eenth century were works of propaganda, appealing with a practical
purpose to the age in which they were written--works whose value does
not depend solely upon artistic considerations. The former were static,
the latter dynamic. As the century progressed, the tendency deepened;
and the literature of the age, taken as a whole, presents a spectacle of
thrilling dramatic interest, in which the forces of change, at first
insignificant, gradually gather in volume, and at last, accumulated into
overwhelming power, carry all before them. In pure literature, the
writers of the eighteenth century achieved, indeed, many triumphs; but
their great, their peculiar, triumphs were in the domain of thought.

The movement had already begun before the death of Louis. The evils at
which La Bruyere had shuddered had filled the attention of more
practical minds. Among these the most remarkable was FENELON, Archbishop
of Cambray, who combined great boldness of political thought with the
graces of a charming and pellucid style. In several writings, among
which was the famous _Telemaque_--a book written for the edification of
the young Duc de Bourgogne, the heir to the French throne--Fenelon gave
expression to the growing reaction against the rigid autocracy of the
government, and enunciated the revolutionary doctrine that a monarch
existed for no other purpose than the good of his people. The Duc de
Bourgogne was converted to the mild, beneficent, and open-minded views
of his tutor; and it is possible that if he had lived a series of
judicious reforms might have prevented the cataclysm at the close of the
century. But in one important respect the mind of Fenelon was not in
accord with the lines on which French thought was to develop for the
next eighty years. Though he was among the first to advocate religious
toleration, he was an ardent, even a mystical, Roman Catholic. Now one
of the chief characteristics of the coming age was its scepticism--its
elevation of the secular as opposed to the religious elements in
society, and its utter lack of sympathy with all forms of mystical
devotion. Signs of this spirit also had appeared before the end of
Louis's reign. As early as 1687--within a year of the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes--FONTENELLE, the nephew of Corneille, in his _Histoire
des Oracles_, attacked the miraculous basis of Christianity under the
pretence of exposing the religious credulity of the ancient Greeks and
Romans. In its mingl