unique in its strangeness. It has been said that a pirated edition appeared in Holland, and this, despite the author’s protest, continued to be reprinted for some thirty years. It has been now proved to be a mere cento of the work of half a dozen different men, scarcely a third of which is La Rochefoucauld’s, and which could only have been possible at a time when it was the habit of persons who frequented literary society to copy pell-mell in commonplace books the MS. compositions of their friends and others. Some years after La Rochefoucauld’s death a new recension appeared, somewhat less incorrect than the former, but still largely adulterated, and this held its ground for more than a century. Only in 1817 did anything like a genuine edition (even then by no means perfect) appear. The Maxims, however, had no such fate. The author re-edited them frequently during his life, with alterations and additions; a few were added after his death, and it is usual now to print the whole of them, at whatever time they appeared, together. Thus taken, they amount to about seven hundred in number, in hardly any case exceeding half a page in length, and more frequently confined to two or three lines. The view of conduct which they illustrate is usually and not quite incorrectly summed up in the words “everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest.” But though not absolutely incorrect, the phrase is misleading. The Maxims are in no respect mere deductions from or applications of any such general theory. They are on the contrary independent judgments on different relations of life, different affections of the human mind, and so forth, from which, taken together, the general view may be deduced or rather composed. Sentimental moralists have protested loudly against this view, yet it is easier to declaim against it in general than to find a flaw in the several parts of which it is made up. With a few exceptions La Rochefoucauld’s maxims represent the matured result of the reflection of a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect, on the conduct and motives which have guided himself and his fellows. There is as little trace in them of personal spite as of forfanterie de vice. But the astonishing excellence of the literary medium in which they are conveyed is even more remarkable than the general soundness of their ethical import. In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clearness, fulness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. His Maxims are never mere epigrams; they are never platitudes; they are never dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would be impossible to pack them closer, yet there is no undue compression; he has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of substance. The comparison which occurs most frequently, and which is perhaps on the whole the justest, is that of a bronze medallion, and it applies to the matter no less than to the form. Nothing is left unfinished, yet none of the workmanship is finical. The sentiment, far from being merely hard, as the sentimentalists pretend, has a vein of melancholy poetry running through it which calls to mind the traditions of La Rochefoucauld’s devotion to the romances of chivalry. The maxims are never shallow; each is the text for a whole sermon of application and corollary which any one of thought and experience can write. Add to all this that the language in which they are written is French, still at almost its greatest strength, and chastened but as yet not emasculated by the reforming influence of the 17th century, and it is not necessary to say more. To the literary critic no less than to the man of the world La Rochefoucauld ranks among the scanty number of pocket-books to be read and re-read with ever new admiration, instruction and delight.
The editions of La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims (as the full title runs, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales) published in his lifetime bear the dates 1665 (editio princeps), 1666, 1671, 1675, 1678. An important edition which appeared after his death in 1693 may rank almost with these. As long as the Memoirs remained in the state above described, no edition of them need be mentioned, and none of the complete works was possible. The previous more or less complete editions are all superseded by that of MM Gilbert and Gourdault (1868–1883), in the series of “Grands Écrivains de la France,” 3 vols. There are still some puzzles as to the text; but this edition supplies all available material in regard to them. The handsomest separate edition of the Maxims is the so-called Édition des bibliophiles (1870); but cheap and handy issues are plentiful. See the English version by G. H. Powell (1903). Nearly all the great French critics of the 19th century have dealt more or less with La Rochefoucauld: the chief recent monograph on him is that of J. Bourdeau in the Grands écrivains français (1893). (G. Sa.)
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE FRÉDÉRIC,
Duc de (1747–1827), French social reformer,
was born at La Roche Guyon on the 11th of January
1747, the son of François Armand de La Rochefoucauld, duc
d’Estissac, grand master of the royal wardrobe. The duc de
Liancourt became an officer of carbineers, and married at
seventeen. A visit to England seems to have suggested the
establishment of a model farm at Liancourt, where he reared
cattle imported from England and Switzerland. He also set up
spinning machines on his estate, and founded a school of arts
and crafts for the sons of soldiers, which became in 1788 the École
des Enfants de la Patrie under royal protection. Elected to the
states-general of 1789 he sought in vain to support the cause of
royalty while furthering the social reforms he had at heart. On
the 12th of July, two days before the fall of the Bastille, he
warned Louis XVI. of the state of affairs in Paris, and met
his exclamation that there was a revolt with the answer, “Non,
sire, c’est une révolution.” On the 18th of July he became
president of the Assembly. Established in command of a military
division in Normandy, he offered Louis a refuge in Rouen, and,
failing in this effort, assisted him with a large sum of money.
After the events of the 10th of August 1792 he fled to England,
where he was the guest of Arthur Young, and thence passed to
America. After the assassination of his cousin, Louis-Alexandre,
duc de La Rochefoucauld d’Enville, at Gisors on the 14th of
September 1792 he assumed the title of duc de La Rochefoucauld.
He returned to Paris in 1799, but received small favour from
Napoleon. At the Restoration he entered the House of Peers,
but Louis XVIII. refused to reinstate him as master of the
wardrobe, although his father had paid 400,000 francs for
the honour. Successive governments, revolutionary and otherwise,
recognized the value of his institutions at Liancourt,
and he was for twenty-three years government inspector of his
school of arts and crafts, which had been removed to Châlons.
He was one of the first promoters of vaccination in France;
he established a dispensary in Paris, and he was an active
member of the central boards of administration for hospitals,
prisons and agriculture. His opposition to the government in
the House of Peers led to his removal in 1823 from the honorary
positions he held, while the vaccination committee, of which
he was president, was suppressed. The academies of science and
of medicine admitted him to their membership by way of
protest. Official hostility pursued him even after his death
(27th of March 1827), for the old pupils of his school were charged
by the military at his funeral. His works, chiefly on economic
questions, include books on the English system of taxation,
poor-relief and education.
His eldest son, François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1765–1848), succeeded his father in the House of Peers. The second, Alexandre, comte de La Rochefoucauld (1767–1841), married a San Domingo heiress allied to the Beauharnais family. Mme de La Rochefoucauld became dame d’honneur to the empress Josephine, and their eldest daughter married a brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese. La Rochefoucauld became ambassador successively to Vienna (1805) and to the Hague (1808–1810), where he negotiated the union of Holland with France. During the “Hundred Days” he was made a peer of France. He subsequently devoted himself to philanthropic work, and in 1822 became deputy to the Chamber and sat with the constitutional royalists. He was again raised to the peerage in 1831.
The third son, Frédéric Gaétan, marquis de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1779–1863), was a zealous philanthropist and a partisan of constitutional monarchy. He took no part in politics after 1848. The marquis wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration; he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet; and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems.
LA ROCHEJACQUELEIN, DE, the name of an ancient French family of La Vendée, celebrated for its devotion to the throne
during and after the Revolution. Its original name was Duverger,
derived from a fief near Bressuire in Poitou, and its pedigree
