Provincial Letters: Containing an Exposure of the Reasoning and Morals of the Jesuits. By Blaise Pascal. Originally published under the Name of Louis de Montalte. Translated from the French. To which is added, A View of the History of the Jesuits, and the late Bull for the Revival of the Order in Europe. 8vo. pp. 388. "The name of Pascal (that prodigy of parts, as Locke calls him),” says Mr. Dugald Stewart, "is more familiar to modern ears than that of any of the other learned and polished anchorites who have rendered the sanctuary of Port Royal so illustrious. Abstracting from his great merit in matheruatics and in physics, his reputation rests chiefly on the Provincial Letters;' a work from which Voltaire, notwithstanding his strong prejudices against the author, dates the fiscatus of the French language; and of which the same excellent judge has said, Mo • liere's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity.' The author was originally induced to compose and pubfish them by a very casual circumstance. Accustomed frequently to visit a sister, who had taken the veil in the monastery of Port Royal, he was introduced to the society of some celebrated Jansenists, particularly M. Arnauld, who bad recently been engaged in a dispute with the doctors of the Sorbonne. The subjects of difference related chiefly to those points of faith which have continually divided Arminians and Calvinists in the Protestant community : the Jesuits being allied in sentiment to the former, and the Jansenists to the latter. The Jesuits had selected five propositions from a posthumous work of Jausen, or Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, which his adherents believed to contain the doctrine of the scriptures and the fathers on the litigated articles of faith, and procured their condemnation by the Faculty of Theology at Paris, and by Pope Innocent the Xth. Arnauld published a letter in 1655, in which he declared that the condemned propositions were not to be found in the book of Jansenius, and then proceeded 'to controvert the Jesuitical notion of efficacious grace. Being at this time a member of the Sorbonne, violent altercations arose; and as his adversaries were in power, they procured his expul * Supplement to Encyc. Brit, vol, i. p. 1. sion from the Faculty of Theology, by a decree in January 1656. The defence which he made was not in itself very satisfactorily written, and some of his friends intimated their wish to M. Pascal, with whom they had become recently acquainted, and of whose talents they had formed a very just idea, that he would write something upon the subject. This occasioned his first letter, which being much admired, was soon succeeded by others, under the fictitious name of Louis de Montalte; the consequence was, the Jesuits became the objects of ridicule and contempt to all Europe. It is quite needless to accumulate testimonies in favour of the extraordinary merit of this work, otherwise the encomiums of numerous French writers might be introduced; and our elegant Gibbon is said to have pos sessed so enthusiastic an admiration for the book, that he was accustomed to read it through once every year. Amongst those, however, who are always entitled to marked attention, must be ranked d'Alembert, whose words are as follow: This masterpiece of pleasantry and eloquence diverted and moved the indignation of all Europe at their (the Jesuits) expense. In vain they replied, that the greatest part of the theologists and monks had taught, as well as them, the scandalous doctrine with which they were reproached. Their answers, illwritten and full of gall, were not read, while every body knew the Provincial Letters by heart. This work is so much the more admirable, as Pascal, in com posing it, appears to have theologised two things which seemed not made for the theology of that time, language, and pleasantry. The (French) language was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading. In the "Provincial Letters," there is not a single word that is grown obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday. A considerable portion of the merit of this performance consists in the ingenious manner in which Pascal has brought together the extravagant maxins of the principal Jesuitical writers, so as to make them appear truly ridiculous. He does not, as Voltaire (who otherwise bestows upon him great praise) insinuates, collect his citations · from a few individuals, whose sentiments are unwarrantably adduced as a fair specimen of the principles of the whole Society, for he uniformly appeals to the very best of their writers, and particularly to the twenty-four elders, who were so designated on account of the entire confidence which the whole body of the Jesuits reposed in their statements. In fact, Pascal adopted no other than the usual and authorised method of obtaining the real opinions of any extensive society. If in their own publications of their most eminent men be not the proper standard of appeal, by what other means can their opinions be obtained? Besides, none of their writings were issued without the sanction of the superiors of their order. One peculiarity of these "Letters" it is impossible to perceive through the medium of a translation. The words selected by the writer are uniformly the purest which the language furnished; and according to the testimony of Voltaire, "not a single word Occurs, savouring of that vicissitude to which living languages are so subject. Here then we may fix the epocha when our language may be said to have assumed a settled form." The conversational form in which the subject is treated, precludes that oratorical elegance and Ciceronian flow which delights the ear. A certain sprightliness and humour constitute their chief characteristics, interspersed with passages of grave instruction, which prove that Pascal wrote for a higher purpose than to furnish a comedy, or to gratify a malignant feeling. After all, a severe critic might detect in this work some minor faults of composition, as redundances and repetitions, unless, as is most probable, even he should be too much occupied with its numerous beauties. THE PAMPHLETEER; containing the Best Pamphlets of the Day, with original Pamphlets, &c. No. XX. September, 1817. THIS useful undertaking has established itself so firmly in public opinion, that our notice can do little more than repeat the general tribute to acknow ledged merit. The preservation, in a cheap and handsome form, of excellent works which are so liable, as single pamphlets are, to be misused and lost, is in itself an object of considerable interest; and it is impossible to look over either this number, or any one of those which have preceded it, without feeling that a store of exceedingly valuable information has been collected from many perishable repositories, to be here concentrated and laid up in excellent order, not only for the improvement of the present age, but for the instruction of posterity. We shall subjoin a curious paper on the Origin of Pamphlets. << THE ORIGIN OF PAMPHLETS." "I look upon Painphlets," says a writer of the 17th century, 66 as the eldest offspring of paper, and entitled to claim the rights of primogenitorship even of bound volumes, however they may be shorter lived, and the younger brother has so much outgrown the elder. In as much as arguments do now, and more especially did, in the minority of our erudition, not only so much more rarely require a larger compass than pamphlets will comprise, but these being of a more facile, more decent, and simple form, suitable to the character of the more artless ages, they seem to have been preferred by our modest ancestors for the communication of their sentiments, before book-writing became a trade, and lucre and vanity let in deluges of digressory learning to swell up unwieldy folios. Thus I find, not a little to the honor of our subject, no less a person than the renowned Alfred collecting his sage precepts and divine sentences, with his own royal hand, into quaternions of leaves stitched together, which he would enlarge with additional quaternions, as occasion offered; yet seemed he to keep his collection so much within the limits of a pamphlet size, however bound together at last, that he called it by the name of his "Hand-book”because he made it his constant companion, and had it at hand wherever he went. "It was, however, the grand contro versy between the Church of Rome and the first opposers thereof, which seems to have laid the foundation of this kind of writing, and to have given great credit to it at the same time, as well by the many eminent authors it produced in church and state, as the successful detection and defeat thereby befalling those religious impostures which had so universally enslaved the minds of men. Nay, this important reformation has been much ascribed to one little pamphlet only, which a certain lawyer of Gray's Inn, (obliged to fly into Germany for having acted in a play which incensed Cardinal Wolsey) composed there, and conveyed by means of Lady Anne Boleyn, to the perusal of Henry VIII. at the beginning of this rupture; the copies whereof were strewed about at the king's procession to Westminster; the first example, as some think, of that kind of appeal to the public. How the Cardinal was nettled thercat, how he endeavoured to stifle and secrete the same, how it provoked the pen of the bigotted Lord Chancellor (Sir Thomas More), how glaringly it was affixed in the front of the prohibited book, and yet how it captivated the said king's affection and esteem, may not only be presumed from the purport, but gathered from the accounts which our ecclesiastical histories have given thereof. It would be endless to specify how much this province was henceforward cultivated by prelates, statesmen, and authors of the first rank, not excepting majesty itself, in the several examples which might be produced of the said Henry VIII., King James, and Charles; the second of whom thought so honorably of these pamphlet performances, that he deemed one of his own writing so much above human patronage, as to make a dedication of it to Jesus Christ." 66 England, through its spirit of liberty, has been the most fruitful country for the production of pamph. lets; so the period which has been most fruitful in them, was that of the civil wars in the reign of Charles 1. Indeed, in all disorders and commotions, it is natural to have recourse to the most ex peditious intelligence and redress, lest delay should be more dangerous than the deficiency of them; or they superauuated before they were born. For while some persons are labouring in the paroxyms of contention, were others pondering long-winded expedients of accommodation, and prescribing voJumes for a recipe, the dose would come too late for the disease, and the very preparation thereof disable its efficacy. Therefore are pamphlets, and such sort of tracts, rifest in great revolutions; which though looked upon by some as paper-lanterns set a-flying to be gazed at by the multitude, (illuminating whom, they have not always escaped the flames themselves) ye are they beheld, by politic or penetrating eyes, as thermometers