[102] In the original _comédies_, a word employed for tragedies as well as for comedies. [103] Cinna in the tragedy of that name, Felix in _Polyeucte_, and Rodogune in _Rodogune_ are examples of this. [104] The original has _nombreux_, the Latin _numerosus_. [105] Three tragedies by Corneille. Though he himself calls the last tragedy by the name given above, its real title is _Horace_. [106] Mithridates, the hero of Racineʼs tragedy of that name; Porus, a character in the _Alexandre_, and Burrhus in the _Britannicus_ of the same author. [107] In the comparison between Corneille and Racine there are some reminiscences of a _Parallèle de M. Corneille et de M. Racine_, published in 1686 by a certain author, de Requeleyne, Baron de Longepierre. [108] Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), Euripides (480-406 B.C.) [109] Cassius Longinus (213-273), a Greek orator, philosopher, and author, is chiefly known by his “Treatise on the Sublime,” which is generally attributed to him. In it he states that there are five principal sources of the sublime, and that the third is nought but the figures of speech turned about in a certain manner. Boileauʼs translation of this “Treatise” appeared in 1674, and in his preface he described but did not define the sublime, a definition also not found in Longinus. [110] The original has _capable_, in the sense of the Latin _capax_. [111] According to Boileau, Longinus does not understand by “sublime” a sublime style, but something extraordinary and marvellously striking, which causes a work to enrapture, delight, and transport us. A sublime style always requires grand, eloquent words; but the sublime may be found in a single thought, a single figure of speech, a single phrase. Longinus himself says that anything which leaves us food for thought, which almost carries us away, and of which the remembrance is lasting, is sublime. [112] In rhetoric there is a difference between a metaphor and a comparison. [113] The above paragraph is said to refer to the polemical writings interchanged between the Jesuits and Jansenists, and seems not quite fair to Pascalʼs _Lettres Provinciales_. [114] Some “Keys” mention the names of Bouhours and Bourdaloue, whilst more modern commentators think that La Bruyère only wished to give a paragraph on the French prose of his time. [115] The original has _artisan_, which even in La Bruyèreʼs time meant an artisan, when used without being qualified; our author employs it, however, for “artist.” [116] Some annotators say a certain Abbé Bourdelon (1653-1730), a completely forgotten critic, was meant; others think it was a hit at Ménage (1613-1692), who had the good sense not to recognise himself in this portrait, and is said to have been also the original of Vadius in Molièreʼs _Femmes Savantes_.