" The ingenuity of man has not devised a
mode of saying those particular things as exactly in fewer words. They
reach the maximum of conciseness, and are therefore called maxims.
It is very unusual in the history of literature to be able to point to
a man of genius as the positive founder of a class of work. When we
look closely into the matter, we are sure to find that there was an
obscure predecessor, a torch-bearer who lighted up the path. Even
Shakespeare has Marlowe in front of him, and in front of Marlowe are
Greene and Peele. Several poets were inspired by the story of the fall
of the rebel angels before Milton took up "Paradise Lost" and seized
that province as his own by conquest. In like manner, La Rochefoucauld
seems to us in a general view, and seemed indeed to his own Parisian
contemporaries, to have invented a new art in the production of his
"Maximes." But, in truth, he was not the pioneer, and he seems to have
spent months, and even years, in a sort of apprenticeship to two
authors who have not survived in French literature as he has. So far
as we can make out, the real creator of the maxim in French was
Jacques Esprit (1611-1678), the Abbe Esprit as he was called, although
he was never a priest, and had a legitimate wife and family.
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