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Updated: May 9, 2025
Boileau was of Lord Macaulay's opinion; at least as regarded Pascal. "Corbinelli wrote to me the other day," says Madame de Sevigne, on the 15th of January, 1690: "he gave me an account of a conversation and a dinner at M. de Lamoignon's: the persons were the master and mistress of the house, M. de Troyes, M. de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli.
She preferred the history of France to that of Rome because she had "neither relatives nor friends in the latter place." She finds the music of Lulli celestial and the preaching of Bourdaloue divine. Racine she did not quite appreciate. In his youth, she said he wrote tragedies for Champmesle and not for posterity.
Pope was a fool; just as some Jesuits in France declare Pascal to have been a man of little or no genius, and some Jansenists affirm Father Bourdaloue to have been a mere babbler. The Jacobites consider Mary Queen of Scots as a pious heroine, but those of an opposite party look upon her as a prostitute, an adulteress, a murderer.
He was not artistic in the use of words and phrases like Bourdaloue, but he reached the conscience and the heart like Whitefield. He never sought to amuse; he would not stoop to any trifling. He told no stories; he made no witticisms; he used no tricks. He fell back on truths, no matter whether his hearers relished them or not; no matter whether they were amused or not.
I then learned who this influential personage was, whose protection is sought by prefects, senators, even ministers, and who must make them pay stiffly for it, since with his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke he has saved enough to produce him an income of twenty-five thousand, sends his daughters to the convent school of the Sacre Coeur, his son to the College Bourdaloue, and owns a chalet in Switzerland where all his family goes to stay during the holidays.
Thereupon I was enlightened on the subject of that influential personage, whose good offices are sought by prefects, senators, even by ministers, and who evidently makes them pay roundly for them, for, with his salary of twelve hundred francs from the duke, he has saved enough to have an income of twenty-five thousand francs, has his daughters at the boarding-school of the Sacred Heart, his son at Bourdaloue College, and a châlet in Switzerland to which the whole family go for the vacation.
Thomas a Kempis, while Bourdaloue, after preaching for a week to empty benches, found his chapel packed to the last seat with weary gentlemen and taper-bearing ladies. By midday there was none in the court who had not heard the tidings, save only Madame de Montespan, who, alarmed by her lover's absence, had remained in haughty seclusion in her room, and knew nothing of what had passed.
The highest names in this department would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any of that significance or promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or Bourdaloue, to those even who have no personal acquaintance with their works.
And what makes Voltaire chiefly circulate is collection; such as his Universal History. BOSWELL. 'What do you say to the Bishop of Meaux? JOHNSON. 'Sir, nobody reads him . He would not allow Massilon and Bourdaloue to go round the world. In general, however, he gave the French much praise for their industry.
On bad terms with his bishop, he had left the diocese where he had been engaged, and in the precarious position of an unattached priest for the clergy have their Bohemians too he was glad to teach the little Jansoulets, recently turned out of the Bourdaloue College.
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