1: Voyez surtout les portraits de lady Mooreland, de lady Williams, de la comtesse d'Ossory, de la duchesse de Cleveland, de lady Price, etc.

2: Carlyle, Cromwell's speeches and letters, t. I, p. 48.

3: Le colonel Hutchinson fut un instant suspect parce qu'il portait les cheveux longs et qu'il s'habillait bien.

4: 1648, trente en un jour. Une d'elles avoua qu'elle avait été à une assemblée où étaient cinq cents sorcières.—Pictorial history, t. III, p. 489.

5: In 1652 the kirk-session of Glasgow «brot boyes and servants before them, for breaking the Sabbath and other faults. They had clandestine censors, and gave money to some for this end.» (Buckle, History of Civilisation, I, 346.)

Even yearly in the 18th century the «most popular divines» in Scotland affirmed that Satan «frequently appears clothed in a corporeal substance.» (Ibid., 367.)

«No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on the Sabbath-day.» (Ibid., 385.)

The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, that ther sould be no pypers at brydels, etc. (Ibid., 389.)

1719. The presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares: «Yea, some have arrived at that height of impiety as not to be ashamed of washing in water and swimming in rivers upon the holy Sabbath.» (Ibid.)

«I think David had never so sweet a time as then, when he was pursued as a partridge by his son Absalom.» (Gray's Great and Precious Promises.)

Voir tout le chapitre où Buckle a décrit, d'après les textes, l'état de l'Écosse au dix-septième siècle.

6: Voyez, dans Richardson, Swift et Fielding, mais surtout dans Hogarth, la peinture de cette débauche brutale. Encore récemment dans un finish à Londres, les gentlemen s'amusaient à soûler de belles filles parées en robe de bal; puis quand elles tombaient inertes, à leur faire avaler du poivre, de la moutarde et du vinaigre. (Flora Tristan, 1840, Promenades dans Londres, chap. VIII.—Témoin oculaire.)

7: Le roi jouait au trictrac: arrive un coup douteux: «Ah! voici Grammont qui nous jugera; Grammont, venez nous juger.—Sire, vous avez perdu.—Comment! vous ne savez pas encore....—Eh! ne voyez-vous pas, sire, que si le coup eût été seulement douteux, ces messieurs n'auraient pas manqué de vous donner gain de cause?»

8: «Il déterrait les malheureux pour les secourir.»

9:

For as Æneas bore his sire
Upon his shoulder through the fire,
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back.

10: Cette barbe était taillée en bêche.

11:

His tawny beard was th'equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile:
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange, mix'd with grey.
The hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns:
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state's were made:
Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
In time to make a nation rue;
Thought it contributed its own fall,
To wait upon the public downfall....—
"Twas bound to suffer persecution,
And martyrdom, with resolution;
T'oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of th'incensed state,
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn,
With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revild, and spit upon, and martyr'd.
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast,
As long as monarchy should last;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state,
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with his whiskers,
And twine so close, that Time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever:
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow.

12:

This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age,
And therefore waited on him so
As Dwarfs upon Knights errants do...
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread.
... 'T would make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth.

13:

Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat.
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.
For though the thesis which thou lay'st
Be true adamussim as thou say'st.
(For that Bear-baiting should appear
Jure divino lawfuller
Than Synods are, thou dost deny,
Totidem verbis, so do I,)
Yet there is a fallacy in this;
For, if by thy Homœsis,
Tussis pro crepitu, an art
Under a Cough to slur a Fart,
Thou wouldst sophistically imply,
Both are unlawful, I deny.

14: Mémoires de Clarendon, t. II, p. 65.

15: «Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the Court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's coming in.» (1667. Pepys.)

Mr. Povy says that to this day the king do follow the women as much as he ever did.—That the Duke of York hath come out of his wife's bed and gone to others laid in bed for him; that the family (of the duke) is in horrible debt, by spending above 60000 liv. per annum, when he hath not 40000 liv.

It is certain that, as it now is, the seamen of England, in my conscience, would, if they could, go over and serve the King of France or Holland, rather than us. (24 juin 1667. Ibid.)

16: Voir une Étude détaillée sur Rochester, par M. Forgues. (Revue des Deux-Mondes, août et septembre 1857.)

