Finesse, in conversation and writing, differs from delicacy; the first applies equally to piquant and agreeable things, even to blame and praise; and still more to indecencies, over which a veil is drawn, through which we cannot penetrate without a blush. Bold things may be said with finesse.
Delicacy expresses soft and agreeable sentiments and ingenious praise; thus finesse belongs more to epigram, and delicacy to madrigal. It is delicacy which enters into a lover's jealousies, and not finesse.
The praises given to Louis XIV. by Despréaux are not always equally delicate; satires are not always sufficiently ingenious in the way of finesse. When Iphigenia, in Racine, has received from her father the order never to see Achilles more, she cries: "Dieux plus doux, vous n'aviez demandé que ma vie!"—"More gentle gods, you only ask my life!" The true character of this partakes rather of delicacy than of finesse.
FIRE.
SECTION I.
Is fire anything more than an element which lights, warms, and burns us? Is not light always fire, though fire is not always light? And is not Boerhaave in the right?
Is not the purest fire extracted from our combustibles, always gross, and partaking of the bodies consumed, and very different from elementary fire? How is fire distributed throughout nature, of which it is the soul?
Ignis ubique latet, naturam amplectitur omnem,
Cuncta parit, renovat, dividit, unit, alit.
Why did Newton, in speaking of rays of light, always say, "De natura radiorum lucis, utrum corpora sint necne non disputamus"; without examining whether they were bodies or not?