Part 1

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CRITICAL MISCELLANIES

JOHN MORLEY

VOL. II.

Essay 1: Vauvenargues

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1905

CONTENTS OF VOL. II. PAGE

The influence of Pascal 1

Vauvenargues holds the balance between him and the votaries of Perfectibility 4

Birth, education, and hard life of Vauvenargues 4

Life in Paris, and friendship with Voltaire 10

His religious sentiment 12

His delicacy, reserve, and psychagogic quality 15

Certain inability to appreciate marked originality 17

Criticisms on Moliere, Racine, and Corneille 19

Comparison with English aphoristic writers and moralists 20

Character the key to his theory of greatness 25

His exaltation of spontaneous feeling, a protest against Rochefoucauld and Pascal 26

His plea for a normal sense of human relation, the same 28

His doctrine of the Will connected with his doctrine of Character 29

Antipathy to ascetic restrictions 33

Two ways of examining character: that followed by Vauvenargues 34

Examples of his style 36

The beauty of his nature to be read in his face 40

VAUVENARGUES.