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As science progresses, it prolongs the agony which is the most dreadful moment and the sharpest peak of human pain and horror, for the witnesses, at least; for, often, the sensibility of him who, in Bossuet's phrase, is "at bay with death," is already greatly blunted and perceives no more than the distant murmur of the sufferings which he seems to be enduring.
He would then fall back on old-time songs or La Fontaine's fables in which he excelled. A skilfully studied mimicry, which seemed entirely natural, underlay his reading. A red handkerchief, which he knew how to draw from his pocket at just the proper moment, always excited applause. One day he conceived the idea of giving one of Bossuet's sermons at his concert.
The Universal Jubilee. Court Preachers. King David. Madame de Montespan is Obliged to go to Clagny. Bossuet's Mission. Mademoiselle de Mauleon. An Enemy's Good Faith. I do not desire to hold up to ridicule the rites of that religion in which I was born and bred. Neither would I disparage its ancient usages, nor its far more modern laws.
Bossuet's talk of universal history, which has been so constantly praised, was fundamentally, and in substance, no more than a bit of theological commonplace splendidly decorated.
The Doctor she regarded with a naive astonishment, slightly tinctured with apprehension. She knew he was very religious, and stretched her comprehension to imagine what he might be like. She thought of Bossuet's sermons walking about under a Protestant coat, and felt vaguely alarmed and sinful in his presence, as she used to when entering under the shadows of a cathedral.
One can hardly deny that this was richly deserved by the English drama of the Restoration, and Collier's strictures were not applicable, nor meant to apply, either to the ancients, for he has a good word even for Aristophanes, or to the French drama. Bossuet's loftier denunciation, like Rousseau's, was puritanical, and it extended to the whole body of stage plays.
But these qualities, pushed to an extreme, have also their disadvantages. Voltaire's style is narrow; it is like a rapier all point; with such neatness, such lightness, the sweeping blade of Pascal has become an impossibility. Compared to the measured march of Bossuet's sentences, Voltaire's sprightly periods remind one almost of a pirouette.
In the earlier part of his youth, La Fontaine was distinguished for his idleness, but hearing an ode by Malherbe read, he is said to have exclaimed, "I too am a poet," and his genius was awakened. Charles Bossuet's mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early age, Fontenelle's 'Eloges' of men of science.
That subtle critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, thinks he can trace a marked rise even in Bossuet's style from the moment he became a courtier of Louis XIV. The King brought men together, placed them in a position where they were induced and urged to bring their talents to a focus. His court was alternately a high-bred gala and a stately university.
He would read Bossuet's description of him in the "Oraison Funebre de la Reine d'Angleterre," and show how in this he was considered entirely from the religious point of view, as an instrument in the hands of God, preordained to His work.
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