and honor was of that humor Loe here Sir not to say half of what I think of it a conclusion verie unworthie a Logician and which is as far from common as from my particular sense Jndeed it was not you that deduced it yet you should not have entertain'd it at second hand and if it did not seem to you to be palpably false yet you might have demurr'd a while and suspected it you have done your selfe wrong and me too in conceiving so bad a thought of your own merit and my fidelitie in expressing that you have some distrust of your self who are of no mean value and but verie little confidence in me whose freeness is something worth I have but little skill in fallacies and a mean Jugler may sometimes gain credit with me neverthelesse I should never have been thus surpris'd and deluded and when you have wrote to me in a dozen Letters at least that you knew some men that wrote pernicious Books and maintained Heretical Propositions I did not yield to such an imagination that this did reflect upon me and when you sent a Lackey into this Province I did not forbear to send you commendations by him You see that I am stung and therefore am sencible If your love were not deare unto me I could well enough bear your neglect of me and if my zeale to you were not strong I should endeavor to solace my selfe after your ill intreating of me But because I love I would be requited with love and I cannot brook to be taxt with a fault which I thought did not deserve so much as suspition Sir I am upon the point to publish a new Volum of Letters where there be some which I have written unto you and others where I make mention of you as
it appear You send me no news concerning the affaires of Italy and I am very desirous to hear some It hath been told me that Monsieur Maynard hath not appeared in Paris though Monsieur de Noâ—illes be arrived thither He will perhaps be stayed a longer time If it be so my affection is so far ingenious as to torment my mind I stand in fear for his sake of all the dangers both of Sea and Land J do apprehend at once that he is led captive into Barbary and that the Spaniards have surprised him That which must comfort me in this distraction is that a good spirit doth passe undauntedly through all and that they were the Poets his Predecessors that made wings for Daedâ—lus However you will confess that if Epigrams be current among the Millanois and that he wants but 2000 of them for his ransom he hath wherewth to satisfie them without dammage to himself In truth I am sollicitous touching this my dear friend and you will oblige me if you will be pleased to send me a relation of his Adventures when you shall come to know them I am Sir Your c. Balzac 30 Decem. 1636. To Monsieur Gerard Secretary to my Lord the Duke of Espernon LET. LVIII SIR Happy are those actions that fall under your Pen and History Since you do extol a mans idleness even to the envy of the world and so far as to propose it for an example what will you talk of the life of the Swedish King and other Miracles of our age if you will take them in hand The mischief is that those that have heard you shall see me and you have set me at so high a rate that I cannot hold after it but upon your credit and by my own absence If Monsieur the Duke of passeth by Balzac the Legend that you have framed of me will at first dash lose that probability that it carried and I shall be no more that famous Hermit that hath been related and described unto him by an officious Impostor In vain will he seek among my papers the fine things that you have promised him and it will repent him perhapâ— that he turned out of the Rode for such a sad spectacle that I shall exhibit him In any case Sir I will present my self and if hitherto you have deceived him yet you shall acquit your self of the name of Cozener when you shall assure him on my behalf of an inviolable fidelity and hearty acknowledgement These are qualities which I possess in a soveraign degree and which I preserve for him in the bottom of my soul But the passion which I bear to his Honour must not be still kept as a secret and I will at length profess what I have this long while adored in particular manner Do me the favor as to tell him thus much and believe withall if you please that I am Sir Your c. Balzac 30. March 1635. To the same LET. LIX SIR I love no kind of quarrelling much lesse with my friends But it is a thing worthy pitty that a man should receive continual wrongs and yet must not open his mouth to complain but he shall be censured for a troublesom and untoward fellow I know the eager spirit of that man that speaks so loud when my interests are in agitation I know he is carried with the hot vapors that exhale from that sulphury vein which you say lyeth about his heart But you will confesse notwithstanding that the bottom of that heart is not bad His lavishness proceeds from a fair spring and in acts of friendship an inundation is better then drouth I forgive the irritated zeal inconsiderate goodness and impetuousness of a man