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VAUVENARGUES, LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUI...

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Originally appearing in Volume V27, Page 962 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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VAUVENARGUES, LUC DE CLAPIERS, See also:MARQUIS DE (1715-1747) , See also:French moralist and See also:miscellaneous writer, was See also:born at See also:Aix in See also:Provence on the 6th of See also:August 1715. His See also:family was poor though See also:noble; he was educated at the See also:college of Aix, where he learned little—neither Latin nor See also:Greek—but by means of a See also:translation acquired a See also:great admiration for See also:Plutarch: He entered the See also:army as sub-See also:lieutenant in the See also:king's See also:regiment, and served for more than ten years, taking See also:part in the See also:Italian See also:campaign of See also:Marshal See also:Villars in 1733, and in the disastrous expedition to Bohemia in support of See also:Frederick the Great's designs on See also:Silesia, in which the French were abandoned by their ally. Vauvenargues took part in Marshal Belle-Isle's See also:winter See also:retreat from See also:Prague. On this occasion his legs were frozen, and though he spent a See also:long See also:time in See also:hospital at See also:Nancy he never completely recovered. He was See also:present at the See also:battle of See also:Dettingen, and on his return to See also:France was garrisoned at See also:Arras. His military career was now at an end. He had long been desired by the marquis of See also:Mirabeau, author of L'Ami See also:des /tontines, and See also:father of the statesman, to turn to literature, but poverty prevented him from going to See also:Paris as his friend wished. He wished to enter the See also:diplomatic service, and made applications to the ministers and to the king himself. These efforts were unsuccessful, but Vauvenargues was on the point of securing his See also:appointment through the intervention of See also:Voltaire when an attack of smallpox completed the ruin of his See also:health and rendered diplomatic employment out of the question. Voltaire then asked him to submit to him his ideas of the difference between See also:Racine and See also:Corneille. The acquaintance thus begun ripened into real and lasting friendship. Vauvenargues removed to Paris in 1745, and lived there in the closest retirement, seeing but few See also:friends, of whom See also:Marmontel and Voltaire were the See also:chief.

Among his correspondents was the archaeologist Fauris de See also:

Saint-Vincens. Vauvenargues published in 1746 an Introduction d la connaissance de See also:resin-it humain, with certain Reflexions and Maximes appended. He died in Paris on the 28th of May 1747. The bulk of Vauvenargues's See also:work is very small, but its See also:interest is very considerable. In the Introduction, in the Reflexions and in the See also:minor fragments, it consists, in fact, of detached and somewhat desultory thoughts on questions of moral See also:philosophy and of See also:literary See also:criticism. Sainte-Beuve has mildly said that as a literary critic Vauvenargues " shows inexperience." His literary criticism is indeed limited to a repetition in crude See also:form of the stock ideas of his time. Thus he exaggerates immensely the value of Racine and Boileau, but depreciates Corneille and even See also:Moliere. As a writer he stands far higher. His See also:style is indeed, according to strict See also:academic See also:judgment, somewhat incorrect, and his few excursions into See also:rhetoric have the artificial and affected See also:character which See also:mars so much 18th-See also:century work. His strength, however, is not really in any way that of a See also:man of letters, but that of a moralist. He did not adopt the See also:complete philosophe attitude; in his letters, at any See also:rate, he poses as " neutral " between the religious and the See also:anti-religious school. In some of his See also:maxims about politics there is also traceable the hollow and confused See also:jargon about tyrants and See also:liberty which did so much to bring about the struggles of the Revolution.

It is in morals proper, in the discussion and application of See also:

general principles of conduct, that Vauvenargues shines. He is not an exact psychologist, much less a rigorous metaphysician. His terminology is popular and loose, and he hardly attempts the co-ordination of his ideas into ally See also:system. His real strength is in a See also:department which the French have always cultivated with greater success than any other See also:modern See also:people—the expression in more or less epigrammatic See also:language of the results of acute observation of human conduct and motives, for which he had found ample leisure in his See also:campaigns. The chief distinction between Vauvenargues r1 and his great predecessor La Rochefoucauld is that Vauvenargues, unlike La Rochefoucauld, thinks nobly of man, and is altogether inclined rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean theory. He has indeed been called a modern Stoic, and, allowing for the vagueness of all such phrases, there is much to be said for the description. An edition of the Euvres of Vauvenargues, slightly enlarged, appeared in the See also:year of his See also:death. There were some subsequent See also:editions, superseded by that of M. See also:Gilbert (2 vols., 1857), which contains some See also:correspondence, some Dialogues of the Dead, " characters " in See also:imitation of See also:Theophrastus and La See also:Gruyere, and numerous See also:short pieces of criticism and moralizing. The best comments on Vauvenargues, besides those contained in Gilbert's edition, are to be found in four essays by Sainte-Beuve in Causeries du lundi, vols. iii. and xiv., and in See also:Villemain's Tableau de la litterature francaise au X VIII'"° sibcle. See also M. Paleologue, Vauvenargues (189o); and Selections from La Bruyere and Vauvenargues, with memoir and notes by See also:Miss See also:Elizabeth See also:Lee (1903).

End of Article: VAUVENARGUES, LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE (1715-1747)

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