Excerpt from Gossip and Glory of Versailles, 1692-1701, Vol. 1: An Abridged Translation With Notes From the Memoirs of the Duke De Saint-Simon

I feel that some apology is needed for offering to the public a translation of a well-known book, written in a language familiar to most educated English people; I can only plead, by way of excuse, that the case is exceptional. The Memoirs of Saint - Simon are certainly well known, in a sense that is, everybody has heard of them everybody knows that they are the very best of all French memoirs, rich as the French language is in literature of that kind. But not everybody reads them, even in France and I am convinced that they are not nearly so familiar to English readers as they deserve to be. I believe, indeed, that they are studied mainly by authors, who dig into them as into some vast rubbish-heap, in search of jewels wherewith to adorn their own writings. The fact is that the Memoirs are very lengthy, and very unequal the best parts are extremely vivid and interesting, but others are dull, and when saint-simon is dull his dullness passes all belief. Macaulay remarks in his Journal for 1852: I finished saint-simon's Memoirs, _and am more struck with the goodness of the good parts than ever. To be sure, the road from fountain to fountain lies through a very dry desert. With all deference for that great critic, I should put the case somewhat differently the Memoirs are not a wilderness with here and there a green oasis; the reader's journey takes him, for the most part, through a pleasant and picturesque country; but now and then he has to cross a patch of desert which seems as though it would never end.

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