yle simple, natural, and delicate in its fervency.

The admirable _Lettre a l'Academie_, Fenelon's latest gift to
literature, states the case of the ancients against the moderns, and
of the moderns against the ancients, with an attempt at impartiality,
but it is evident that the writer's love was chiefly given to his
favourite classical authors; simplicity and natural beauty attracted
him more than ingenuity or wit or laboured brilliance. He feared that
the language was losing some of its richness and flexibility; he
condemns the use of rhyme; he is hardly just to Racine, but honours
himself by his admiration of Moliere. In dealing with historical
writings he recognises the importance of the study of governments,
institutions, and social life, and at the same time values highly
a personal, vivid, direct manner, and a feeling for all that is real,
concrete, and living. To his rare gifts of intellect and of the soul
was added an inexpressible personal charm, in which something that
was almost feminine was united with the reserved power and authority
of a man.

CHAPTER VIII
TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The spiritual life was interpreted from within by Fenelon. The facts
of the moral world, as seen in society, were studied, analysed, and
portrayed by La Bruyere and Saint-Simon.

JEAN DE LA BRUYERE (1645-96), a Parisian of the _bourgeoisie_,
appointed preceptor in history to the grandson of the great Conde,
saw with the keen eyes of a disenchanted observer the spectacle of
seventeenth-century society. In 1688, appended to his translation
of the Characters of Theophrastus, appeared his only important work,
_Les Caracteres ou les Moeurs de ce Siecle_; revised and enlarged
editions followed, until the ninth was published in 1696. "I restore
to the public," he wrote, "what the public lent me." In a series of
sixteen chapters, each consisting of detached paragraphs, his
studies of human life and of the social environment are presented
in the form of maxims, reflections, observations, portraits. For the
maxims a recent model lay before him in the little volume of La
Rochefoucauld; portraits, for which the romances of Mlle. de Scudery
had created a taste, had been exhibited in a collection formed by
Mlle. de Montpensier--the growth of her _salon_--in collaboration
with Segrais (_Divers Portraits_, 1659). Aware of his mastery as a
painter of character, La Bruyere added largely to the number of his
portraits in