17: When she is young, she whores herself for sport:

And when she's old, she bawds for her support....
She is a snare, a shamble, a stews.
Her meat and sawce she does for lechery chuse,
And does in laziness delight the more,
Because by that she is provoked to whore.
Ungrateful, treacherous, enviously enclined,
Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined,
Than is her stubborn and rebellious mind....
Her temper so extravagant we find,
She hates or is impertinently kind.
Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil,
And like a fool or whore, when she be civil....
Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust,
And covetous to spend it on her lust.

18: Pepys.

19: «Je ne sais où ce fou de Crofts avait pris que les Moscovites avaient tous de belles femmes, et que leurs femmes avaient toutes la jambe belle. Le roi soutint qu'il n'y en avait point de si belle que celle de Mlle Stewart. Elle, pour soutenir la gageure, se mit à la montrer jusqu'au-dessus du genou.» (Grammont.)

20: «Si l'on veut respecter l'antiquité, c'est l'âge présent qui est le plus vieux.»

21: To say he hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say he dreamed that God spoke to him. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice, is to say that he has dreamed between sleeping and waking. To say he speaks by supernatural inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak or some strong opinion of himself for which he cannot alledge no natural and sufficient reason.

22: From the principal parts of nature, reason and passion, have proceeded two kinds of learning, mathematical and dogmatical. The former is free from controversy and dispute, because it consisteth in comparing figure and motion only, in which things truth and the interest of men oppose not each other. But in the other there is nothing undisputable, because it compares men and meddles with their right and profit.

23: Ses principaux ouvrages ont été écrits entre 1646 et 1655.

24: Nemo dat nisi respiciens ad bonum sibi.

Amicitiæ bonæ, nempe utiles. Nam amicitiæ cùm ad multa alia, tum ad præsidium conferunt.

Sapientia utile. Nam præsidium in se habet nonnullum. Appetibile est per se, id est jucundum. Item pulchrum, quia acquisitio difficilis.

Non enim qui sapiens est, ut dixere stoici, dives est, sed contra qui dives est sapiens est dicendus.

Ignoscere veniam petenti pulchrum. Nam indicium fiduciæ sui.

Imitatio jucundum, revocat enim præterita. Præterita autem si bona fuerint, jucunda sunt repræsentata, quia bona. Si mala, quia præterita. Jucunda igitur musica, pictura, poesis.

25: Metus potentiarum invisibilium, sive fictæ illæ sint, sive ab historiis acceptæ sint publice, religio. Si publice acceptæ non sint, superstitio.

26: Omnis societas vel commodi causa vel gloriæ, hoc est, sui, non sociorum amore contrahitur.

Statuendum originem magnarum et diuturnarum societatum non a mutua benevolentia, sed a mutuo metu exstitisse.

Voluntas lædendi omnibus inest in statu naturæ.

Status hominum naturalis antequam in societatem coiretur, bellum. Neque hoc simpliciter, sed bellum omnium in omnes.

Bellum sua natura sempiternum.

27: Corpus et substantia idem significant, et proinde vox composita substantia incorporea est insignificans æque ac si quis diceret corpus incorporeum.

Quidquid imaginamur finitum est. Nulla ergo est idea neque conceptus qui oriri potest a voce hac, infinitum.

Recidit ratiocinatio omnis ad duas operationes animi, additionem et substractionem.

Genus et universale nominum non rerum nomina sunt.

Veritas in dicto non in re consistit.

Sensio igitur in sentiente nihil aliud esse potest præter motum partium aliquarum intus in sentiente existentium, quæ partes motæ organorum quibus sentimus partes sunt.

28: 1662.

29: Mot de Le Sage.

30: Son Wild Galant est de 1662.

31: «We love to get our mistresses, and purr over them, as cats do over mice, and then let them get a little way, and all the pleasure is to pat them back again.»

Wildblood dit à sa maîtresse: «I am none of those unreasonable lovers that propose to themselves the loving to eternity. A month is commonly my stint.»—Et Jacintha répond: «Or would not a fortnight serve our turn?» (Mock Astrologer.)

Souvent, à la barbarie de ses plaisanteries, on dirait qu'il traduit Hobbes.

