[55] According to all the “Keys,” this is said to be an allusion to the Abbé de Dangeau (1643-1723), a member of the French Academy, and a brother of the better known marquis. But why and wherefore this Abbé has been singled out, has not reached posterity. Some say the President Cousin, the editor of the Journal des Savants, was meant.
[56] Ζηλωτής means “envious.”
[57] In his Recueil de divers ouvrages en prose et en vers, 1676, Charles Perrault defended the Alceste of Quinault and attacked the Alcestis of Euripides. Unfortunately his criticism contained several errors, which Racine noticed in the preface of Iphigénie, accusing Perrault at the same time of having carelessly read the work he was censuring.
[58] This was meant for Henri-Joseph de Peyre, Count de Troisvilles (1642-1708), pronounced Tréville, a very intelligent and highly-cultivated nobleman, brought up in his youth with Louis XIV., whose talents he rather undervalued. He was on intimate terms with the Port-Royalists, and after several alternate fits of devotion and dissipation, ended his days devoutly and penitently.
[59] The Abbé de Dangeau, a pedantical purist mentioned already, page 13, note.
[60] In the seventeenth century fireworks were in French feu gréçois, literally “Greek fire.”
[61] The Cid, the dramatic masterpiece of Pierre Corneille, was first performed in 1636. Cardinal Richelieu tried to get up a cabal to crush it, but was unsuccessful; he also persuaded the Academy to publish a severe criticism on it, which is too favourably spoken of by La Bruyère. Boileau says in his ninth satire:—
“En vain contre le Cid un ministre se ligue,
Tout Paris pour Chimère a les yeux de Rodrigue.
LʼAcadémie en corps a beau le censurer,