rs of their schools to the
Greek and Latin classics, but they represented the ancient masterpieces
dissevered from their original historic environment, as impersonal
models of taste, as isolated standards of style. They did much, however,
for the cultivation of original composition modelled on Cicero and
Virgil. They have been charged with paying an exaggerated attention to
form, and with neglecting the subject-matter of the classics. This
neglect is attributed to their anxiety to avoid the "pagan" element in
the ancient literature. Intensely conservative in their methods, they
kept up the system of using Latin in their grammars (and in their oral
instruction) long after it had been abandoned by others.

Port-Royal.

The use of French for these purposes was a characteristic of the "Little
Schools" of the Jansenists of Port-Royal(1643-1660). The text-books
prepared for them by Lancelot included not only the above-mentioned
Latin grammar (1644) but also the _Methode grecque_ of 1655 and the
_Jardin des racines grecques_ (1657), which remained in use for two
centuries and largely superseded the grammar of Clenardus (1636) and the
_Tirocinium_ of Pere Labbe (1648). Greek began to decline in the
university about 1650, at the very time when the Port-Royalists were
aiming at its revival. During the brief existence of their schools their
most celebrated pupils were Tillemont and Racine.

The Jesuits, on the other hand, claimed Corneille and Moliere, as well
as Descartes and Bossuet, Fontenelle, Montesquieu and Voltaire. Of their
Latin poets the best-known were Denis Petau (d. 1652), Rene Rapin (d.
1687) and N.E. Sanadon (d. 1733). In 1762 the Jesuits were suppressed,
and more than one hundred schools were thus deprived of their teachers.
The university of Paris, which had prompted their suppression, and the
parliament, which had carried it into effect, made every endeavour to
replace them. The university took possession of the _Collegium
Claromontanum_, then known as the _College Louis-le-Grand_, and
transformed it into an _ecole normale_. Many of the Jesuit schools were
transferred to the congregations of the _Oratoire_ and the Benedictines,
and to the secular clergy. On the eve of the Revolution, out of a grand
total of 562 classical schools, 384 were in the hands of the clergy and
178 in those of the congregations.

Classical education attacked.

The expulsion of the Jesuits gave a new impulse to the attacks dir