La Rochefoucauld §laroch_382: Our actions are like the rhymed ends of blank verses (Bouts-Rimes) where to e...
Source: François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665) (laroch_382) · external_aligned
Our actions are like the rhymed ends of blank verses (Bouts-Rimes) where to each one puts what construction he pleases. [The Bouts-Rimes was a literary game popular in the 17th and 18th centuries--the rhymed words at the end of a line being given for others to fill up. Thus Horace Walpole being given, "brook, why, crook, I," returned the burlesque verse-- "I sits with my toes in a Brook, And if any one axes me Why? I gies 'em a rap with my Crook, 'Tis constancy makes me, ses I."]
Witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15)
- manuscript_tradition: First edition, Paris 1665 — Barbin imprint
- critical_edition: Pleiade edition — Truchet (Gallimard, 1964)
- translation: Tancock translation (Penguin Classics, 1959)
- republication: Project Gutenberg — Maxims
- republication: Internet Archive — multiple editions