and the mind. But there was a very great difference between the
influence these ladies exercised from 1620 until 1640, and what took
place in 1658, the year when Moliere returned to Paris. The Hotel de
Rambouillet, and the aristocratic drawing-rooms, had then done their
work, and done it well; but they were succeeded by a clique which cared
only for what was nicely said, or rather what was out of the common.
Instead of using an elegant and refined diction, they employed only a
pretentious and conceitedly affected style, which became highly
ridiculous; instead of improving the national idiom they completely
spoilt it. Where formerly D'Urfe, Malherbe, Racan, Balzac, and Voiture
reigned, Chapelain, Scudery, Menage, and the Abbe Cotin, "the father of
the French Riddle," ruled in their stead. Moreover, every lady in Paris,
as well as in the provinces, no matter what her education was, held her
drawing-room, where nothing was heard but a ridiculous, exaggerated, and
what was worse, a borrowed phraseology. The novels of Mdlle. de Scudery
became the text-book of the _precieux_ and the _precieuses_, for such
was the name given to these gentlemen and ladies who set up for wits,
and thought they displayed exquisite taste, refined ideas, fastidious
judgment, and consummate and critical discrimination, whilst they only
uttered vapid and blatant nonsense. What other language can be used when
we find that they called the sun _l'aimable eclairant le plus beau du
monde, l'epoux de la nature_, and that when speaking of an old gentleman
with grey hair, they said, not as a joke, but seriously, _il a des
quittances d'amour_. A few of their expressions, however, are employed
even at the present time, such as, _chatier son style_; to correct one's
style; _depenser une heure_, to spend an hour; _revetir ses pensees
d'expressions nobles_, to clothe one's thoughts in noble expressions,
etc.

Though the _precieux and precieuses_ had been several times attacked