32:

Is not Love love without a Priest and Altars?
The temples are inanimate, and know not
What vows are made in them; the Priest stands ready
For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples.
Love alone is marriage....

33:

I wished the ball might be kept perpetually in our cloyster, and that half the handsome nuns in it might be turned to men, for the sake of the other.

34:

35:

For Kings and Priest are in a manner bound
For reverence sake, to be close hypocrites.

36:

Fate is what I
By virtue of omnipotence have made it.
And Power omnipotent can do no wrong.
Not to myself, because I will it so;
Not yet to men, for what they are is mine.
This night I will enjoy Amphytrion's wife:
For when I made her, I decreed her such
As I shou'd please to love.

37: Lorsque Jupiter sort, alléguant qu'il est jour, Alcmène lui dit:

But you and I will draw our curtains close,
Extinguish day-light, and put out the sun.
Come back, my lord.
You have not yet laid long enough in bed
To warm your widowed side.

Comparez la matrone romaine de Plaute et l'honnête dame française de Molière à cette personne expansive.

38:

39:

Though I cannot lie like them, I am as vain as they; I cannot but publicly give your Grace my humble acknowledgments.... This is the poet's gratitude, which in plain english is only pride and ambition.

40: Madame Bovary, par G. Flaubert.

41:

42:

43: Il faut lire cet épilogue, pour voir quelles paroles et quels détails on osait mettre dans la bouche d'une actrice.

44:

45:

46: Unfortunate lady that I am! I have left the herd on purpose to be chased. But the park affords not so much as a satyr for me; and no Burgundy man, or drunken scourer, will reel my way. The rag-women, and cinder-women, have better luck than I. (Acte IV.)

47: Dans l'Épouse campagnarde.

48: On connaît la lettre d'Agnès dans Molière: «Je veux vous écrire, et je suis bien en peine par où je m'y prendrai. J'ai des pensées que je désirerais que vous sussiez; mais je ne sais comment faire pour vous les dire, et je me défie de mes paroles, etc.» Regardez la façon dont Wycherley la traduit: «Dear, sweet M^r Horner, my husband would have me send you a base, rude, unmannerly letter: but I won 't; and would have forbid you loving me, but I won 't; and would have me say to you, I hate you, poor M^r Horner, but I won 't tell a lie for him. For I'm sure if you and I were in the country at cards together, I could not help treading on your toe under the table, or rubbing knees with you, and staring in your face, till you saw me, and then looking down and blushing for an hour together, etc.»—«Why, he put the tip of his tongue between my lips.»

49: Dans le Plain dealer.

50:

La scène est empruntée au Misanthrope et à la Critique de l'École des Femmes; jugez de la transformation.

51:

Cette dernière phrase est d'un satirique morose plutôt que d'un observateur exact.

52: Go, husband, and come up, friend; just the buckets in the well; the absence of one brings the other. But I hope, like them too, they will not meet in the way, jostle and clash together.

53:

54: Comparez au rôle d'Alceste des tirades comme celle-ci:

Such as you, like common whores and pickpockets, are only dangerous to those you embrace.

Comparez au rôle de Philinte des tirades comme celle-ci:

But, faith, could you think I was a friend to those I hugged, kissed, flattered, bowed to? When their backs were turned, did not I tell you they were rogues, villains, rascals, whom I despised and hated?

55: I shall not have again my alcove smell like a cabin, my chamber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenburgh, hear vollies of brandy sighs, enough to make a fog in one's room.

56: My lord, all that you have made me known by your whispering which I knew not before, is that you have a stinking breath. There is a secret for your heart.

57:

58:

59: Her love—a whore's, a witch's love!—But what, did she not kiss well, sir? I'm sure, I thought her lips.... But I must not think of them more.... But yet they are such I could still kiss, grow so,—and then tear off with my teeth, grind them into mammocks, and spit them into her cuckold's face.

60: What, you are my rival, then! And therefore you shall stay and keep the door for me, whilst I go in for you; but when I'm gone, if you dare to stir off from this very board, or breath the least murmuring accent, I'll cut her throat first; and if you love her, you will not venture her life. Nay, then I'll cut your throat too, and I know you love your own life at least.... Not a word more, lest I begin my revenge on her by killing you.

