His set Critical Dissertations quite confirm this verdict. [Sidenote: _His Critical Dissertations._] He opens them with a great deal about Discipline, _Justesse_, _Bienséance_, the Mean, and the like. He tells us (vol. ii. p. 537) that any one who likes Ariosto would prefer a Siren to a beautiful woman—the answer to which challenge may be justly suspended by the true critic till he has a Siren produced before him. There might be much to be said for her. He has some not unpleasant remarks on the obligatory subject of the great sonnet-duel between Voiture’s “Uranie” and Benserade’s “Job”: but he has not, so far as I remember, discovered the critical truth that their beauty lies in the singular charm of the _first_ line of the one and the _last_ of the other. He is in one place (ii. 597) almost savage with Montaigne, of whom he says that, though he be adopted father to Mlle. de Gournay, esteemed by Father Paul, and “_allégué par le Chancelier Baccon_” (_sic_), he can see nothing in his Essays but equivoques and mistakes of judgment. This, however, is said chiefly in reference to Montaigne’s Latinity and knowledge of Latin: and elsewhere (pp. 657-662) there is a set judgment much more favourable, though still smacking of the double prejudice against a prophet of his own country and a man of the last generation. But his Dissertation on or against the Burlesque[312] style, when one remembers the excesses in which, from Scarron down to Dassoucy, men were about to indulge, is not contemptible: and there are amusing things in his _Barbon_, a sort of elaborate Theophrastian portrait of a young pedant, from which Scriblerus may have borrowed. ----- Footnote 312: With this it is interesting to compare the disquisition written to Balzac, and apparently at his request, _De Ludicra Dictione_ (opening his _Opera_, fol., Amst., 1709) by François Vavasseur, a Jesuit Professor, who also wrote not a bad book on _Epigrams_ and some other literary work, besides sermons and theological treatises. Vavasseur is at once refreshingly logical and audacious. The Greeks (he is bold enough even to face the retort of “Aristophanes”?) did not use _ludicra dictio_ or burlesque language. Nor did the Romans: for Lucilius _desideratur_ (scarcely so much as to warrant the conclusion to those who know the fragments well), and as for Petronius and Apuleius, decent people never mention _them_. Secondly, the ancient critics give no precepts for it. Thirdly, there is no reason for using it. Fourthly, there are many reasons for _not_ using it. So that is settled. One may like Vavasseur. -----