rt. Even his approval of the
revocation of the edict of Nantes stopped far short of approving
dragonades within his diocese of Meaux. But now his patience was wearing
out. A dissertation by one Father Caffaro, an obscure Italian monk,
became his excuse for writing certain violent _Maximes sur la comedie_
(1694) wherein he made an outrageous attack on the memory of Moliere,
dead more than twenty years. Three years later he was battling with
Fenelon over the love of God, and employing methods of controversy at
least as odious as Fenelon's own (1697-1699). All that can be said in
his defence is that Fenelon, four-and-twenty years his junior, was an
old pupil, who had suddenly grown into a rival; and that on the matter
of principle most authorities thought him right.

Amid these gloomy occupations Bossuet's life came slowly to an end. Till
he was over seventy he had scarcely known what illness was; but in 1702
he was attacked by the stone. Two years later he was a hopeless invalid,
and on the 12th of April 1704 he passed quietly away. Of his private
life there is little to record. Meaux found him an excellent and devoted
bishop, much more attentive to diocesan concerns than his more stirring
occupations would seem to allow. In general society he was kindly and
affable enough, though somewhat ill at ease. Until he was over forty, he
had lived among purely ecclesiastical surroundings; and it was probably
want of self-confidence, more than want of moral courage, that made him
shut his eyes a little too closely to the disorders of Louis XIV.'s
private life. After all, he was not the king's confessor; and to
"reform" Louis, before age and Mme de Maintenon had sobered him down,
would have taxed the powers of Daniel or Ezekiel. But in his books
Bossuet was anything but timid. All of them, even the attacks on Simon,
breathe an air of masculine belief in reason, rare enough among the
apologists of any age. Bossuet would willingly have undertaken, as
Malebranche actually undertook, to make an intelligent Chinaman accept
all his ideas, if only he could be induced to lend them his attention.
But his best praise is to have brought all the powers of language to
paint an undying picture of a vanished world, where religion and
letters, laws and science, were conceived of as fixed unalterable
planets, circling for ever round one central Sun.

AUTHORITIES.--The best edition of Bossuet's sermons is the _OEuvres
oratoires de Bossuet_, edi