61: Here, madam, I never left yet my wench unpaid.

62:

63: Voir toutes les pièces historiques de Shakspeare.

64: 1654.

65: 1660.

66: Pepys, 1663.

67: Grammont.

68: Voyez, par exemple, dans le Beaux Stratagem (Farquhar), act. II, sc. ii, le Beau à l'Église.

69: Voir surtout An Account of the United Provinces, Memoirs of Gardening.

70: I have often wondered how such sharp and violent invectives came to be made so generally against Epicurus, by the ages that followed him, whose admirable wit, felicity of expression, excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temperance of life, and constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by his scholars, and honoured by the Athenians.

71: But, where factions were once entered and rooted in a state, they thought it madness for good men to meddle with public affairs (P. 203, 206, 191, t. III.)

72: But the true service of the public is a business of so much labour and so much care, that though a good and wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it by his prince or his country, and thinks he can be of more than vulgar use, yet he will seldom or never seek it, but leaves it commonly to men who, under the disguise of public good, pursue their own designs of wealth, power, and such bastard honours as usually attend them, not that which is the true, and only true reward of virtue.

73: Comparez cet essai à l'ouvrage de Carlyle; c'est le même titre et le même sujet, et il est curieux d'y voir la différence des deux siècles.

74: They were commonly excellent poets, and great physicians: they were so learned in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, and storms at sea, great droughts, and great plagues, much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain; not to mention the magical powers attributed to several of them, to allay storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease.

75: What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable art?

76: Macaulay, Essai sur William Temple.

77: It may, perhaps, be further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are still Esop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original, so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian, with some others, have attributed them to Lucian; but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander. (Of ancient and modern learning, 469.)

78: Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit for company; but if used discretly, you are the fitter for conversation by them.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only so a night, and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns.

79: There is never a man in the town lives more like a gentleman with his wife than I do. I never mind her motions; she never enquires into mine. We speak to one another civilly, hate one another heartily.

80: Pretty pouting lips, with a little moisture hanging on them, that look like the Province rose fresh on the bush, ere the morning sun has quite drawn up the dew.

81:

My passion with your beauty grew,
While Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favour'd you,
Threw a new flaming dart.
Each gloried in their wanton part;
To make a lover, he
Employ'd the utmost of his art—
To make a beauty, she.

82:

83:

So in those nations which the Sun adore
Some modest Persian or weak-eyed Moor
No higher dares advance his dazzled sight
Than to some gilded cloud, which near the light
Of their ascending God adorns the East,
And graced with his beam, outshines the rest.

84:

While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer
Attend my passion and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To Gods appealing when I reach their bow'rs
With loud complaint, they answer me in show'rs.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is giv'n,
More deaf than trees and prouder than the heav'n.
The rock
.... That cloven rock produc'd thee.
This last complaint th'indulgent ears did pierce
Of just Apollo, president of verse,
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing, etc.

85:

Then blush not, Fair! or on him frown:
How could the youth, alas! but bend
When his whole Heav'n upon him lean'd;
If ought by him amiss was done,
'Twas to let you rise so soon.

86:

Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which but tasted does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.

87:

Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline;
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain.

88:

Yet, fairest blossom, do not slight
The age which you may know so soon.
The rosy morn resigns her light
And milder glory to the noon.

89:

He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head:
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet:
But fear prevails and bids him trust his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry.

90:

My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays:
Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs;
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, or mock the ploughman's toil,
But godlike his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull:
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full....
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows;
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that's high or great.

91: Etheredge dans Sir Fopling Flutter, Wycherley dans Monsieur de Paris.

92: «I was always eminent for being bien ganté.» (Etheredge, Sir Fopling Flutter.)

93: De 1672 à 1726.

94: Ornuphre, Begears.

95: Consultations de Sganarelle dans le Médecin malgré lui.

96: Parmi les femmes, Éliante, Henriette, Élise, Uranie, Elmire.

97: Voyez l'admirable tact et le sang-froid d'Éliante, d'Henriette et d'Elmire.

98: Dryden s'en vante. Il y a toujours chez lui une comédie complète amalgamée grossièrement avec une tragédie complète.

99: