ave had at about the same time a partly similar experience.

XII.

BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-1704; MASSILLON: 1663-1742.

We group three names in one title, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, to
represent the pulpit orators of France. There are other great names,--as
Flechier, with Claude and Saurin, the last two, Protestants both,--but
the names we choose are the greatest.

Bossuet's individual distinction is, that he was a great man as well as
a great orator; Bourdaloue's, that he was priest-and-preacher simply;
Massillon's, that his sermons, regarded quite independently of their
subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded merely as masterpieces
of pure and classic style, became at once, and permanently became, a
part of French literature.

The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the French national creed. No
Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it.
Protestant agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least in
this. Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as
Milton is to the Englishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence,
somehow, seems a thing too near the common human level to answer fully
the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. Bossuet is not
eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is in equal part oratory,
while in English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in literature
its satisfaction to the sentiment of the sublime, very well represents
the difference in genius between the two races. The French idea of
poetry is eloquence; and it is eloquence carried to its height, whether
in verse or in prose, that constitutes for the Frenchman sublimity. The
difference is a difference of blood. English blood is Teutonic in base,
and the imagination of the Teuton is poetic. French blood, in base, is
Celtic; and the imagination of the Celt is oratoric.

Jacques Benigne Bossuet was of good _bourgeois_, or middle-class, stock.
He passed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic
consistency with what was to be his subsequent career. He was brought
forward while a young man in the Hotel de Rambouillet, where, on a
certain occasion, he preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices
of his admiring patron. In due time he attracted wide public attention,
not merely as an eloquent orator, but as a profound student and as a
powerful controversialist. His character and influence became in their
maturity such, that La Bruye