Is there any stranger character in history than Le Rol
Soleil, with his high-heeled shoes and airs and graces, disguising a short stature and a long head ? Certainly Louis was a great King by whatever canon we judge him : the stupider and meaner we believe him to have been the more must we marvel at his splendid achievements. He lived in a magnifi- cent age, and influenced it profoundly ; he raised the Mon- archy to a dazzling eminence and sowed thereby the seed of the Revolution ; he was magnificent in his miseries and mistakes as he was in the days when he was lucky and powerful and all Europe accepted him at his own valuation. In Louis XIV . in Love and War (Cape, 18s.) Mr. Sisley Huddleston develops the well-worn theme of the " inferiority-complex." To our mind this proves little. The King was disgracefully 'treated as a child and knew himself to be dull. So he deter- mined to be great. In describing his rise to power we can attach, if we will, Dr. Adler's label to the sudden energy, the arrogant audacity, the over-vaulting ambition of this strange boy. But the label explains nothing and Mr. Huddleston leaves us no wiser than we were.
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