The bulk of Vauvenargues’s work is very small, but its interest is very considerable. In the Introduction, in the Réflexions, and in the minor fragments it consists, in fact, of detached and somewhat desultory thoughts, in the style wherein the 18th century so much delighted, on questions of moral philosophy and of literary criticism. Sainte-Beuve has mildly said that as a literary critic Vauvenargues “shows inexperience.” It would be truer to say that this part of his work has no value or interest beyond that of curiosity. He had no knowledge of any language but his own, and his literary criticism is limited to a repetition in crude form of the stock ideas of his time. Thus he exaggerates immensely the value of Racine and Boileau, but depreciates Corneille and even Molière. It is almost sufficient to say that he blames Molière for choosing “des sujets si bas,” and shows an entire ignorance of all French literature before the 17th century, and of all other literature whatsoever, except a certain second-hand acquaintance with the classics. As a writer he stands far higher. His style is indeed, according to strict Academic judgment, somewhat incorrect, and when he attempts rhetorical flourishes (which is not often) they have usually the artificial and affected character—stilted or namby-pamby— which mars so much 18th-century work. His strength, however, is not really in any way that of a man of letters, but that of a moralist. Even here he is not superior to the weaknesses of his time. In his day the anti-religious or anti-Christian movement of thought was not fully declared, and he did not adopt the complete philosophe attitude; in his letters, at any rate, he poses somewhat ostentatiously as “neutral” between the religious and the anti-religious school. In some of his maxims about politics there is also traceable the hollow and confused jargon about tyrants and liberty which did so much to bring about, and to embitter when brought about, the struggles of the Revolution. It is in morals proper, in the discussion and application of general principles of conduct, that Vauvenargues shines. No century has ever excelled the 18th in moral theory, whatever may have been its deserts in respect of moral practice, and no 18th-century moralist has excelled Vauvenargues. He is not an exact psychologist, much less a rigorous metaphysician. He has no worked-out or workable theory of moral obligation or of the moral sense. His terminology is merely popular and loose, and he hardly attempts the co-ordination of his ideas into any system. His real strength is in a department which the French have always cultivated with greater success than any other modern people,—the expression in more or less epigrammatic language of the results of acute observation of human conduct and motives. The chief distinction between Vauvenargues and his great predecessor La Rochefoucauld is that Vauvenargues, unlike La Rochefoucauld, thinks nobly of man, and is altogether inclined rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean theory. He has indeed been called a modern Stoic, and, allowing for the vagueness of all such phrases, there is much to be said for the description.

An edition of the Works of Vauvenargues, slightly enlarged, appeared in the year of his death, and in part or in whole has been frequently reprinted, all editions, however, being superseded by that of Μ. Gilbert (2 vols., Paris, 1857), which contains the previously unpublished correspondences above referred to and all other attainable matter, including some Dialogues of the Dead, some “characters” in imitation of Theophrastus and La Bruyère, and numerous short pieces of criticism and moralizing. Vauvenargues has been frequently written about, the comments best worth reading, besides those contained in Gilbert’s edition, being four essays by Sainte-Beuve in Causeries du Lundi, vols. iii. and xiv.