EVERETT'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ. [Boston Miscellany, Feb. 1842.] It is remarkable that many of the best books of all sorts have been written by persons, who at the time of writing them, had no intention of becoming authors. Indeed, with a slight inclination to systematize and exaggerate, one might be almost tempted to maintain the position, however paradoxical it may at first blush appear, that no good book can be written in any other way; that the only literature of any value is that which grows indirectly out of the real action of society, intended directly to effect some other purpose; and that when a man sits down doggedly in his study, and says to himself, 'I mean to write a good book,' it is certain, from the necessity of the case, that the result will be a bad one. To illustrate this by a few examples: Shakspeare, the Greek Dramatists, Lope and Calderon, Corneille, Racine, and Molière, in short, all the dramatic poets of much celebrity, prepared their works for actual representation, at times when the drama was the favorite amusement. Their plays, when collected, make excellent books. At a later period, when the drama had in a great measure gone out of fashion, Lord Byron, a man not inferior, perhaps, in poetical genius to any of the persons just mentioned, undertakes, without any view to the stage, to write a book of the same kind. What is the result? Something which, as Ninon de l'Enclos said of the young Marquis de Sévigné, has very much the character of fricasseed snow. Homer, again, or the Homerites, a troop of wandering minstrels, composed, probably without putting them to paper, certain songs and ballads, which they sung at the tables of the warriors and princes of their time. Some centuries afterwards, Pisistratus made them up into a book, which became the bible of Greece. Voltaire, whose genius was perhaps equal to that of any of the Homerites, attempted in cold blood, to make just such a book; and here, again, the product, called the Henriade, is no book, but another lump of fricasseed snow. What are all your pretended histories? Fables, jest books, satires, apologies, any thing but what they profess to be. Bring together the correspondence of a distinguished public character, a Washington, a Wellington, and then, for the first time, you have a real history. Even in so small a matter as a common letter to a friend, if you write one for the sake of writing it, in order to produce a good letter as such, you will probably fail. Who ever read one of Pliny's precious specimens of affectation and formality, without wishing that he had perished in the same eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed his uncle? On the contrary, let one who has any thing to say to another at a distance, in the way of either business or friendship, commit his thoughts to paper merely for the purpose of communicating them, and he will not only effect his immediate object, but, however humble may be his literary pretensions, will commonly write something that may be read with pleasure by an indifferent third person. In short, experience seems to show that every book, prepared with a view to mere book-making, is necessarily a sort of counterfeit, bearing the same relation to a real book, which the juggling of the Egyptian magicians did to the miracles of Moses. But not to push these ideas to extravagance, it may be sufficient for the present purpose to say that Madame de Sévigné, without intending to become an author, has, in fact, produced one of the most agreeable and really valuable books that have ever been written. Her letters are not sermons, or essays in disguise, but were composed, without any view to publication, for the purpose of talking on paper to a beloved daughter, with whom the writer had in a manner identified her existence. They are, therefore, a genuine thing of their kind, and besides answering the purpose for which they were originally written, may be expected, as was just now remarked, to possess an accidental value for the public, which will be greater or less according to the character of the writer. In the present case, this accidental value is very high, in consequence of the extraordinary merit and talent of Madame de Sévigné, and the elevated sphere in which she moved. It has been justly observed by Madame de Staël, that the private life of almost every individual, properly treated, would furnish materials for an interesting romance. It is easy to imagine, therefore, that a collection of letters, covering a period of half a century in the domestic history of one of the most distinguished and accomplished families in France, written throughout in a manner which is admitted by all to be the perfection of the epistolary style, must have the charm of a first-rate novel. But, in addition to this, they have another value, of a perfectly distinct, if not much higher kind, as a picture by a master-hand, of one of the most brilliant periods in the history of civilization. Madame de Sévigné was placed by birth and marriage in the highest circles of the Court of Louis XIV., and maintained a constant personal intercourse, more or less intimate, with all the prominent political men, from the King downwards. Her superior intellect and literary tastes and habits also gave her an interest in the current literature. The popular authors and their books are among her regular topics. These new books, of which she notices the publication and first effect, are no other than the acknowledged masters-pieces of modern art; their authors are Corneille, Racine, Molière and La Fontaine, De Retz and La Rochefoucault, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier and Massillon. - Again; her fascinating manners and splendid conversational powers, - for she seems to have excelled as much in conversation as in writing, rendered her a universal favorite, and the life of every circle in which she appeared. She is constantly surrounded, -abroad and at home, in town or in the country, - by the most interesting portion of the refined and cultivated classes. Thus, the varied and brilliant panorama, exhibited at the Court of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV., is reflected in her letters with a perfect truth to nature, and a magical grace, vivacity and elegance of style. Finally, these remarkable letters derive their last and highest charm from the excellent moral tone that pervades the whole collection. Living in a society where licentiousness had ceased to be regarded as criminal, and was countenanced by the almost universal practice of the Court, Madame de Sévigné, though continually wrought upon by iufluences of the most seductive kind, maintained the purity of her personal character unsullied by blemish or suspicion. At a time when there was, generally speaking, no medium, in the circles in which she moved, between the avowed voluptuary and the ascetic, she avoided both extremes; and following with firmness, or rather without any apparent effort, the impulse of a naturally sound judgment and |