[831] The chapter “Of the Pulpit” was first published in 1688, and our author made additions to it until the eighth edition of the “Characters” saw the light, in 1694. He had heard all the best preachers of his time, such as the Jesuit Claude de Lingendes (see page [323], note 592), and the Oratorians Le Jeune and Senault, who both died in 1672, whilst Bossuet preached in Paris from 1659 to 1669. Bourdaloue began preaching there in 1663, Mascaron in 1666, Fléchier in 1670, and Fénelon in 1675. The only great pulpit-orator our author did not hear was Massillon, who did not preach in the capital until 1696. Several sermons on pulpit oratory were preached in France, and many books on the same subject had been published there before and after this chapter was printed.
[832] Three barristers of repute in the seventeenth century, Antoine le Maître (1608-1658), whose Recueil de Plaidoyers has been printed; Claude Pucelle, and Bonaventure Fourcroy, a friend of Molière and Boileau, who died in 1691 and was a poet as well as a lawyer.
[833] See the Chapter “Of Certain Customs,” [§ 42.]
[834] A certain Abbé le Tourneur or le Tourneux, who died in 1680 at the age of forty-six, is said to have been such a man, but was, of course, not allowed to remain long at court.
[835] Bourdaloue (1632-1704) set the fashion of introducing in his sermons “portraits” or “Characters” of well-known individuals: a fashion which was much exaggerated by his imitators, and which also for some time prevailed in England. The Sermons of Dr. R. South (1633-1716), Prebendary of Westminster and Canon of Christ Church, Oxon, contain also many “portraits.”
[836] Our author says in a note; “This was Father Seraphin, a Capuchin monk.” Others have been less favourably inclined towards this preacher than La Bruyère was. This monk, who had been holding forth in Paris as early as 1671, preached in the parish church of Versailles, and four years later before the court and the king, in the palace.
[837] Saint Basil (329-379) was bishop of Cesarea; Saint John Chrysostom was (347-407) bishop of Constantinople, called the “golden-mouthed” for his great eloquence.
[838] Our author makes the same observation about dramatic poets. See his Chapter “Of Works of the Mind,” page [9], § 8.
[839] Compare in Racineʼs comedy of Les Plaideurs the speech of “LʼIntimé” (act iii, scene 3), to ridicule similar quotations.
[840] The Pandects of the Roman emperor Justinian were a cyclopædia of legal decisions of Roman lawyers; and after they had been discovered at Amalfi in Italy about the year 1137, they changed the whole of the legal aspect of Europe.