that cannot love with moderation We must do him some right and not hate his passion though we approve it not for my part I do permit it but not imploy it and though he tells me that he hath a fierce Satyre to come forth to kill our Messer if he do not save himself in the little Cottage I give him thanks for his good will but I desire him to deliver the Satyre into my hands for this purpose only that none might see it You shal find in my packet some latine compositions that were sent me particularly the latter teares of S. Peter which have been commended unto you In my judgement and I think you will subscribe to it he is too subtle and shews too much punctuality in delineating a true Penitent Nature doth not speak thus nor its passions either which are the Daughters of nature as subtleties are the wantons of Art S. Peters sorrow is admirably well expressed by Grotius and these four verses of his which I remember do weigh down the 400 that I have sent you Quae me recondet Regiâ— quâ maestum diem Fallam latebrâ quaero nigrantem specum Quâ me sepeliam vivus ubi nullum vidâ—ns Nulli videndus lachrymas soveam meas Are not these worthy of the Heroick times and purest Antiquity the rest of the discourse is animated with the same Genius and is a lesson for Orators that sorrow must not be elaborate or at leastwise must not betray any studied care I leave your Brother to relate newes he hath in charge to inform you of all occurrences and therefore I have nothing to say but that I am Sir Your c. Balzac 15. June 1636. To Monsieur De la Mothe Le Vayer LET. LX. SIR My spirits have been so dull and heavy these three dayes â—hat it is beyond imagination Never did any man lose the relish of all Books and Arts as I did and hence you may gather that that which you sent me was very delicate when it procured an appetite to a languishing man You have strangely altered me in a moment my soul is touched to the quick and you have made it so hungry after knowledge that I have no mind to any thing but to your Philosophy If you will set up a Sect I am ready to enrole my self at least wise I will subscribe willingly to that franke Doctrine which maintains its liberty against the usurpations of Aristotle and is contented to acknowledge lawful power but not to be slave to the Tyranny of one particular man I speak Sir as I believe Doubtless your work will last and to give you your full due I must give it in your own language so noble an act of the soul is not the weakest argument we have of its immortality and if any shall hereafter take in hand this subject he will be beholding to you for this new argument which your modesty would not permit you to make use of Certainly there were no reason nor colour that the Off-spring should be of a better condition then the Mother and that those productions which must encounter time and conquer Fate should flow from a corruptible Principle But since I have sped so well in my first sollicitations I desire not to stop there This good
success doth encourage me to redouble them and in the name of all the Learned to begge yet more works of the same vigour Though I should perform no other Office in the Commonwealth of Learning then this I were not an unuseful member and this will be one day honour enough for me when it will be said that I gave the counsel for those labors which you have undertaken Acquire for me Sir this reputation that I may adde it to that which I would gladly deserve all my life time which is to be Balzac 29. March 1637. Your c. To Monsieur de LET. LXI SIR The Discourse which you did me the honour to send me is full of an infinite number of good things and none can deny but your friend is both learned and judicious Nevertheless I do not think that he will finde in that place whither he goeth that approbation which he promiseth to himself I think that for his speaking Latine after the French manner his meaning is better than his expression He is not alwayes so regular as I would desire and his words do sometimes do wrong to his thoughts True it is that in these times we are very nice and delicate in the purity of expressions VVe can brook no stile that is licentious be it never so little and whatsoever is no after the garbe of the Court is accounted barbarous This is not that I am of the opinion of Monsieur do that said that the good mans judgement could never passe beyond the Garâ—nd and that he was put into such a fright at Blaye that he durst not adventure any farther VVhen he spake this he forgot sure that Mons de Pibrac Monside Montegne and the Cardinal de Ossat were Gascons their solid judgements which are admired to this day over all Europe do sufficiently refute that poor jest which passeth among some for excellent It is certain that Reason is common to all Countries and consequently is of that where they say Adieu-sias as well as when they say Dieu vous condu ssi It is confined to no place and we may finde subtlety among the Switzers and stupidity among the Florentines but indeed for the Language it is not