REVIEWS.

Pensées, Fragmens, et Lettres de Blaise Pascal, publiés pour la prémière fois conformement aux Manuscrits Originaux, en grande partie inédits, par M. Prosper Faugère. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844. (Pascal's Thoughts, &c., with many important additions of Passages suppressed at the first publication, now supplied from the Originals in the Royal Library, and other sources.)

THE possession of a European reputation has become, in our days, a common attribution to books and authors: and surely it is an unexceptionable phrase, when it can be justly applied. To the True Christianity of Arndt, the Pilgrim's Progress, and Paradise Lost, none will dispute this claim. Equally clear is the title of PASCAL'S Thoughts on Religion and some other subjects. That prodigy of intellectual and moral excellence died in 1662, at the age of thirty-nine. Many of our readers know his character. By the influence of family, education, and surrounding connexions, he was all his life-time subject to bondage; the slave to implicit faith in the right of the falsely-called Catholic church to be regarded as the mother of all the faithful, and the infallible dictatress of Christian doctrine and discipline. Strange as this may appear to us, he, and many before him and besides him, a noble army of his persecuted predecessors and contemporaries, and (we rejoice in the knowledge) a few in France and Italy down to our times,— united with many popish errors in doctrine, and a partial submission to papal authority, convictions avowed, sentiments expressed in the most admirable manner, and a practice of the highest consistency, on the basis of evangelical and vital Christianity. If any of our readers are so happy as to possess a small volume, by Theophilus Gale, the True Idea of Jansenism, with a recommendatory preface by Dr. Owen, they understand what we mean. Within the last thirty years, this portion of religious history has been presented to revived attention, both in England and abroad, in various books upon the Port Royal Society, its illustrious members, their characters, and their sufferings. They were persecuted with extreme violence and cruelty, by the court and government of Lewis XIV., under the instigation of the Jesuits, who also compelled Pope Clement IX. to condemn them, contrary to his judgment and inclination. Just as, fifty years afterwards, another pretender to infallibility, Clement XI., was obliged to unsay his approbation of the pious Jansenist, Quesnel. The enmity of the Jesuits against the Jansenists, was founded essentially upon the universal truth,

that the children of darkness hate the light; "the wicked plotteth against the just, and seeketh to slay him." Hence the dilapidations and exhumations of Port Royal, the savage transportations of its inmates, the imprisonments of Le Maistre de Sacy (the translator of the Bible, whose version of the New Testament, with a very few popish blots, is singularly excellent), and of Quesnet, and the manifold barbarities exercised upon many others. But, in this case, there was a special reason. M. Pascal had published, in 1656, Les Provinciales, (Letters to a Friend in the Country,) in which he laid open the false theology, the unprincipled casuistry, and the dreadfully immoral influence of the Jesuits: a work universally regarded as at the summit of French literature, with respect to truth, argument, and eloquence. That worshipper of genius and talent, but hater of true goodness, Voltaire, with the strongest disposition to cavil and condemn, says, "His Provincial Letters are a model of eloquence and pleasantry. Molière's best comedies have not more wit than the earlier of the series. Bossuet has nothing more sublime than the latter."—(Siècle de Louis XIV., vol. ii., p. 274.) And again : "The first work of genius in French prose, was the Provincial Letters. All the kinds of eloquence are contained in them. Though a hundred years have elapsed since they were written, there is not a single word that savours of the change in meaning which almost always affects living languages. To this work must be referred the epoch of the fixation of our tongue. The Bishop of Luçon, son of the celebrated Bussi, told me that, having once asked the Bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, what work he would most like to have been the author of, he replied, Excepting my own writings, the Provincial Letters."-(Ib. p. 171.)

In relation to this subject, and its important associations, we earnestly beg the revived attention of our readers to Mr. Poynder's History of the Jesuits, vol. ii., chap. xx., and to the whole work. This, with the smaller works of that gentleman, more powerfully demand to be now pressed upon the public attention, than even at their original publication, near thirty years ago.

It would be a great service at the present time, if some one, competent to the task of selecting and translating,* would publish in our country the most appropriate parts of the Provincial Letters. A translation into English was published in 1658, which is tolerably good, and might be a suggestive assistant; but the best style of our idiomatical language would be honoured in being the vehicle of transfusing Pascal's mind and manner.

To give an idea of this celebrated work, we shall cite a passage from

* This is not every man's work, nor every young lady's. It mortifies us deeply to see such miserable things as are published among us, under the name of translations of French and German books.

an Essay on the Life, &c. of Pascal, most valuable in every respect, and which we cannot doubt to be the production of one who ranks among the greatest of our Christian philosophers, Sir David Brewster. Adverting to the popish monasticism, he says: "Almost every order had its casuists, who decided cases of conscience, and affixed, as it were, a numerical value to human actions. Crimes became virtues, when tested by the intention of the criminal; and thus did the casuist priests, with the privileges of the confessional, become at once the arbiters and the tyrants of conscience. The theological ethics of the Jesuits abounded in these misleading principles, in which their casuists were intrenched. Their doctrines of probabilism, of mental restriction, and of the direction of intention, were often applied with singular subtility and talent; but, in an age of ignorance and superstition, the actual decisions of such judges as the Jesuits, administering such codes of casuistic law, must have been, as they were, scandalous. Against cases of this kind, carefully collected from their writings, Pascal directs the artillery of his sarcasm. Their new system of morality; their remiss and their rigid casuistry; their substitution of obscure authorities for that of the fathers; their artifices for evading the authority of the Gospel, the councils, and the popes; the privilege of sinning, and even of killing, granted to priests and friars; their corrupt maxims respecting judges; their false worship of the Virgin Mary; their facilities for procuring salvation while living in sin-are all exposed with a severity of satire, a gaiety of sentiment, an elegance of style, and an exuberance of wit, which have interested all classes of readers.". North British Review, 1844, No. II. p. 315.