of state, foreshowing the temperature and changes of govern. ment, with the calentures approaching therein; and even preservatives to be had against them, would the active be as unanimous to prevent, as the speculists have been industrious to prognosticate the same." The writer of this essay proceeds to remark on the great price given for pamphlets which were become scarce. "There never was a greater esteem, or, better market; never so many eager searches after, or extravagant purchasers of, scarce pamphlets, than in the present times, which have been made evident either from the sales of them in general; as that of Tom Britton, the celebrated small-coal man of Clerkenwell, who, besides his chemical and musical collections, had one of choice pamphlets, which he sold to the late Lord Somers, for upwards of 5002; and more especially Mr. Anthony Collins, the last year, whose library consisting principally of pamphlets, and those mostly controversial, and mostly modern, is reported to have sold both parts of it for 18001.; or whether we descend into particulars, and consider the exorbitant value set upon some single pieces, as the topographical pamphlets of John Norden, the surveyor, which before they were reprinted often sold for 40s. a-piece; the Examination of Sir John Oldcastle, which I have known sold for three guineas, though gleaned from Fox's Book of Martyrs; the Expedition of the Duke of Somerset into Scotland, also has been sold for four guineas, though totally inserted in Hollinshed. From the grand collection of pamphlets which made by Tomlinson, the bookseller, from the latter end of the year 1640 to the beginning of 1660, it appears there were published in that space nearly thirty thousand several tracts; and that these were not the complete issue of that period there is good presumption, and, I believe, proofs in being. Notwithstanding it is enriched with near a hundred manuscripts, which, nobody then (being written on the side of the royalists) would venture to put into print, the whole, however, is progressionally and uniformly bound in upwards of two thousand volumes, of all sizes. The catalogue, which was taken by Marmaduke Foster, the auctioneer, consists of twelve vols. in folio; wherein was every piece has such a punctual register and reference, that the smallest, even of a single leaf, may be readily repaired to thereby. They were collected no doubt with great assiduity and expense, and not preserved in those troublesome times, without great danger and difficulty; the books being often shifted from place to place, out of the army's reach. So scarce were many of the pamphlets, even at their publication, that Charles I. is reported to have given ten pounds for only reading one over (which he could no where else procure) at the owner's house in St. Paul's Church-yard. "The extraordinary price of pamphlets already mentioned, would naturally excite our deliberate inquiry into what has been most extraordinary in the contents of them; but so multifarious are the subjects, that it cannot be expected I should enumerate them in the narrow limits of an epistolary address. What do most attract the attention of mankind, are those dreaded scourges of a mal-administration, commonly, though perhaps sometimes too indiscriminately, bearing the contumelious denomination of libels. It matters little whether it be reasonable or not, that such writings as duly expose villainly should themselves be vile; or that some persons, who have been unjustly injurious by any other means, may not be justly injured by this; but it is obvious to all who know the disproportion of riches and power in this world, that there are crimes not to be blasted, and criminals not to be branded, by other means. And since the lashes of reason will reach where those of justice cannot; since truth will project defamation from the actions of oppresive rulers, as uncontrolledly as the sun does the shadows from opacous bodies, the redress of the effect is to be sought for in the cause; and we should apply the salve to the minds which received the provocation; not, empiric like, seek to staunch them by binding up the weapons which returned it. Nay, we read that the Emperor Charles V.; Francis I. of France; and even Solyman, the Grand Turk; with Barbarossa, the Pirate; and several other potentates, all condescended to become tributary to the satyric muse of Pietro Aretino; whom, notwithstanding it is not very probable they had any way personally exasperated. Som also in our story might be named, who have taken the like method to assuage the effects of their discreditable conduct; among whom are not wanting those who, having penuriously made their plaister too scant for the sore, have rather multiplied than subtracted from their own disgrace; and industriously exposed their folly by the imperfect concealment of their vice. These had not the affected tenderness for their own reputations it seems, even of the Turks and barbarians; not that exquisite apprehension of this durable discipline, which may visit the sins of the fathers on their children unto the third and fourth generation: as not the love, so neither the fear. of men of letters, which is noted in one of the wisest Roman Emperors, by the historian of his life, (Lampridius in Alexandro Severo) and by one of our own authors in these words: He feared less a hundred lances, then Th' impetuous charges of a single pen: Well knowing Parva necat morsu spatiosum vipera taurum. "I shall leave it for others to discuss, whether this sort of writing is more inclinable to flourish, and to take deeper