I select these examples expressly from the best authors, in order that they may be the more striking. I do not lay hold of those puns which play upon words, the false taste of which is felt by all. There is no one that does not laugh when, in the tragedy of the "Golden Fleece," Hypsipyle says to Medea, alluding to her sorceries: _Je n'ai que des attraits, et vous avez des charmes._ I have attractions only, you have charms. Corneille found the stage and every other department of literature infested with these puerilities, into which he rarely fell. I wish here to speak only of such strokes of wit as would be admitted elsewhere, and as the serious style rejects. To their authors might be applied the sentence of Plutarch, translated with the happy naivete of Amiot: "_Tu tiens sans propos beaucoup de bons propos_." There occurs to my recollection one of those brilliant passages, which I have seen quoted as a model in many works of taste, and even in the treatise on studies by the late M. Rollin. This piece is taken from the fine funeral oration on the great Turenne, composed by Fléchier. It is true, that in this oration Fléchier almost equalled the sublime Bossuet, whom I have called and still call the only eloquent man among so many elegant writers; but it appears to me that the passage of which I am speaking would not have been employed by the bishop of Meaux. Here it is: "Ye powers hostile to France, you live; and the spirit of Christian charity forbids me to wish your death.... but you live; and I mourn in this pulpit over a virtuous leader, whose intentions were pure...." An apostrophe in this taste would have been suitable to Rome in the civil war, after the assassination of Pompey; or to London, after the murder of Charles I.; because the interests of Pompey and Charles I. were really in question. But is it decent to insinuate in the pulpit a wish for the death of the emperor, the king of Spain, and the electors, and put in the balance against them the commander-in-chief employed by a king who was their enemy? Should the intentions of a leader--which can only be to serve his prince--be compared with the political interests of the crowned heads against whom he served? What would be said of a German who should have wished for the death of the king of France, on the occasion of the death of General Merci, "whose intentions were pure"? Why, then, has this passage always been praised by the rhetoricians? Because the figure is in itself beautiful and pathetic; but they do not thoroughly investigate the fitness of the thought. I now return to my paradox; that none of those glittering ornaments, to which we give the name of wit, should find a place in great works designed to instruct or to move the passions. I will even say that they ought to be banished from the opera. Music expresses passions, sentiments, images; but where are the notes that can render an epigram? Quinault was sometimes negligent, but he was always natural.