In order to obtain some information respecting the author of these letters, the reader is referred to the Memoirs of Madame de Staal, as published in 2 vols. in 1783.—We there learn that Mademoiselle de Launai, by one of the many whimsical incidents which constituted her motley destiny, found herself at an early period a prisoner in the Bastile; to which very interesting confinement (as it ultimately proved) she was introduced by her patroness the Duchess Du Maine: who, having quarreled with the French Court, applied for redress to the Spanish Government; a measure which so irritated the Regent of France, M. D’Orléans, that he ordered her dispatches to be seized, and the Duchess to be sent to the Citadel of Dijon; while Mademoiselle de Launai, her protégée, for having assisted in destroying some tell-tale manuscripts, was conveyed to the Bastile. To this event, however unpromising in speculation, Mlle. de Launai appears to have owed the most endearing pleasures of her life. Love, who seems never to have lost sight of her for a moment, provided a resource against that ennui which is so notoriously irksome to the captive, that we are not without examples of the most ingenious devices employed by the solitary inmates of a prison to “whip the lagging moments into speed.” We have heard of a man cultivated an acquaintance with a spider, and extracted a kind of pleasure even from his society. How fortunate, then, may we pronounce Mademoiselle deLaunai who found something so much better than even Arachne herself, in the form of a handsome knight, the Chevalier De Menil, who had been sent to the same prison for his devotion to the Duke Du Maine. To this intercourse, for they had never previously said a word to[Page 542] each other, we are indebted for the greatest part of the letters contained in the two volumes before us.
Correspondence between lovers immured in a prison we must admit to be invaluable to the Pyramus and Thisbe themselves: they could, no doubt, repeat the same tale, decorate with the same glowing language the same sentiments, and never tire each other: but the reader, if not in love, sickens at the platitude of the cooing pens of poor captives, the locality of whose situation necessarily precluded all communication with the world at large. Hence, the scanty occurrences of the Bastile furnished Mademoiselle deLaunai with no subjects of intelligence but such as love supplied. We have a sanction for our remarks in the description of these letters given in an extract from Madame deStaal's memoirs, affixed to this publication, where she thus speaks of them herself:
The little incidents which they contain form the substance of this adventure; they are the actual events which attest their truth, and the sources in which I have recovered some circumstances that had escaped me. They will supply the place of our conversations, always disturbed by fear, abridged by prudence, more short and less continued than our epistolary correspondence, and almost entirely effaced from my memory.
Our confinement, in a place in which we had no employment, occasioned the production of a countless multitude of letters. That passion, which I believed myself capable of cherishing without offering any outrage to reason or virtue, I expressed without offering any outrage to a reason or virtue, I expressed without any reserve. I spoke to a person to whom I considered myself as already united by the most sacred ties, waiting only for the termination of our captivity in order to render our enjoyment legal and indissoluble.
Notwithstanding this want of general interest, and of novelty, the letters possess much merit. The language is correct and elegant; the sentiments are dignified and moral; and though occasionally impassioned, they are always delicately chaste, and apparently dictated by good sense and amiable dispositions.
The correspondence of Mademoiselle de Launai with the Marquis De Silly, and with Monsieur D’Héricourt when she had become Madame de Staal, equally deserves our approbation on the same ground of merit; and we are indebted to the editor who obliges us with these posthumous credentials of the genius which we formerly admired.
In a note, we meet with a sort of biographical table, which may be considered as an useful memorandum, and we shall therefore copy it:
[Page 543]| Mesdames | La Suzè | born | 1618 | died | 1673 |
| Villedieu | — | 1640 | — | 1683 | |
| De Motteville | — | 1615 | — | 1689 | |
| De Montpensier | — | 1627 | — | 1693 | |
| La Fayette | — | 1634 | — | 1693 | |
| Deshoulieres | — | 1638 | — | 1694 | |
| Sévigné | — | 1626 | — | 1696 | |
| Scudery | — | 1607 | — | 1701 | |
| Ninon | — | 1618 | — | 1705 | |
| Maintenon | — | 1635 | — | 1719 | |
| Dacier | — | 1651 | — | 1720 | |
| De Lambert | — | 1647 | — | 1733 | |
| Duchâtelet | — | 1706 | — | 1749 | |
| De Launai | (about) | 1693 | (de Staal) | 1750 | |
| Dumaine | — | 1676 | — | 1753 | |
| De Graffigny | — | 1694 | — | 1758 | |
| Riccoboni | — | 1734 | — | 1792 |
These volumes form part of a series of epistolary works now publishing in France, consisting of letters from celebrated French ladies in the last two centuries.