product of what has always been, in France, an extremely rare phenomenon—­an amateur in literature who was also a genius.  Saint-Simon was so far from being a professional man of letters that he would have been shocked to hear himself described as a man of letters at all; indeed, it might be said with justice that his only profession was that of a duke.  It was as a duke—­or, more correctly, as a Duc et Pair—­that, in his own eyes at any rate, he lived and moved and had his being.  It was round his position as a duke that the whole of his active existence had revolved; it was with the consciousness of his dukedom dominating his mind that he sat down in his retirement to write his memoirs.  It might seem that no book produced in such circumstances and by such a man could possibly be valuable or interesting.  But, fortunately for the world, the merit of books does not depend upon the enlightenment of authors.  Saint-Simon was a man of small intellect, with medieval ideas as to the structure of society, with an absurd belief in the fundamental importance of the minutest class distinctions, and with an obsession for dukedoms almost amounting to mania:  but he had in addition an incredibly passionate temperament combined with an unparalleled power of observation; and these two qualities have made his book immortal.

Besides the intrinsic merits of the work, it has the additional advantage of being concerned with an age which, of enthralling interest on its own account, also happened to be particularly suited to the capacities of the writer.  If Saint-Simon had lived at any other time, his memoirs would have been admirable, no doubt, but they would have lacked the crowning excellence which they actually possess.  As it was, a happy stroke of fortune placed him in the one position where he could exercise to the full his extraordinary powers:  never, before or since, has there been so much to observe; never, before or since, so miraculous an observer.  For, at Versailles, in the last years of Louis, Saint-Simon had before him, under his very eyes as a daily and hourly spectacle, the whole accumulated energy of France in all its manifestations; that was what he saw; and that, by the magic of his pen, is what he makes us see.  Through the endless succession of his pages the enormous panorama unrolls itself, magnificent, palpitating, alive.  What La Bruyere saw with the spiritual gaze of a moralist rushed upon the vision of Saint-Simon in all the colour, the detail, the intensity, the frenzy, of actual fact.  He makes no comments, no reflections—­or, if he does, they are ridiculous; he only sees and feels.  Thus, though in the profundity of his judgement he falls so infinitely below La Bruyere, in his character-drawing he soars as high above him.  His innumerable portraits are unsurpassed in literature.  They spring into his pages bursting with life—­individual, convincing, complete, and as various as humanity itself.  He excels in that most difficult art of presenting