[683]. It is generally quoted “Le style c’est l’homme.” There is a further dispute whether it ought to be “de l’homme même.” For what is probably the nearest anticipation of it, v. sup., p. [336].
[684]. So again in the remark, not made formally, but often thrown in his face, that certain verses were “as fine as fine prose.” But this heresy, as readers of this volume will know, is only that of Fénelon and La Motte revived.
[685]. His literary work has only one small section to itself, the Réflexions Critiques sur quelques Poètes; but some of it appears in the Fragments, the Dialogues, and elsewhere. All is in Gilbert’s excellent edition of the Œuvres, (2 vols., Paris, 1857), some in that volume of the Didot Collection which gives Vauvenargues’ Maxims with those of La Rochefoucauld and Montesquieu.
[686]. Les Beaux Arts réduits[réduits] à un même principe, Paris, 1746; Cours de Belles-Lettres, 4 vols., Paris, 1750; Traité de la Construction Oratoire, Paris, 1764.
[687]. 5 vols., Paris, 1764. This is the edition I have used; later ones seem to be in 6 vols., but without addition so far as I know.
[688]. 2 vols., Paris, 1771.
[689]. It is perhaps right to warn the reader that this is not, I believe, the general opinion.
[690]. See on Rollin, sup., p. [509].
[691]. Op. cit., i. 60.
[692]. He, with Condorcet and M. J. Chénier, is sometimes spoken of as showing a classical reaction against the eighteenth-century toleration of English and other vagaries which we shall see in Marmontel. I think “reaction” is rather too strong a word, though “recrudescence” might do. Condorcet was only a critic par interim, if even that, nor need we occupy ourselves with him: justice shall be done (Fortune permitting) in the next volume to the person who had the honour to be brother to André Chénier.