The volume, as a whole, will be found less dogmatic, calmer, more convincing, and more directly applicable to artistic judgment, than any of the others. There is the same love of mysticism and undermeanings, but freighted with deeper and more central truths: a charming conclusion to a fourteen-years' diary of such study of Art and Nature, so severe, so unremitting, as never critic gave before.
Fenelon was in exile at his diocese; public rumor before long attributed the work to him; the Maximes des Saints had just been condemned, Telemaque was seized, the printers were punished; some copies had escaped the police; the book was reprinted in Holland; all Europe read it, finding therein the allusions and undermeanings against which Fenelon defended himself.