root, by the ventilations of resentment; or wither and die away in the shades of disregard: but this we may observe, that some charges are of such a convincing, clinging nature, that they are found not only to strike all apology or contradiction dumb, but to stick longer upon the names of the accused than the flesh upon their bones. Thus Philip the Second's wicked employment, treacherous desertion, and barbarous persecution of his secretary, Antonio Perez, upraids him out of the author's Librillo, through all Europe to this day. Mary, Queen of Scots, has not yet got clear of Buchanan's Detection. Robert, Earl of Leicester, cannot shake off Father Parson's Green Coat. George, Duke of Buckingham, will not speedily outstrip Doctor Eglisham's Fore-runner of Revenge. Nor was Oliver Cromwell far from killing himself at the pamphlet which argued it to be No Murder, lest it should persuade others to think so, and he perish by ignobler hands than his own. "In this manner did some take the liberty of calling these personages to account for their misdeeds, even while they were living. And with regard to that most memorable usurper last mentioned, thus was a celebrated writer of ours for immortalizing him: When we fix any infamy on deceased persons, it should not be done out of any hatred to the dead, but out of love and charity to the living; that the curses that only remain in men's thoughts, and dare not come forth against tyrants, because they are tyrants, while they are so, may at last be for ever settled and engraven upon their memory, to deter all others from the same wickedness. The mischief of tyranny is too great, even in the shortest time that it can continueit is endless and insupportable if the example be to reign too. If it were possible to cut tyrants out of all history, and to extinguish their very names, I am of opinion it ought to be done; but since they have left behind them too deep wounds to be ever closed up without a scar, at least let us set a mark on their memory, that men of the same wicked inclinations may be no less affrighted with their lasting ignominy, than enticed by their momentary glories." "How little soever these sentiments may be thought to need corroboration, I flatter myself the following reply of our late excellent Queen Mary ought not here to be forgotten, when some of her courtiers would have incensed her against Monsieur Jurien, who in his answer to Father Maimburg, that he might the better justify the reformation in Scotland, made a very black representation of their Queen Mary-' Is it not a shame,' said one of the company, that this man, without any consideration of your royal person, should dare to throw such infamous calumnies on a queen from which your Royal Highness is descended. Not at all,' replied this ingenuous princess, for is it not enough that, by fulsome praises, kings be lulled asleep all their lives; but must flattery accompany them to their graves? how shall then princes fear the judgment of posterity, if historians were not allowed to speak the truth after their death!" Placide: A Spanish Tale. In Two EVERY thing which is said in this work respecting the Battuécas, their origin, their singular history, their character, their manners, &c. is strictly true. The description of their mysterious valley is faithfully drawn. The adventure of the Duke d'Albe, who, by so wonderful an accident, discovered this small colony, is also an historical fact. All these details, so curious and interesting, are to be found in the Dictionary of Moréri, in the travels of M. de Bourgoing (an author of much celebrity from his fidelity). Several Spanish writers have also spoken of these people, and all their accounts perfectly agree. This small and fortunate republic existed in all the happiness of its obscurity, and was blessed in being unknown to the rest of the world, even, so late as 1806; but it is doubtful whether, since that epoch, it hath been disturbed by the sanguinary war which desolated Spain. One would fain believe, that, defended by its rocks, preserved by its poverty, ambition did not deign to enslave and corrupt it. There is nothing, however, historical in this work, except the details respecting the Battuécas; every thing else is fiction. The author has endeavoured to give some interest to the valley of the Battućcas; but in admiring the innocence of their manuers, in criticising our own, his object was not to satirize civilization; on the contrary, his design has been to prove, that heroic virtue, which is nothing but the happy exercise of a strong mind, is never to be met with where there is nothing to com bat, and is never to be found but in the midst of every species of seductions, which unite to overcome and annihilate it, and, consequently, must be sought for in a state of civilization. Placide, the young Battuécas, and the hero of this romance, is not a savage without reflection or judgment; nor is he a misanthrope, who sees every thing on its dark side only. He is animated with benevolence to all mankind, enlightened by the truths of Christianity, he possesses that true cultivation of mind, which gives perfection to our moral ideas. Endowed with the happiest organization, born with an ardent imagination, and a noble and feeling heart, he is suddenly thrown into the great world without knowing the secrets of our arts and sciences, and entirely ignorant of our follies, our customs, and our manners. He is then alternately astonished and confounded by enthusiasm and indignation. His censures and praises are never exaggerated, yet their energy would not be natural in |