318 L A S L A S
their apprehension of both sides of a question, interferes with their capacity as men of action. But there is no ground whatever for the view which represents the Maxims as the mere outcome of the spite of a disappointed intriguer, disappointed through his own want of skill rather than of fortune.
Interesting, however, as he is when considered as a man and as a typical figure of a brilliant and historically important class, his importance as a social and historical figure is far inferior to his importance as a man of letters. His work in this respect consists of three parts – letters, Memoirs, and the Maxims. The letters collected by the diligence of his latest editor exceed one hundred in number, and are biographically valuable, besides displaying not a few of his literary characteristics; but they need not further detain us. The Memoirs, when they are read in their proper form, yield in literary merit, in interest, and in value to no memoirs of the time, not even to those of Retz, between whom and La Rochefoucauld there was a strange mixture of enmity and esteem which resulted in a couple of most characteristic portraits. But their history is 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 beyond doubt or question 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." 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 loudly protested 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 reflexion 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 corollaries 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 published in his lifetimeCite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag</ref> 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. There have been several editions more or less complete in the last seventy years, but they are all thrown into the shade by that of MM. Gilbert and Gourdault, 1868-81, in the series of Grands Écrivains de la France, 3 vols. This is complete as to the text, but a glossary and some other additional matters have yet to appear. The handsomest separate edition of the Maxims is the so-called Édition des Bibliophiles, 1870 ; but cheap and handy issues are plentiful. (G. SA.)
LA SALLE, chief city of La Salle county, Illinois, U.S., is situated on the right bank of the Illinois river, navigable up to this point, about 80 miles south-west of Chicago, with which it is connected by the Illinois and Michigan Canal as well as by rail. La Salle is a rising commercial city, with manufactories of glass, sulphuric acid, and soda-ash, and some export of ice, as well as extensive zinc rolling mills – the only works of the kind in the United States. The supply of bituminous coal in the vicinity is large, the output of the mines being 1,000,000 tons annually. The population in 1880 was 7847.
LA SALLE, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de (1643-1687), a French explorer in North America, was born at Rouen in November 1643. He became a settler in Canada, and about 1669, leaving his trading post at La Chine, above Montreal, he sought to reach China by way of the Ohio, supposing, from the reports of Indians, this river to flow into the Pacific. He made explorations of the country between the Ohio and the lakes, but, when Joliet and Marquette made it evident that the main river Mississippi emptied in the Gulf of Mexico, he conceived a vast project for extending the French power in the lower Mississippi valley, and thence attacking Mexico. He obtained extensive grants from the French Government, rebuilt Fort Frontenac, established a post above Niagara Falls, and built a small vessel, in which he sailed up the lakes to Green Bay. Thence, despatching his vessel freighted with furs, he proceeded with the rest of the party, in boats and on foot, to the Illinois river, near the head of which he began a post called Fort Crêve Cœur, and a vessel in which to descend the Mississippi. Not hearing of his vessel on the lakes, he detached Hennepin, with one companion, to ascend the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois, and, leaving Tonty, with five men, at Fort Crêve Cœur, he returned by land to Canada. Towards the close of 1681 La Salle, with a party in canoes, again reached the head of Lake Michigan, at the present site of Chicago, and, making
