praise, than any of his works, and retains its popularity undiminished at the present day.
Although he recounts with pride, in his History, the triumphs of the French arms, and often makes feats of valour the theme of his verse, yet it is singular how different were his views from those of his own or any preceding age, on the subject of military glory.
"When I have asked you," he writes to Thiriot, "for anecdotes about the age of Louis XIV., it is less about his person than about the arts which have flourished in his time. I like better details of Racine and Boileau, Quinault, Lulli, Molière, Le Brun, Bossuet, Poussin, Descartes, &c., than of the battle of Steinkirk. Nothing but the name remains of those who have led battalions and squadrons. The human race gains nothing by these pitched battles. But the great men I have mentioned have prepared pure and durable pleasures for posterity. A canal which joins two seas, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth discovered, are a thousand times more precious than all the annals of a Court, all the records of a campaign. You know that, with me, the great men come first, the heroes last. I call great men those who have excelled in the useful or the agreeable; the pillagers of provinces are mere heroes."
In a similar vein is a little stanza which he wrote, in old age, to a lady:—
"A Hero, ravaging our sphere,
- To my mind is a monstrous evil;
Far more a Founder I revere,—
- This is a god, but that a devil."
By one of those grotesque caprices which are to be looked for when absolute power is exercised by a Louis XV., the author of this fine contribution to French history had already been deprived of his post of historio-
