literary
history is, of course, _Telemaque_, which work he had anticipated by the
somewhat similar _Aventures d'Aristonous_. It has often been regretted
that classics in any language should be used for purposes of instruction
in the rudiments, and hardly any single work has suffered more from this
practice than _Telemaque_, for learners of French are usually set to
read it long before they have any power of literary appreciation. A
continuous narrative, moreover, is about the least suited of all
literary forms to bear that process of cutting up in short pieces which
is necessary in education. The pleasure of the story is either lost
altogether, or anticipated by surreptitious reading on the part of the
pupil, after which the mechanical plodding through matter of which he
has already exhausted the interest is disgusting enough. Yet it can
hardly be doubted that if _Telemaque_ had not, in the case of most
readers, this fatal disadvantage, its beauties would be generally
acknowledged. Its form is somewhat artificial, and the author has,
perhaps, not escaped the error of most moral fiction writers, that of
making his hero too much of a model of what ought to be, and too little
of a copy of what is. But the story is excellently managed, the various
incidents are drawn with remarkable vividness and picturesqueness, the
descriptions are uniformly excellent, and the style is almost
impeccable. Even were the moral sentiments and the general tendency of
the book less excellent than they are, its value as a model of French
composition would probably have secured it something like its present
place side by side with La Fontaine's Fables as a school-book. It is
fair to add that in the character of Calypso, where the need of the
author for a 'terrible example' freed him from his restraints, very
considerable powers of character-drawing are shown, and the same may be
said of not a few of the minor personages.

[Sidenote: Massillon.]

The third greatest name of the period in this class of men of letters
is beyond all question that of Massillon. He, like Fenelon, belongs to
the second, if not the third, generation of the Siecle de Louis
Quatorze, being nearly forty years younger than Bossuet. He was a long
liver, and his death did not occur till far into the reign of Louis XV.,
when the reputation of Voltaire was established, and the
eighteenth-century movement was in full swing. But his literary and
oratorical activity had ceased fo