A second reason of the superiority of the Jesuits over the other orders, in respect to the sciences and knowledge, is, that they have sufficient time for resigning themselves up to study, enjoying in this point as much liberty as can possibly be enjoyed in a regular community, not being subjected, as the other orders are, to the minute practices of devotion, and to offices which absorb the greatest part of the day. If it were not known that hatred makes arms of every thing, we should have some difficulty to believe, that during their great and fatal law-suit, it was gravely objected to them as a crime, in some of the Jansenist pamphlets, that they did not assemble together so often as other monks, to say, in common, matins and prayers; as if a religious society (the first duty of which is to be useful) had nothing better to do than to chant over heavily bad Latin several hours in the day. It will be said perhaps, that religious orders are instituted only for prayer: be it so; but in that case let the religious shut themselves up in their houses, in order to pray there quite at their ease, and let them be hindered from meddling in any thing else. This suppression of praying and chanting, among the Jesuits, before it became a subject of reproach against them, had been matter of pleasantry, agreeably to the genius of our nation: “The Jesuits,” said they, “cannot sing, for birds of prey never do: they are,” said they again, “a set of folks who get up at four in the morning, in order to repeat together the litanies at eight in the evening.” The Jesuits had the good sense to laugh the first at these French witticisms, and to make no change in their manner of living; they thought it more serviceable and more honourable to them, to have Petaus and Bourdaloues, than triflers and chanters. It must be confessed nevertheless, that in the sciences and the arts, two kinds have been but feebly cultivated by the Jesuits: these are French poetry and philosophy. The best of their French poets is beneath mediocrity; yet French poetry requires, in order to excel in it, a delicacy of feeling and taste, which cannot be acquired but by frequenting the world much more than a religious ought to permit himself to do. This school of urbanity and delicacy is perhaps the only thing that was wanting to the Jesuit Le Moine to make him a poet of the first rank; for that Jesuit, according to the judgement given of him by one of our greatest masters, had, in other respects, an imagination that was prodigious[5]. If it be asked why the Jesuits have not had French poets, we must ask why the universities have not had more of them, and why so many modern Latin poets, taken throughout the several communities, and throughout all conditions, have not been able to succeed in making two tolerable French lines in verse.