to be dazzled by false brilliancy, by unnatural expressions, nor by those antitheses so much in fashion:  as a protection against such innovations, have a recourse to your own good sense, and to the ancient authors.  On the other hand, do not laugh at those who give into such errors; you are as yet too young to act the critic, or to stand forth a severe avenger of the violated rights of good sense.  Content yourself with not being perverted, but do not think of converting others; let them quietly enjoy their errors in taste, as well as in religion.  Within the course of the last century and a half, taste in France has (as well as that kingdom itself) undergone many vicissitudes.  Under the reign of I do not say Lewis XIII. but of Cardinal de Richelieu, good taste first began to make its way.  It was refined under that of Lewis XIV., a great king, at least, if not a great man.  Corneille was the restorer of true taste, and the founder of the French theatre; although rather inclined to the Italian ‘Concetti’ and the Spanish ‘Agudeze’.  Witness those epigrams which he makes Chimene utter in the greatest excess of grief.

Before his time, those kind of itinerant authors, called troubadours or romanciers, were a species of madmen who attracted the admiration of fools.  Toward the end of Cardinal de Richelieu’s reign, and the beginning of Lewis XIV.’s, the Temple of Taste was established at the Hotel of Rambouillet; but that taste was not judiciously refined this Temple of Taste might more properly have been named a Laboratory of Wit, where good sense was put to the torture, in order to extract from it the most subtile essence.  There it was that Voiture labored hard and incessantly to create wit.  At length, Boileau and Moliere fixed the standard of true taste.  In spite of the Scuderys, the Calprenedes, etc., they defeated and put to flight ARTAMENES, Juba, OROONDATES, and all those heroes of romance, who were, notwithstanding (each of them), as good as a whole Army.  Those madmen then endeavored to obtain an asylum in libraries; this they could not accomplish, but were under a necessity of taking shelter in the chambers of some few ladies.  I would have you read one volume of “Cleopatra,” and one of “Clelia”; it will otherwise be impossible for you to form any idea of the extravagances they contain; but God keep you from ever persevering to the twelfth.

During almost the whole reign of Lewis XIV., true taste remained in its purity, until it received some hurt, although undesignedly, from a very fine genius, I mean Monsieur de Fontenelle; who, with the greatest sense and the most solid learning, sacrificed rather too much to the Graces, whose most favorite child and pupil he was.  Admired with reason, others tried to imitate him; but, unfortunately for us, the author of the “Pastorals,” of the “History of Oracles,” and of the “French Theatre,” found fewer imitators than the Chevalier d’Her did mimics.  He has since been taken off by a thousand authors:  but never really imitated by anyone that I know of.