(37.) I question if it be possible to write more clever letters in a more agreeable manner and in a better style than those of Balzac[71] or Voiture;[72] but they are void of those sentiments which have swayed us since their time and originated with the ladies. That sex excels ours in this kind of writing; from their pens flow naturally those turns and expressions which often are with us the effects of tedious labour and troublesome research; they are fortunate in the selection of their wordings, which they employ so cleverly, that though they are not new, they have all the charm of novelty, and seem only designed for the use they put them to; they alone can express an entire sentiment in a single word, and render a delicate thought as delicately; their arguments are connected in an inimitable manner, follow one another naturally, and are only linked together by the sense. If the ladies wrote always correctly, I might affirm that perhaps the letters of some of them would be among the best in our language.[73] (38.) Terentius[74] wanted nothing but to be less cold. What purity! what preciseness! what polish! what elegance! what characters! Molière wanted nothing but to avoid the vulgar tongue and barbarisms and to write elegantly.[75] What fire! what artlessness! what original and good jokes! how well he imitates manners! what imagery! and how he lashes what is ridiculous! But what an author might have been formed of these two comic writers! (39.) I have read Malherbe and Théophile.[76] They both understood nature, with this difference: the first, in a nervous and uniform style, displays at one and the same time whatever is beautiful, noble, ingenuous and simple, and depicts or describes it; the other, without choice or accuracy, with a loose and uneven pen, some times overloads his descriptions, goes into too many details, and analyses too much; sometimes he imagines certain things,[77] exaggerates, outstrips what is true in nature, and becomes a romancer. (40.) In both Ronsard[78] and Balzac, each in their kind, are found a sufficient number of good and bad things to form after them very great men either in verse or prose. (41.) Marot,[79] by his phraseology and style, seems to have written after Ronsard wrote; there is very little difference, except in a few words, between the style of the former and our present style. (42.) Ronsard and his contemporaries have done more harm than good to style; they delayed its progress towards perfection, and exposed it to the danger of being always defective and of never becoming perfect again. It is astonishing that Marotʼs works, which are so natural and easy, have not made of Ronsard, so full of rapture and enthusiasm, a greater poet than he or Marot ever were; and that, on the contrary, Belleau, Jodelle, and du Bartas[80] were soon followed by a Racan[81] and a Malherbe, and that the French language was no sooner vitiated than it recovered. [Illustration: MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE]