he seventeenth century salon was of a threefold
nature--literary, moral, and social. According to the salon
conception, artistic, literary, or musical pleasure being derived
from form and mode of expression, it possessed a special and unique
interest in proportion to the efforts made and the difficulties
surmounted in attaining that form and expression: thus, woman
introduced a new standard of excellence.

_Preciosite_ treated language not as a work of art, but as a medium
for the display of individual linguistic dexterity; giving no thing
its proper name, it delighted in paraphrase, allusion, word play,
unexpected comparisons and abundance of metaphors, and revelled in
the elusive, delicate, subtle, and complex. Hence conversation turned
constantly to love and gallantry; thus woman developed to a wonderful
degree, unattainable to but few, the art of conversation, politeness
and courtesy of manners, and social relations, at the same time
purifying language and enriching it.

French women of the seventeenth century are condemned for having
treated serious things too lightly; and it is said that "in confining
the French mind to the observation of society and its attractions, she
has restricted and retarded a more realistic and larger activity."
In answer to this it may be asserted that the French mind was not
prepared for a broader field until it had passed through the process
of expurgating, refining, drilling, and disciplining. If _preciosite_
influenced politics, it was by developing diplomacy, for, from
the time that this spirit began to spread, French diplomacy became
world-renowned.

The social influence of the movement may be better appreciated
by considering the condition of woman in earlier periods. Having
practically no position except that of housewife or mother, she was
merely a source of pleasure for man, for whom she had little or no
respect. The _precieuses_, on the contrary, exacted respect, honor,
and a place beside man, as rights that belonged to them.

As the outcome of their desire to think, feel, and act with greater
delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression, finesse in
analysis, keenness of _esprit_, psychological subtleness: qualities
that surely tended to higher standards of morality, purer social
relations, finer and more subtle diplomacy, more elegance and
precision in literature. Therefore, _preciosite_ in France had a
wholesome influence, which was possible because woman had won f