But this is not our immediate subject, though deeply interesting. It is Pascal's Thoughts that we have to attend to. That book originated in a design to write a treatise upon the Evidences of the Christian religion; but which, in the short remainder of his life, he was prevented from completing, in consequence of his extreme physical sufferings, produced by bad health, by the impression of a terrible accident on one of the Paris bridges,-from the fatal effects of which he was saved as by a miracle,—and by his ascetic self-tortures, the result of his conscientious subjugation to the anti-Christian superstition. After his death, many scraps of paper were found; memoranda of ideas, germs of sentiment to be pursued afterwards, and paragraphs referring to consecutive trains of thought, most, or all of which were supposed to be the product of his meditations, in preparation for his great work. They were strung upon cords in the most promiscuous manner. By the care of an affectionate, pious, and highly intellectual sister, these precious fragments were preserved as a casket of jewels; and it may be reasonably presumed that none were lost, though of this we cannot be certain, for the emissaries of the "great red dragon," Bourbon tyranny and Jesuitical artifice, were watching; and they would have “devoured

them as soon as they were born." Within seven years, that lady and a few of her own and her brother's Jansenist friends, selected, arranged according to their own ideas (partly conjectural, but partly also directed by the details which he had given in conversation) of the abortive treatise, and, in 1669, published them under the title of " Pensées de M. Pascal sur la Religion et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont été trouvées après sa Mort parmi ses Papiers." The highest attention was awakened, and, we may say, has been ever since sustained, by this publication. It has been republished times innumerable, in its original and in translations. We have just said selected, for, though there were some reasons for believing that such was the case, it was not clearly avowed. Under all the circumstances, it was a wonder of gracious Providence that the manuscripts were not for ever destroyed by the devourer. More than a century after, Condorcet (then Marquis) and two years further in time, Voltaire, published each an edition, under a new arrangement, but garbled, and furnished with their own often pernicious notes.

Of late years, the suspicion had been gathering strength, that this celebrated book was not merely a collection, (for the word recueil occurs rather obscurely in the original preface ;) but that very important omissions had been made. Now, however, the matter is put out of doubt. In an article in the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, year 1835, by M. Foisset, he states that the suppressions by the original editors were numerous, daring, and of great importance. In 1843, Victor Cousin published a pretty large volume upon the character and writings of Pascal. He, too, plainly fosters the hope of Condorcet and Voltaire, that something favourable to infidelity might be drawn out of Pascal, especially when the concealed treasures should be displayed. Happily, now they are so; three or four transcripts of various portions have been at different times brought to light; and at last the autographs of the great author make their appearance. They had been preserved (buried for conservation!) in the vast library at the Tuilleries, called Royal, National, Imperial, and Royal again. On the 29th of June last, the government of Lewis Philip gave permission to M. Prosper Faugère to publish them. He obtained, also, from the respective proprietors, the scattered manuscripts, which were immediate or mediate copies of portions. He has carefully collated them all, and the printed editions; and has accomplished the task in the most judicious and scrupulously faithful manner. He has added the requisite accompaniments of elucidation; and thus has formed the two beautiful volumes which we now rejoice in announcing to our readers. A finer example of able editorship it would be difficult to find we only regret the want of a copious index.

The hopes of infidelity from this source are blasted. Scepticism must for ever relinquish any inferential countenance from the illus

trious French philosopher. M. Faugère has gathered up every sentence, clause, line, and even single word, of Pascal's writings thus opened before him. He has presented them in their precise original form. He suppresses nothing; he hides nothing; where a word has faded, or is from any other cause illegible, he points it out: in short, he has given us a perfect specimen of the treatment due to the most illustrious monuments of literature, and to the prescriptions of public right.

The original editions presented the fragments arranged in a very good order, indicating a sketch of systematic divinity. Condorcet, and after him Bossut, overturned that arrangement, not much for the better. M. Faugère has incorporated the new matter with the old, . yet ever distinguishing them, upon another plan of collocation. He makes fewer chapters than did the first editors, and expresses their titles in part differently. We know not which of the two orders to prefer; they are both good. But as to the fragments themselves, very many, especially of the shorter ones, which are often unfinished sentences, and even single words, might be equally well placed under any one of several heads. In point of quantity, the new matter appears to be about equal to the old. Many sentences and paragraphs bear the clearest indications of being the sparks of thought, written instantly on being struck off. Pascal wrote a very rapid hand; but it could not keep pace with his thinking. In numerous instances, he has drawn his pen across, no doubt to signify obliteration; but those passages are often among the brightest scintillations of mind.

Besides the Thoughts, these volumes contain other productions of M. Pascal, most of which were before unknown, except to the handful of persons who had access to the manuscripts :-Letters to his sister, and other bosom-friends; a long and most affecting PRAYER, (written when he was about twenty-five years old,) imploring the Divine blessing upon the sufferings of illness, full of evangelical humility, and the adoring of sovereign grace, and with scarcely the faintest tinge of a popish implication, a meditative act of communion with the God of holiness and redemption, (and it has been often printed, both separately and in the editions of the Thoughts;) several treatises, mathematical, physical, moral, and sacred, among which is a copious essay on the Art of Persuading, which every preacher of the Gospel might read with signal advantage.

The volumes are elegantly printed, exemplarily correct, and enriched with fac-similia of Pascal's hand-writing, and of a beautiful portrait, taken by one of his friends, in red chalk, on the inside board of a book, when M. Pascal was in about his twenty-sixth year.