as an artist, by profession he was a theologian; and
even the style of Bossuet can hardly save from oblivion the theological
controversies of two hundred years ago. The same failing mars his
treatment of history. His _Histoire Universelle_ was conceived on broad
and sweeping lines, and contains some perspicacious thinking; but the
dominating notion of the book is a theological one--the illustration,
by means of the events of history, of the divine governance of the
world; and the fact that this conception of history has now become
extinct has reduced the work to the level of a finely written curiosity.

Purely as a master of prose Bossuet stands in the first rank. His style
is broad, massive, and luminous; and the great bulk of his writing is
remarkable more for its measured strength than for its ornament. Yet at
times the warm spirit of the artist, glowing through the well-ordered
phrases, diffuses an extraordinary splendour. When, in his _Meditations
sur l'Evangile_ or his _Elevations sur les Mysteres_, Bossuet unrolls
the narratives of the Bible or meditates upon the mysteries of his
religion, his language takes on the colours of poetry and soars on the
steady wings of an exalted imagination. In his famous _Oraisons
Funebres_ the magnificent amplitude of his art finds its full
expression. Death, and Life, and the majesty of God, and the
transitoriness of human glory--upon such themes he speaks with an
organ-voice which reminds an English reader of the greatest of his
English contemporaries, Milton. The pompous, rolling, resounding
sentences follow one another in a long solemnity, borne forward by a
vast movement of eloquence which underlies, controls, and animates them
all.

O nuit desastreuse! O nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout-a-coup
comme un eclat de tonnerre, cette etonnante nouvelle: Madame se
meurt, Madame est morte!...

--The splendid words flow out like a stream of lava, molten and glowing,
and then fix themselves for ever in adamantine beauty.

We have already seen that one of the chief characteristics of French
classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit
as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the
_Fables_ of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the
same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La
Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, writing the one at the beginning, the
other towards the close, of the classic