on. It is the
man living upon the level of his time, and finding his inspiration in
the world of events, who reflects its life, marks its currents, and
registers its changes. Matthew Arnold has aptly said that "the qualities
of genius are less transferable than the qualities of intelligence, less
can be immediately learned and appropriated from their product; they are
less direct and stringent intellectual agencies, though they may be
more beautiful and divine." It was this quality of intelligence that
eminently characterized the literature of the seventeenth century. It
was a mirror of social conditions, or their natural outcome. The spirit
of its social life penetrated its thought, colored its language, and
molded its forms. We trace it in the letters and vers de societe which
were the pastime of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the Samedis of Mlle. de
Scudery, as well as in the romances which reflected their sentiments and
pictured their manners. We trace it in the literary portraits which were
the diversion of the coterie of Mademoiselle, at the Luxembourg, and in
the voluminous memoirs and chronicles which grew out of it. We trace it
also in the "Maxims" and "Thoughts" which were polished and perfected in
the convent salon of Mme. de Sable, and were the direct fruits of a wide
experience and observation of the great world. It would be unfair to say
that anything so complex as the growth of a new literature was wholly
due to any single influence, but the intellectual drift of the time
seems to have found its impulse in the salons. They were the alembics in
which thought was fused and crystallized. They were the schools in which
the French mind cultivated its extraordinary clearness and flexibility.

As the century advanced, the higher literature was tinged and modified
by the same spirit. Society, with its follies and affectations, inspired
the mocking laughter of Moliere, but its unwritten laws tempered his
language and refined his wit. Its fine urbanity was reflected in the
harmony and delicacy of Racine, as well as in the critical decorum of
Boileau. The artistic sentiment rules in letters, as in social life. It
was not only the thought that counted, but the setting of the thought.
The majestic periods of Bossuet, the tender persuasiveness of Fenelon,
gave even truth a double force. The moment came when this critical
refinement, this devotion to form, passed its limits, and the inevitable
reaction followed. The great