was brought up by charity, gained a
reputation as a brilliant exhibitioner at the College d'Harcourt, and,
after the mishap of being imprisoned for a libel, obtained new success
at the Academy competitions. He acquired the favour of Voltaire, and
fairly launched himself in literature. For many years he furnished
tragedies to the stage, and criticised the literary work of others with
a singular mixture of acuteness, pedantry, and ill-temper. He was
converted from Republicanism by an imprisonment during the Terror, and
became a violent conservative and defender of orthodoxy. He died in
1803. His principal critical work is his _Cours de Litterature_, which
was the work chiefly of his later days. La Harpe had very considerable
talent, which was however warped by the false and narrow system of
criticism he adopted, and by his personal ill-temper and overbearing
disposition. He is even more than Boileau the type of the
schoolmaster-critic, who marks passages for correction according to
cut-and-dried rules instead of attempting to judge the author according
to his own standard. Yet, if he is the most typical example of the
school, he is also perhaps the best. In dealing with authors of his own
century, he is especially worthy of attention, because for the most part
they themselves had before them the standards which he used, and his
method is therefore relevant as far as it goes. La Harpe wrote well in
the fashion of his day.

[Sidenote: Thomas.]

With Duclos, Marmontel, and La Harpe, Thomas is usually named. This
writer, like others of our present subjects, was chiefly a composer of
academic _Eloges_, _Memoires_, _Discours_, and the like. He also wrote a
book on _Les Femmes_, a subject which he treated, as he did most things,
with seriousness, and with a mixture of declamation and sentimentality.
His literary value is but small.

[Sidenote: Orthodox Apologists.]

Of the definitely orthodox party only two names need be mentioned, that
of the Abbe Guenee, who devoted himself to exposing Voltaire's numerous
slips in erudition in his _Lettres de Quelques Juifs_, and that of the
Abbe Bergier, who is chiefly noteworthy as having held the singular post
of official refuter of the Encyclopaedists, in virtue of which
appointment he received two thousand _livres_ per annum from the General
Assembly of the clergy for sixteen years. He wrote with assiduity, but
was not read, and three years before the Revolution he lost his annuity,