their nature?"

This enemy of his century really believes the fable of Orpheus, and has
not apparently heard either the beautiful music of Italy, or even that
of France, which in truth does not charm snakes, but does charm the ears
of connoisseurs.

What is still more strange is that, having all his life cultivated
belles-lettres, he does not reason better about our good authors than
about our philosophers. He looks on Rabelais as a great man. He cites
the "Amours des Gaules" as one of our best works. He was, however, a
scholar, a courtier, a man of much wit, an ambassador, a man who had
reflected profoundly on all he had seen. He possessed great knowledge: a
prejudice sufficed to spoil all this merit.

There are beauties in Euripides, and in Sophocles still more; but they
have many more defects. One dares say that the beautiful scenes of
Corneille and the touching tragedies of Racine surpass the tragedies of
Sophocles and Euripides as much as these two Greeks surpass Thespis.
Racine was quite conscious of his great superiority over Euripides; but
he praised the Greek poet in order to humiliate Perrault.

Molière, in his good pieces, is as superior to the pure but cold
Terence, and to the droll Aristophanes, as to Dancourt the buffoon.

There are therefore spheres in which the moderns are far superior to the
ancients, and others, very few in number, in which we are their
inferiors. It is to this that the whole dispute is reduced.