great?" Bishops and politicians combined in perfect good faith to
advertise your merits. Hard must have been the heart that could
resist the testimonials of your skill as a poet offered by the Duc
de Montausier, and the learned Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and
Monseigneur Godeau, Bishop of Vence, and M. Colbert, who had such a
genius for finance.

If bishops and politicians and Prime Ministers skilled in finance,
and some critics (Menage and Sarrazin and Vaugelas), if ladies of
birth and taste, if all the world in fact, combined to tell you that
you were a great poet, how can we blame you for taking yourself
seriously, and appraising yourself at the public estimate?

It was not in human nature to resist the evidence of the bishops
especially, and when every minor poet believes in himself on the
testimony of his own conceit, you may be acquitted of vanity if you
listened to the plaudits of your friends. Nay, you ventured to
pronounce judgment on contemporaries--whom Posterity has preferred
to your perfections. "Moliere," said you, "understands the genius
of comedy, and presents it in a natural style. The plot of his best
pieces is borrowed, but not without judgment; his morale is fair,
and he has only to avoid scurrility."

Excellent, unconscious, popular Chapelain!

Of yourself you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature,
that your "courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work
not absolutely good." And yet you regarded "La Pucelle" with some
complacency.