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THE GREAT FRENCH WRITERS

BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE




The Great French Writers.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ           BY GASTON BOISSIER.
GEORGE SAND                 BY E. CARO.
MONTESQUIEU                 BY ALBERT SOREL.
VICTOR COUSIN               BY JULES SIMON.
TURGOT                      BY LÉON SAY.
THIERS                      BY PAUL DE RÉMUSAT.
MADAME DE STAËL             BY ALBERT SOREL.
BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE     BY ARVÈDE BARINE.

OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION.

_Uniform in style. Price, $1.00 a volume._




The Great French Writers


BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE

BY

ARVÈDE BARINE

_TRANSLATED BY J. E. GORDON_

WITH A PREFACE BY

AUGUSTIN BIRRELL

[Illustration: Logo]

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY

1893




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER                                                 PAGE
  I. YOUTH--YEARS OF TRAVEL                                1

 II. PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY--VOYAGE TO THE ISLE
       OF FRANCE; ACQUAINTANCE WITH J. J. ROUSSEAU;
       THE CRISIS                                         42

III. THE "ÉTUDES DE LA NATURE"                            87

 IV. PAUL AND VIRGINIA                                   149

  V. WORKS OF HIS OLD AGE--THE TWO MARRIAGES--DEATH
       OF BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE--HIS
       LITERARY INFLUENCE                                179




PREFACE.


The life of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre is so unusual, so interesting,
so suggestive and amusing, that the grumpiest of Anglo-Saxons need
not complain of the fact that no series of Great French Writers would
be complete which did not contain the name of the author of "Paul and
Virginia." Even "Shakespeare's heirs" must accept the judgment of other
nations about their own authors. Our duty is to comprehend a verdict we
are powerless to upset. Dorian women, as Gorgo says in the famous ode
of Theocritus, have a right to chatter in a Dorian accent, and a great
French writer is not necessarily the worse for a strong infusion of
French sentiment.

Saint-Pierre was no ordinary person, either as man or author. His
was a strong and original character, more bent on action than on
literature. Though a master of style and a great painter in words, he
was ever a preacher, a _sermonneur_, as Sainte-Beuve calls him. His
masterpiece--as the French reckon "Paul and Virginia" to be--came by
chance, and is but a chapter in a huge treatise, a parable told by the
way in a voluminous gospel. It is as if Ruskin's _chef d'oeuvre_ were a
novelette, or as if Carlyle's story had been a perfect whole, instead
of a fragment and a failure.

To understand "Paul and Virginia" aright, one should read the "Études
de la Nature," first published in 1784. Our grandparents read them
greedily enough, either in the original or in the excellent translation
of Dr. Henry Hunter, the accomplished minister of the Scots Church,
London Wall. A hundred years have, however, pressed heavily upon these
Studies, but to this day a tender grace clings to them. Even so will
our own descendants in 1984 turn the pages of Ruskin and inhale a stray
whiff of the breath which once animated a generation.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was as obstinate a theorist as ever lived,
and his theory was that Providence had fashioned the whole world with
one intent only, namely, the happiness of man. That man was not happy,
Saint-Pierre sorrowfully admitted; but there was no reason whatever,
save his own folly, why he should not be as happy as the days were
long. Nothing could shake this faith of Saint-Pierre's. The terrible
catastrophes of life--plague, pestilence, and famine