They concern us from a pedagogic point of view, in many ways. They wrote text-books, many of which are the basis of manuals in almost every line of education to-day, sometimes without the change of a word, and generally without acknowledgment. Besides that, their literary productions were, as a rule, the offspring of their labors in the schools. It might not be safe to estimate their standing as _littérateurs_, by the process which a Scotch Professor uses, who, in the course of forty-seven elegant lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, sees little occasion to recognize the existence of this Jesuit school of literature, except when he goes out of his way to salute Père Rapin in a somewhat questionable manner.[137] Many of those whom the Scottish Professor himself does honor to, in his pages, were Jesuit scholars,--Bossuet, Corneille, Molière, Tasso, Fontenelle, Didérot, Voltaire, Bourdaloue, himself a Jesuit. It would be safer then to determine the standing of these Professors, who were in control of a great literary age, by looking at the golden age itself, that of Louis XIV. The majority of the brilliant figures, whom Dr. Blair names as illustrating the epoch,[138] were all Jesuit scholars. Naturally, then, the fifty Professors of the Jesuit College at Paris were, as Cardinal Maury affirmed, a permanent tribunal of literature for all men of letters, a high court of judicature, a focus of public attention from which radiated the public opinion of the capital; in short, as Piron had emphatically said, "the Star-chamber of literary reputations."[139] Devoted as they were to an austere profession, we may say of many among them, that they were not themselves romancers of a lively fancy or great poets; and so far agree with Voltaire, who made this very remark about his old Professor, Père Porée. Yet also, without inconsistency I believe, we may agree with the spirit of Père Porée's rejoiner, when the remark was reported to him, that "he was not one of the great poets." The Jesuit replied, "At least you may grant that I have been able to make some of them." And, should results be gauged on a wider basis than mere poetry, not a few of the most prominent men in European history would seem to have been the outcome of this system, men, too, who represented every possible school and tendency, in their subsequent literary and public life. A few names show this. There are those of Descartes, Buffon, Justus Lipsius, Muratori, Calderon, Vico, the jurisconsult, founder of the philosophical school of history. There are Richelieu, Tilly, Malesherbes, Don John of Austria, Luxembourg, Esterhazy, Choiseul, with those of Saint Francis de Sales, founder of a religious Order, Lambertini, afterwards the most learned of Popes, under the name of Benedict XIV, and the present Pontiff, Leo XIII, also most erudite. These certainly represent many schools and tendencies, and they come, with many others, from the same schools.[140]