all alike without question in some places they speak better then elsewhere and whereas a Courtier of Rome did tast something of Padua in the Histories of Titus Liviuâ— it is not impossible to observe in the writings and conversations of your men some tincture of their Province Ever and anon you shall observe them to let flip vousist for voulust fausist for falust cousin miâ—n ie suis esté a Thoulouze which marre all good speech and their allarent donuarent armarent have run over their banks and come as far as our Countrey The late Monsieur de Malherbe hath told me often that he did what possible he could for to correct the dialect of Monsieur de and purge it of Gasconisme but could never bring it about so difficult is it to wipe off our natural stains and utterly to weare out the badge of our Countrey Neverthelesse for all this neither the Patavinity of Titus Livius nor the Gasconisme of some of our times do hinder them from being reputed Eloquent And for one petty fault either of use or of Grammer I condemn not those works which in all other respects are excellent To satisfie your desire I have sent by Monsieur de the Letters of Monsieur Heinsius one whereof preceded my Dissertation the other followed his answer Now that I have furnished you with these two Letters to entertain you a while be pleased not to take it amisse that I take leave of you and all the world for two years I am forbid to write any thing for so long a time and this is an oath that I have taken by the order of my Confessor and upon good and waighty considerations I hope God will give me the grace to observe it Nec mihi scribendi veniet tam dira cupido And you will not I am sure tempt me to sin and provoke me to break that silence which I have sworn to But though you should solicite me a thoâ—â—and times and assault me every day in two or three Languages I am resolved to be inexorable and not to be moved with that happy abundance of your words If you terme me uncivil and expostulate with me in the words of your Poet. Vnde istam meruit non faelix charta repulsam Hostes ab Hoste tamen per barbara verba salutem Accipit Salve mediis intervenit armis Respondent saxa homini I will make answer with an audible voice both to your Poet and you that Religion must sway Civility and that a lesser duty must yield to a greater Finally if there be an absolute necessity that we have some commerce with each other in this case I will chuse rather to make a journey then write a letter and expose my self to the hazard of shipwrack by going to see you then violate my faith by writing to you Adieu then until the year of 1639. which we will begin by Gods grace by the renewing of our ancient Trafick Is is Sir Your c. Balzac FINIS A Table of the Letters as they lie in order which are contained in this Volume TO Monsieur Conrart Let. 1. p. 1. To Monsieur du Moulin let 2. p. 3 To Mons L'Huillier let 3. p. 4 To Mons the Abbat of Rois-Robert let 4. p. 6 To my Lord the Earl of Excester let 5. p. 7 To my Lord the Duke De la Valette let 6. p. 8 To Mins Drovet let 7. p. 9 To Mons De-Bonair let 8. p. 10 To Mons Huggens let 9. p. 11 To Mons de Racan let 10. p. 12 To Mons De St. Chartres let 11. p. 13 To Mons Baudoin let 12. p. 14 To Mons De Coignet let 13. p. 15 To Madam Desloges let 14. p. 16 To my Lord Keeper of the Seals Seguier c. let 15. p. 17 To Mons De Morins let 16. p. 18 To Mons De Vaugelas let 17. p. 19 To Mons De la Motte Aigron let 18. p. 21 To Mons De Borstel let 19. p. 22 To Mons the chief Advocate let 20. p. 23 To Mons De Maury let 21. p. 24 To Mons De Mondory let 22. p. 24 To Mons Le Guay let 23. p. 26 To Mons De Silhon let 24. p. 26 To Mons De la Fosse let 25. p. 27 To Mons D' Espesses let 26. p 29 To the same let 27. p. 30 To Mons De Couurelles let 28. p. 32 To let 29. p. 32 To my Lord the Bishop of Angoulesme let 30. p. 33 To Mons de let 31. p. 34 To Mons De Serizary let 32. p. 39 To Mons Habert Abbat of Cerizy l. 33. p. 40 To Mons De Gaillard let 34. p. 41 To the same let 35. p. 42 To Madam Desloges let 36. p. 43 To Mons de let 37. p. 44 To Mons Girard let 38. p. 46 To the same let 39. p. 47 To the same let 40. p. 48 To the same let 41. p. 49 To Madamoisel de Campagnole let 42. p. 50 To Mons the Abbat of Bois-Robert let 43. p. 51 To the same let 44. p. 52 To the same let 45. p. 53 To Mons de Savignac let 46. p. 54 To Mons Chapelain let 47. p. 56 To the same let 48. p. 57 To the same let 49. p. 58 To the same let 50. p. 59 To the same let 51. p. 60 To the same let 52. p. 62 To the same let 53. p. 63 To the same let 54. p. 64 To the same let 55. p. 65 To the same let 56. p. 66 To Mons de Silhon let 57. p. 67 To Mons Gerard Secretary to the D. of Espernon l. 58. p. 68 To the same let 59. p. 69 To Mons de la Mothe le Vayer let 60. p. 70 To Mons de let 61. p. 71 * Madam Gabriella * A little principality in France The City of Mets. * Meaning himself Pierre Math. Hist de Hen. 4. Liv. 3. L. 7. nat Hist c 30. Hom. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mart l. 4. Epig. 32.