The Life and Times of Louis XIV

The Life and Times of Louis XIV

James, George Payne Rainsford

London: Bentley, 1838

Internet Archive

1838

George Eliot to Maria Lewis, 13 February 1840. "I have been reading the 3 volumes of the Life and Times of Louis the Fourteenth and am as eagerly waiting for the 4th and last as any voracious novel reader for Bulwer's last. I am afraid I am getting quite martial in my spirit, and in the warmth of my sympathy for Turenne and Condé losing my hatred of war. Such a conflict between individual and moral influence is no novelty. But certainly war though the heaviest scourge with which the Divine wrath against sin is manifested in Time, has been a necessary vent for impurities and a channel for tempestuous passions that must have otherwise made the whole earth like the land of the devoted Canaanites to vomit forth the inhabitants thereof; awful as such a sentiment appears it seems to me that in the present condition of man, and I do not mean this in the sense that Cowper does, such a purgation of the body politic is very likely essential to its health. A foreign war would soon put an end to our national humours that are growing to so alarming a head. -- What do you think of the Progress of Architecture as a subject for Poetry?" GEL 1: 37

James, George Payne Rainsford, The Life and Times of Louis XIV, George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57028

https://georgeeliotarchive.org/files/original/12c5e25d0bb0b7d9ec153cc6ad2c2692.pdf